topic: Saving Species From Extinction

topic: Saving Species From Extinction

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Final cheetah conservationists freed in Iran, but the big cat’s outlook remains grim
- In April, the last four cheetah conservationists from the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation jailed in 2018 for alleged espionage were released from prison in Tehran; four of their colleagues had been released earlier, while one had died in custody.
- The case had a chilling effect on scientific collaboration and efforts to save the critically endangered Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus), which is today found only in Iran, with fewer than 30 believed to remain in the wild.
- The cheetah faces a range of threats, chief among them vehicle collisions: some 52% of cheetah deaths in Iran are due to road accidents.
- Saving the species will require a comprehensive and coordinated effort, and international scientific cooperation is crucial — but conservation work has been hampered by complex geopolitical dynamics, including sanctions.

Bangladesh uses satellite transmitters on saltwater crocodiles in Asia’s first
- On March 13, the Bangladesh forest department tagged satellite transmitters on two saltwater crocodiles for the first time in Asia and released them in the Sundarbans waters.
- So far, four saltwater crocodiles — three from captivity and one from the wild — have been tagged and the preparation is in place to tag more.
- The forest department has already started collecting data using the satellite transmitters to understand the crocodile’s habits in this ecosystem and identify nesting its hotspots, ecology, mortality rate and habitat range.
- Experts say the satellite data will play an important role in crocodile conservation in Bangladesh, where the species is critically endangered, and will help the authorities make proper conservation management plans to protect it.

New calf, same threats: Javan rhinos continue to reproduce despite perils
- Recent camera-trap images of a Javan rhino calf, estimated to be 3-5 months old in March, demonstrate that the species continues to reproduce despite being beset by challenges.
- The species is confined to a single habitat, and while its population is officially estimated at more than 70 individuals, a report last year cast doubt on those figures, alleging that 18 of those rhinos had not been spotted on camera for years.
- The peninsula of Ujung Kulon National Park, where all Javan rhinos live, has been closed to all visitors since September 2023 after poaching activity was detected.

Smaller population estimate underscores urgency of saving Cao-vit gibbon
- A recent survey based on “vocal fingerprinting” puts the total population of Cao-vit gibbons at just 74 individuals, down from previous estimates of 120.
- Researchers say the lower number represents more precise data, not an actual decline in gibbon numbers.
- However, habitat loss and hunting, along with a slow rate of reproduction, have pushed Cao-vit gibbons to the edge of extinction.
- Reforestation and establishing protected forest corridors are key to increasing population numbers, while inbreeding remains a concern for the small population.

‘Mind-blowing’ new orchid species found in Madagascar forest canopy
- Scientists from Madagascar, the U.S. and Europe have described a new orchid species from the forests of central Madagascar, which has a record-breaking long nectar spur relative to its small flower size.
- The orchid is pollinated by a species of hawkmoth with a very long tongue, similar to Darwin’s orchid, which was predicted to exist by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the 1800s.
- Habitat of the newly described orchid species is threatened deforestation and mining activities, especially from the Ambatovy nickel and cobalt mine nearby, though Ambatovy is funding conservation actions to protect the species.
- Madagascar’s unique biodiversity, including many species found nowhere else on Earth, is under serious threat from rapid deforestation driven by agriculture, fires and mining.

Comeback on the cards for Asian antelope declared extinct in Bangladesh
- Nilgais, the largest antelope species in Asia, are reappearing in northwestern Bangladesh, a country that was part of their historical range but where they were declared locally extinct in the 1930s due to habitat loss and hunting.
- Forays by nilgais, mostly from neighboring India but also from Nepal, suggest that the species can be reestablished in parts of Bangladesh that still have sufficient areas of undisturbed natural landscape.
- A 2023 study identified 13 instances of nilgai sightings in the country from 2018-2022 from media reports, but it’s likely that most sightings are going unreported because they end up in local residents catching and killing the antelopes for their meat.
- Experts say any attempt to reestablish a nilgai population within Bangladesh’s borders should be carried out in tandem with a public education campaign to discourage the hunting of the animal.

Summit on migratory species sides with science, throws shade on deep-sea mining
- Representatives from 133 member states of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) met in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, from Feb. 12-17 to discuss measures to protect migratory species on a global scale.
- Many decisions at the meeting, known as COP14, focused on the protection of marine species, including the listing of several species in the convention’s appendices, a draft decision on vessel strikes, and an updated resolution on climate change that urges parties to take measures to protect species from future threats.
- The convention also adopted a resolution urging parties not to engage with or support deep-sea mining until more scientific evidence is acquired. This resolution garnered criticism from the secretary-general of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N.-mandated body that governs deep-sea mining in international waters.
- While attendees say COP14 had many successes, some experts say that more action and resources are required to keeping species from sliding toward extinction.

Colombia adds hundreds of species to list of threatened flora and fauna
- The Ministry of Environment updated a list of threatened species in Colombia for the first time since 2017, adding hundreds of species facing a wide range of threats, from deforestation and mining to illegal hunting and fishing.
- The country now has 2,103 species listed as critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable, up by about 800 species from the last time the analysis was carried out.
- Colombia has over 56,000 species in total, making it one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, according to WWF.

Scientists warn of ‘extinction crisis’ stalking Africa’s raptors
- A Nature Ecology & Evolution paper found that of 42 African raptor species, 37 had suffered a population decline over just three generations (up to 40 years).
- Raptors like secretarybirds (Sagittarius serpentarius) stand out among birds thanks to their razor-sharp vision, piercing talons and hooked beaks, making them such effective hunters of everything from other birds to mammals.
- The secretarybird, a charismatic and rare long-legged raptor that hunts on the ground, saw an 80% decline in populations in four African regions.
- The research also highlighted the grave risk to large-bodied raptor populations and the danger of some of the most threatened species being confined to protected areas.

To help beleaguered Javan rhinos, study calls for tree felling, captive breeding
- The sole remaining population of Javan rhinos, around 70 individuals, persists in a single national park in Indonesia.
- A new paper argues that conservationists should clear some areas of the park to increase feeding areas for rhinos, and create a captive-breeding program for the species.
- Recent government reports indicate that 13 of the remaining Javan rhinos display congenital defects, likely due to inbreeding.
- Despite intensive monitoring by camera trap, scientists know relatively little about the species’ reproductive behavior and breeding patterns.

Photos: Top species discoveries from 2023
- Scientists described a slew of new species this past year, including an electric blue tarantula, two pygmy squid, a silent frog, and some thumb-sized chameleons.
- Experts estimate less than 20% of Earth’s species have been documented by Western science.
- Although a species may be new to science, it may already be well known to local and Indigenous people and have a common name.
- Many new species of plants, fungi, and animals are assessed as Vulnerable or Critically Endangered with extinction as soon as they are found, and many species may go extinct before they are named, experts say.

Could mugger crocodiles be brought back from regional extinction in Bangladesh?
- Once, mugger crocodiles (Crocodylus palustris) were common in Bangladesh’s major rivers, including the Padma, Jamuna, Meghna and most of their tributaries, but the species is thought to have gone extinct in the country due to unchecked poaching for its prized skin.
- Although the IUCN in 2000 declared the mugger regionally extinct in Bangladesh, three adult muggers were recovered from the country’s river and water bodies in only 11 days, Oct. 17-28 this year.
- The crocodiles were taken to the Karamjol Crocodile Breeding Centre in Khulna, and authorities are working on how muggers could be brought back to nature by increasing their population through captive breeding.
- Experts suggest establishing a safe zone for the crocodiles in the upper Padma River.

Study: Singapore biodiversity loss is bad — but not as bad as previous estimate
- A recent study concludes that Singapore has lost 37% of its species since the construction of the city began in 1819.
- While high, the figure is significantly lower than a 2003 estimate of 73% species loss during the same period, a difference the authors of both the current study and the 2003 estimate attribute to more advanced statistical modeling.
- Although 99% of Singapore’s forests have been wiped out, extinction rates have leveled off and all remaining primary forest is protected, which researchers say presents an opportunity to conserve remaining species and work to reintroduce animals that have gone locally extinct.

‘Immense body of knowledge’ at stake in Cambodia’s Prey Lang as deforestation soars
- Researchers have launched a new book that catalogs hundreds of plant species from Cambodia’s Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary that have known medicinal uses.
- The book draws on the knowledge of Indigenous communities who have found a use for these plants over the course of generations, and whose livelihoods and cultures are closely intertwined with the fate of these species.
- The book also serves to highlight the imperiled situation of Prey Lang and its native species as deforestation by politically linked timber-trafficking networks continues to destroy vast swaths of this ostensibly protected area.
- “If the current trends of deforestation continue,” the authors warn, “an immense body of knowledge about nature will be lost, reducing the resilience and adaptability of future generations.”

Boost for Sumatran rhino IVF plan as eggs extracted from Bornean specimen
- Conservationists in Indonesia say they’ve successfully extracted eggs from a Sumatran rhino to be used in an IVF program meant to boost the population of the near-extinct species.
- The donor rhino, known as Pahu, is a Bornean specimen of the Sumatran rhino, and her egg would greatly expand the genetic pool of a species believed to number as few as 40.
- Since 2012, three Sumatran rhinos have been born under Indonesia’s captive-breeding program, but all are closely related: a single captive male is the father to two of them and grandfather to the third.
- Conservationists say they hope to eventually fertilize Pahu’s eggs with sperm from captive Sumatran males, with one of the Sumatran females then serving as a surrogate to hopefully bring a baby to term.

Sliver of hope as ‘mountain chicken’ frog shows resistance to deadly disease
- A Caribbean frog species known as the mountain chicken is on the brink of extinction due to the spread of an infectious fungal disease.
- However, a recent survey found that there were still 21 of these supersized frogs on the island of Dominica.
- Some of these frogs were found to have genes resistant to the fungal disease, raising hope for the species’ survival.

South Africa’s penguins heading toward extinction; will no-fishing zones help?
- With just 10,000 breeding pairs left, the endangered African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) could be extinct in the wild by 2035 if the current rate of population decline continues.
- To protect the bird’s food supply and slow its population collapse, South Africa is throwing a protective no-fishing cordon around its main breeding colonies for a period of 10 years.
- But the devil is in the details, and conservationists say the cordons are too small to ensure the penguins get enough fish.
- Negotiations over whether to adjust the cordons are continuing in advance of an early 2024 deadline.

Indonesia reports a new Javan rhino calf, but population doubts persist
- Indonesian officials have reported the sighting of a new Javan rhino calf in Ujung Kulon National Park, home to the last surviving population of the critically endangered species.
- While the discovery of the female calf is good news, it comes amid growing doubt about official claims that the species’ population is increasing steadily.
- The Indonesian government puts the Javan rhino’s current population at about 80 animals, with an average of three new calves added per year.
- Its past estimates, however, have counted rhinos that have disappeared (some of which were confirmed dead), throwing into question whether the species’ population trend is really increasing or even declining.

Barely making it: A conversation with ‘Eight Bears’ author Gloria Dickie
- Gloria Dickie is an award-winning journalist who has documented the state of the world’s eight remaining bear species in a compelling new book, “Eight Bears: Mythic Past and Imperiled Future.”
- Despite the conservation gains made by iconic bear species like the giant panda and the brown bear, most bear species remain at risk.
- In this podcast conversation, the author shares the context behind why some bear species, such as the Andean bear and the polar bear, which face climate-related threats, are much harder to protect.
- “It’s quite tricky for bears threatened by climate change and not just habitat loss,” she says on this episode.

PFAS ‘forever chemicals’ harming wildlife the world over: Study
- While the health impacts of toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, or PFAS, are well known in humans, a new study reports how they affect a wide range of wildlife species.
- In this survey of published studies, the authors found and mapped wildlife exposures worldwide, including impacts on animal species in remote parts of the planet, including the Arctic.
- Researchers documented serious PFAS-triggered conditions in wildlife, including suppressed immunity, liver damage, developmental and reproductive issues, nervous and endocrine system impacts, gut microbiome/bowel disease and more. PFAS pose yet another threat to already beleaguered global wildlife.
- National governments have done little to restrict use of PFAS or remediate pollution, despite growing evidence of increased harm to both humans and wildlife. The study authors call for immediate action to remediate PFAS-contamination sites and regulate industrial chemicals to help protect threatened and endangered species.

How hot are the desert tortoises getting? iButtons help find the answer
- Researchers are using a button-shaped device to gather data about desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) and their habitats in the Mojave Desert in Southern California.
- Using iButtons, the researchers are trying to understand how hot the tortoises get, and the temperatures that they prefer in the burrows where they spend most of their time.
- Identifying the critically endangered species’ temperature preferences is an urgent task: the tortoise faces threats to its survival from various quarters such as rising temperatures, habitat loss, and attacks by predators.
- With this research, scientists say they hope to find habitats that are safer and where the thermal conditions are suitable for the long-term survival of the tortoises.

African Parks to rewild 2,000 rhinos from controversial breeding program
- African Parks, which manages national parks in several countries across the continent, announced it has purchased Platinum Rhino, John Hume’s controversial intensive rhino breeding project
- The conservation organization plans to rewild all 2,000 southern white rhinos in Hume’s project, following a framework to be developed by independent experts.
- The biggest challenge African Parks will face is finding safe spaces to translocate 300 rhinos to every year, as poaching the animals for their horns shows little sign of diminishing.

Off Mexico’s coast, world’s largest limpet is slipping into extinction
- Scutellastra mexicana, the world’s largest limpet, is at risk of extinction and requires urgent conservation action, according to a group of researchers.
- Once widely dispersed, the few remaining viable populations of these sea snails are now found in Mexico’s Islas Marias, a biosphere reserve. Though officially protected, the limpet continues to be harvested.
- Limpet species such as S. mexicana play an important role in maintaining coastal ecosystems, and research suggests they can mitigate some of the effects of warming oceans.
- Researchers are calling for “extreme protection” for S. mexicana and the Islas Marías to halt the species’ decline and potential extinction.

World’s largest private rhino herd doesn’t have a buyer — or much of a future
- Controversial rhino breeder John Hume recently put his 1,999 southern white rhinos up for auction as he can no longer afford the $9,800 a day running costs — but no buyers have come forward so far.
- Hume’s intensive and high-density approach is undoubtedly effective at breeding rhinos, but with the main issue currently a shortage of safe space for rhino rather than a shortage of rhino, the project’s high running costs and concerns over rewilding captive-bred rhino make its future uncertain.
- Platinum Rhino’s financial issues reflect a broader debate around how to move forward with rhino conservation and the role that private owners have to play when the financial costs of rhino ownership far outweigh the returns.
- Update: The nonprofit conservation organization African Parks has moved to buy the rhinos and reintroduce them to the wild.

Translocation is a viable option for Brazil’s threatened porcupines: Study
- Brazil’s thin-spined porcupine (Chaetomys subspinosus) is a picky eater that lives only in dense coastal habitats with well-developed canopies that allow the animals to move between trees; however, these habitats are increasingly under threat due to coastal development.
- Researchers used radio telemetry to monitor three porcupines that had been translocated to a new, permanent preservation area, as well as one local resident; they determined that translocation is a viable conservation tool for protecting these animals.
- The research also highlights the importance of conserving the porcupines’ restinga forest habitat and its unique features.

Bangladesh orchid losses signal ecological imbalance, researchers say
- Bangladesh has lost 32 orchid species from nature in the last hundred years out of 188 once-available species.
- Habitat destruction, overharvesting, and indiscriminate collection for sale in local and international markets cause the disappearance, researchers say.
- Considering the unique position of orchids in the ecosystem and their herbal, horticultural and aesthetic value, researchers consider this loss alarming.

Meet the kipunji: A rare primate success story in Tanzania
- A recent census shows that the population of the kipunji monkey (Rungwecebus kipunji) in Tanzania’s Southern Highlands has increased by 65%, while signs of human impacts in its habitat decreased by 81%, over a 13-year period.
- The increase follows 20 years of intensive holistic conservation efforts by the Wildlife Conservation Society and Tanzanian government partners, including greater legal protection for forests and community engagement.
- The total population size of the kipunji is estimated at 1,966 individuals in two subpopulations, and the species is classified by the IUCN as endangered.
- The kipunji has been on the Primates in Peril list of 25 most endangered primates three times: in 2006-2008, 2008-2010, and 2018-2020, but was not on the most recent list.

Effort to save rare Colombian monkey looks to crowdfund its conservation
- The nonprofit Fundación Proyecto Tití has conserved some 5,100 hectares (12,600 acres) of forest in Colombia, helping to reconnect forest fragments and secure more habitat for the critically endangered cotton-top tamarin.
- To combat deforestation and fragmentation, the project aims to buy an additional 386 hectares (954 acres) with the help of ReWorld, a fully volunteer-run organization that has committed to raising $1.2 million for Proyecto Tití.
- Researchers say restoration initiatives can help with the conservation and management of ecosystems by controlling fragmentation and the expansion of deforestation.

Bangladesh ramps up freshwater fish conservation in bid for food security
- Bangladesh is reviving 39 native freshwater fish species through hatchery breeding, in an effort to secure stocks of commercially important fish.
- A quarter of the freshwater fish found in Bangladesh are threatened with extinction, according to a 2015 assessment, largely as a result of habitat loss, overfishing and pollution.
- In response to the decline, the Bangladesh government is breeding several species in captivity and distributing the fry for free to fish farmers.
- Bangladesh produces 4.6 million metric tons of fish a year, and is the No. 3 producer of freshwater fish globally.

Philippines research offers hope for conserving enigmatic Rafflesia plants
- Rafflesia, flowering parasitic plants found only in Southeast Asian rainforests, are infamously difficult to study due to their rarity and small habitat ranges.
- With Rafflesia species edging closer to extinction due to habitat loss, botanists are working to better understand the genus and to develop methods that allow the plants to be propagated in labs and botanical gardens.
- Parallel research efforts from two teams led by Filipino scientists are yielding promising results in both understanding how Rafflesia function at the genetic level and in refining methods that will allow for ex situ cultivation.

Volunteers, First Nations work to bring back a disappearing oak prairie
- The rain-shadow regions of North America’s Pacific Northwest, stretching from British Columbia to Oregon, are home to a unique carbon-rich oak-prairie ecosystem dominated by Garry oaks and several species of grasses and shrubs, including endemic plants.
- The ecosystem also holds a special significance in the way of life for the Indigenous peoples in the region, who have stewarded it for millennia and depended on it for food.
- In the past few centuries, however, rapid urbanization, agricultural expansion, development along the coast and proliferation of invasive plants have destroyed more than 95% of the ecosystem, pushing it toward near-extinction.
- Communities, partnering with different national and regional agencies, First Nations and nonprofits, are working to restore and preserve the remnants using various strategies, many of which have borne fruit.

Return of the lions: Large protected areas in Africa attract apex predator
- It’s a critical time for lion conservation as the species declines across Africa. Globally, the lion population has dropped by 43% over the past 21 years.
- Lions are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN, with the species facing a high risk of extinction in the wild. In many of the lion’s core ranges across Africa, populations have plummeted due to, among other reasons, habitat fragmentation and poaching.
- But some African lion populations are increasing, with the big cats spotted after years of absence in parks in Mozambique and Chad. The reason: the creation of vast protected landscape mosaics, with natural corridors stretching far beyond core protected lands, which consider the large areas lions need to roam seasonally.
- This strategy entails collaboration between multiple stakeholders and across varied land uses, including state lands and private property not formally protected. These examples are showing that conservation across landscape mosaics is possible in Africa, and offer the promise of wider benefits to ecosystems and people.

Global study of 71,000 animal species finds 48% are declining
- A new study evaluating the conservation status of 71,000 animal species has shown a huge disparity between “winners” and “losers.” Globally, 48% of species are decreasing, 49% remain stable, and just 3% are rising. Most losses are concentrated in the tropics.
- Extinctions skyrocketed worldwide with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, especially since World War II, when resource extraction and consumption rates soared, and the planet saw exponential growth in human population to 8 billion by 2022.
- Habitat destruction, especially in the tropics, is the major driver. But a confluence of human activities, ranging from climate change, to wildlife trafficking, hunting, invasive species, pollution and other causes, are combining to drive animal declines.
- The research also revealed that one-third of non-endangered species are in decline. These data, say the researchers, could provide an early warning for preemptive conservation action by spotlighting species slipping downhill, but where there’s still time to act — and prevent extinction.

Conservationists aim to save critically endangered European eels on Italy’s Po River
- European eels (Anguilla anguilla) are critically endangered, their population having plummeted by 97% since 1980.
- Illegal fishing, dams and other barriers to their migration, droughts, pollution and habitat changes are putting the eels’ survival at risk.
- These eels reproduce once in their lifetime, only in the Sargasso Sea, where they die. Their unique lifecycle and migratory pattern further complicates conservation efforts.
- In Italy’s Po River Basin, researchers are working to conserve eels through interventions including the construction of fish passages to defragment rivers, reproduction in captivity and teaching fishers to recognize and release the likeliest breeders.

‘I’m not distressed, I’m just pissed off’: Q&A with Sumatran rhino expert John Payne
- Rhino expert John Payne worked with Sumatran rhinos in Malaysia from the 1970s until 2019, when the country’s last rhino died.
- With no rhinos left to care for, Payne has started working with other species, and recently published a book in which he argues the strategy to save Sumatran rhinos from extinction was flawed from the start.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Payne speaks about his new book, moving on after the loss of the rhinos he cared for, and his frustration with officials and conservation organizations.

Bangladesh’s vultures still threatened by poison despite conservation actions
- The discovery of 14 dead vultures in an area of Bangladesh considered safe for the scavenging birds has highlighted the persistent threats to the birds despite ongoing measures to protect them.
- The vultures are thought to have died after feeding on a goat carcass laced with poison, which local residents had left out for feral dogs and jackals that had killed their livestock.
- Vulture populations across South Asia were decimated in the 1990s by the widespread use of the cattle painkiller diclofenac; birds that fed on dead cattle that had been treated with the drug died of severe poisoning.
- Bangladesh has since banned diclofenac and ketoprofen, another livestock painkiller deemed poisonous to vultures, and established vulture-safe zones around the country in an effort to boost their populations.

Bankrolling biodiversity: How are private philanthropists investing in nature?
- A Mongabay analysis of the largest-ever private philanthropic campaign for biodiversity conservation has found about a quarter of the pledged $5 billion has already been allocated.
- The Protecting Our Planet (POP) campaign was launched in late 2021 ahead of the COP15 conference in Montreal. The POP group includes foundations representing some of the richest people on Earth.
- Critics of the scheme have called for greater transparency in the use of private funds for protected areas conservation, such as the creation of a charter of principles and commitments, or compliance framework, to mitigate negative impacts.

Flawed count puts ‘glorified’ Javan rhinos on path to extinction, report says
- Javan rhinos, a critically endangered species found only in a single park in Indonesia, may be on a population decline that could see the species go extinct within a decade, a new report warns.
- The report highlights questionable practices in the Indonesian government’s official population count, which has shown a steady increase in rhino numbers since 2011.
- Notably, the official count includes rhinos that haven’t been spotted or recorded on camera traps in years; at least three of these animals are known to have died since 2019.
- The report, by environmental NGO Auriga Nusantara, also highlights an increase in reported poaching activity in Ujung Kulon National Park, and a general lack of official transparency that’s common to conservation programs for other iconic species such as Sumatran rhinos and orangutans.

Video of rare West African lion cubs sparks hope for the population
- New video of a West African lioness and her three cubs is exciting news for conservation as it sparks hope for the recovery of a population perilously close to extinction in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park.
- The lioness in the video, named Florence or Flo by researchers, was the first lion fitted with a tracking collar in Senegal by Panthera and is considered NKNP’s matriarch. She had given birth to three healthy cubs while denning in the dense forest.
- West African lions are critically endangered, with only 120 to 374 remaining in the wild. Florence is the mother of an estimated nine cubs, including the first males in NKNP.
- Panthera and Senegal’s Department of National Parks have been monitoring the small West African lion population in Senegal since 2011, and after hiring anti-poaching brigades, the lion population has more than doubled from 10-15 individuals to 30. Their goal is to reach 100 lions by 2030.

New map boosts Philippine eagle population estimate, but highlights threats
- The Philippine eagle has been declared threatened with extinction for nearly three decades, but little is definitely known about its range and its wild population.
- Using satellite images, decades of georeferenced nest locations, and data from citizen scientists, a team of researchers identified 2.86 million hectares (7.07 million acres) of forest suitable for the eagles, which they estimate host around 392 breeding pairs.
- Only 32% of the identified habitats fall within the Philippines’ current protected area network, prompting researchers to call for stronger protection measures for the endemic raptor.

Last chance: Study highlights perilous state of ‘extinct in the wild’ species
- A study published in the journal Science highlights that “extinct in the wild” species, those that cling on in captivity or as part of conservation efforts outside their natural habitat, are at serious risk of disappearing entirely.
- The researchers found that 33 animals and 39 plants have no wild population remaining, and at least 15 of these animals are down to fewer than 500 individuals.
- The researchers found that out of the 95 species classified as extinct in the wild since 1950, 11 have gone extinct since the 1990s. On the flip side, 12 of these species have been successfully reintroduced, brought back from the brink of extinction.
- The study highlights the challenges associated with maintaining genetic diversity in captivity and the need for more support of as well as greater coordination and communication among conservation institutions.

Podcast: Goodbye to blue skies? The trouble with engineered solutions
- Humanity has created a lot of ecological problems, and many of the proposed solutions come with giant price tags — or the things lost can even be priceless, like the sight of a blue sky — with no guarantee of solving the situation in the long term.
- Many such solutions — like Australia’s deliberate introduction of the toxic cane toad, which has wreaked havoc on the country’s wildlife — create new problems.
- Solar geoengineering to slow climate change would have the most visible effect to all, likely making the sky appear white: No more blue skies—but how would this affect the global plant community’s ability to photosynthesize, would it harm agriculture?
- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert joins the Mongabay Newscast to talk about her latest book, “Under a White Sky,” which examines these interventions, the problems they come with and humanity’s seeming inability to stop turning to them.

Kew Gardens joins local partners to save tropical plants from extinction
- The U.K.’s Kew Gardens does far more than preserve and display 50,000 living and 7 million preserved specimens of the world’s plants; it also educates the public about the importance of plant conservation via its famous London facility.
- In 2022, Kew Gardens identified 90 plants and 24 fungi completely new to science. They include the world’s largest giant water lily, with leaves more than 3 meters across, from Bolivia; and a 15-meter tree from Central America, named after the murdered Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres.
- The institution is working actively with local partners in many parts of the world, and especially in the tropics, to save these species in-situ, that is, where they were found. When Kew can’t do this, it saves seeds in its herbarium, carrying out ex-situ conservation.
- Kew researchers, along with scientists from tropical nations, are also working together to ensure that local communities benefit from this conservation work. The intention is to save these threatened plants for the long term, helping slow the pace of Earth’s current extinction crisis — the only one caused by humans.

Study: Paying fishers to ease off sharks and rays is cost-effective conservation
- Paying fishers in Indonesia to not catch sharks and rays could be a cost-effective way of conserving these species, a new study suggests.
- Interviews with fishers at two sites shows that payments of $71,408-$235,927 per year could protect up to 18,500 hammerheads and 2,140 wedgefish at those sites.
- Researchers say this money could come from dive tourism levies, and they are already carrying out a pilot project that has seen fishers release more than 150 hammerheads and wedgefish in eight months.
- An independent expert cautions that there need to be safeguards to prevent a perverse incentive where fishers are deliberately catching these species just so they can release them and claim payment.

EU demand for frogs’ legs raises risks of local extinctions, experts warn
- The European Union is the world’s largest consumer of frogs’ legs from wild-caught species, most of them imported from Indonesia, according to a group of conservationists and researchers.
- A lack of transparency and environmental impact assessments connected to the trade is cause for concern and is increasing the risk of local and regional extinctions, they say.
- They note the trade also poses the threat of introducing pathogens that could affect frog populations in the importing countries.

Podcast: At COP 15, biodiversity finance, Indigenous rights, and corporate influence
- Mongabay editor Latoya Abulu joins the Mongabay Newscast to discuss her visit to the United Nations conference on biodiversity in Montreal that occurred in December 2022.
- Latoya shares the details on the landmark Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework, which nearly 200 nations agreed to, toward halting and reversing global biodiversity loss by 2030.
- While the historic agreement has been lauded as a victory, particularly for its inclusion of the acknowledgment of Indigenous rights, biodiversity experts, advocates and Indigenous leaders alike have reservations.
- Latoya speaks about all this as well as corporate influence over the final text, such as the inclusion of “biodiversity credits,” which also raise some concerns.

Top 15 species discoveries from 2022 (Photos)
- A resplendent rainbow fish, a frog that looks like chocolate, a Thai tarantula, an anemone that rides on a back of a hermit crab, and the world’s largest waterlily are among the new species named by science in 2022.
- Scientists estimate that only 10% of all the species on the planet have been described. Even among the most well-known group of animals, mammals, scientists think we have only found 80% of species.
- Unfortunately, many new species of plants, fungi, and animals are assessed as Vulnerable or Critically Endangered with extinction.
- Although a species may be new to science, it may already be well known to locals and have a common name. For instance, Indigenous people often know about species long before they are “discovered” by Western Science.

Bird declines boost case for transformative biodiversity agreement in Montreal
- A recent report from the conservation partnership BirdLife International reveals that populations of 49% of avian species are decreasing. That figure in the group’s last report, in 2018, was 40%.
- Habitat loss, hunting and fisheries bycatch continue to threaten birds, but newer threats, such as avian flu and climate change, are also endangering the survival of bird species.
- Scientists say the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, which begins in Montreal on Dec. 7, is an opportunity for countries to implement conservation measures, such as protecting 30% of the planet by 2030, to halt the global loss of plant and animal species.

New protections for sharks, songbirds, frogs and more at CITES trade summit
- The 19th meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, known as CoP19, ended Nov. 25 in Panama, after two weeks of negotiations.
- Member states agreed on new trade regulations for more than 600 animal and plant species, including the protection of sharks, glass frogs, turtles, songbirds and tropical timber species.
- Experts say that while these new regulations are essential, implementing and enforcing the rules will have the most significant conservation impact.

Conservationists play matchmaker to boost Argentina’s jaguar gene pool
- Conservationists arranged a complex operation to mate two jaguars living in two different parks in Argentina and to prepare their offspring for release into Iberá Park in the country’s Corrientes province.
- The jaguar cubs will bring genetic diversity to the small but growing population of jaguars in Iberá.
- For about 70 years, jaguars were absent from Iberá, but conservationists have been reintroducing them for the past two years.
- It’s estimated that only 200 to 300 jaguars live across Argentina.

Will shipping noise nudge Africa’s only penguin toward extinction?
- The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is expected to go extinct in the wild in just over a decade, largely due to a lack of sardines, their main food.
- A colony in South Africa’s busy Algoa Bay is suffering a population crash that researchers say coincides with the introduction of ship-to-ship refueling services that have made the bay one of the noisiest in the world.
- They say theirs is the first study showing a correlation between underwater noise pollution and a seabird collapse.
- Current studies are investigating whether the ship noise is interfering with the penguins’ foraging behavior and their ability to find fish.

Alleged macaque-smuggling ring exposed as U.S. indicts Cambodian officials
- U.S. federal prosecutors have charged eight people, including two Cambodian forestry officials, for their alleged involvement in an international ring smuggling endangered long-tailed macaques.
- The indictment alleges forestry officials colluded with Hong Kong-based biomedical firm Vanny Bio Research to procure macaques from the wild and create export permits falsely listing them as captive-bred animals.
- One of the officials charged was arrested in New York City on Nov. 16, en route to Panama for an international summit focused on regulating the global trade in wildlife.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

Breeding success raises hopes for future of endangered African penguin
- Two African penguin chicks have hatched at a nature reserve in South Africa where conservationists have been working for years to entice the endangered birds to breed.
- The colony was abandoned more than 10 years ago after a caracal killed a number of penguins.
- The recent hatching comes at a time when survival prospects for Africa’s only resident penguin species look grim, due mainly to declining food stocks.
- But encouraging new colonies at sites close to abundant food sources could help to bring the species back from the brink.

Stem cells may make ‘impossible possible’ for near-extinct Sumatran rhino
- Wildlife scientists in Germany are developing a method to produce new living cells from a dead Sumatran rhinoceros in an effort to prevent the extinction of the critically endangered species.
- They have used skin samples of the last male rhino in Malaysia, known as Kertam, who died in May 2019, to grow stem cells and mini-brains as reported in the researchers’ recently published paper.
- Fewer than 80 rhinos remain in the world, and they all currently live in Indonesia in the wild, and some in a sanctuary for captive breeding.
- The captive breeding initiative of the Sumatran rhinos began in the 1980s, but over the years, the attempts have yielded both successes and failures.

Amid Mexico’s Day of the Dead, a fish declared extinct comes back to life
- Amid Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities, a community released thousands of golden skiffia fish back into the species’ native range in the Teuchitlán River in Jalisco state.
- The fish, declared extinct in the wild in 1996, were part of a captive-breeding program and nearly 10 years of restoration work to restore their habitat and remove some of the threats that would prevent successful reintroduction.
- Freshwater fish are the most threatened group of vertebrates on Earth, with scientists estimating that one out of three is threatened with extinction.
- This golden skiffia reintroduction is part of the Fish Ark Mexico project, which works to conserve highly threatened species of freshwater fish in Central Mexico, including 39 species of splitfins, from the family Goodeidae.

Habitat loss, climate change threaten Bangladesh’s native freshwater fishes with extinction
- There were at one time more than 300 native freshwater fish species in Bangladesh, but many have disappeared while others are on the verge of extinction due to habitat loss, overfishing, pollution and climate change.
- Open rivers and other bodies of water in Bangladesh are dwindling fast due to development interventions, unplanned urbanization, encroachment and siltation, which are destroying the habitats of indigenous fish species.
- According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the statuses of 64 freshwater fish species in Bangladesh range from vulnerable to critically endangered while 30 have become extinct in the wild during the last 30 to 40 years.
- Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI) has so far revived 37 out of 67 species that disappeared from the wild through captive breeding programs and conservation efforts.

Poaching surges in the birthplace of white rhino conservation
- Poaching has more than doubled this year in South Africa’s Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park, the birthplace of white rhino conservation.
- Conservationists say poaching syndicates have turned their attention to this and other parks in KwaZulu-Natal province because rhino numbers in Kruger National Park, the previous epicenter of rhino poaching, have been drastically reduced, and private reserves around Kruger are dehorning their animals.
- Hluhluwe-Imfolozi is a very challenging game reserve for anti-poaching patrols to defend, exacerbated by leadership issues in Ezemvelo, the government body responsible for managing KwaZulu-Natal’s conservation areas.
- Unless more is done to tackle the wider issue of the illegal wildlife trade, the future looks bleak for the rhinos of HIP.

Eight new-to-science geckos described from biodiversity haven Madagascar
- Scientists have described eight new-to-science species of geckos from Madagascar, all about the length of your thumb.
- They were elevated to species level following DNA studies of what was, for decades, thought to be a single species group of dwarf gecko, Lygodactylus madagascariensis. They add there could be up to 18 distinct genetic lineages.
- Scientists have found and named at least 150 new-to-science species from Madagascar in the last 30 years, and are still finding more nearly every year. More than 90% of species in Madagascar are endemic, meaning they’re found nowhere else on Earth.
- Given ongoing threats to the forests and ecosystems in Madagascar, scientists say we may not be finding and naming species quickly enough to know what’s being lost.

‘It sustains us all’: IPBES report calls for accounting of nature’s diverse values
- A recent assessment from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services calls for the integration of the variety of ways humans value nature.
- Often, many decisions are driven by market-based considerations, which has helped contribute to the global biodiversity crisis, the authors of the assessment say.
- But nature is worth more to humans than just the marketable or tangible.
- By considering these other values, such as cultural identity and spirituality, decision-makers can create policies that are more inclusive and have the potential to stem the worldwide loss of species, the scientists say.

Parrots of the Caribbean: Birding tourism offers hope for threatened species
- Four species of parrots endemic to Caribbean islands in the Lesser Antilles — St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Dominica — are clinging to existence amid a volley of hurricanes and volcanic eruptions that have decimated their populations and habitats.
- Efforts by state agencies, NGOs, volunteers and entrepreneurs are trying to ensure that none of them slips into extinction.
- Ecotourism is seen by most people directly involved as being the best route forward for the parrots’ protection and for sustainable community development.

Latest ‘plan for the planet’ calls for protecting 44% of land, home to 1.8b humans
- A new study says 44% of Earth’s terrestrial area needs conservation attention to halt the runaway destruction of the natural world.
- The figure is significantly higher than the goal currently under discussion as part of the global post-2020 agenda, which is to protect 30% of land and ocean by 2030.
- The area identified for protection by the new study is home to 1.8 billion people, almost a quarter of the human population.
- The study authors suggest prioritizing biologically rich regions at the highest risk of being converted for human use by 2030, most notably in Africa.

Can conservation technology help save our rapidly disappearing species? | Problem Solved
- Humanity knows, in a best-case scenario, only 20% of the total species on Earth.
- Yet humans have, at a minimum, increased species extinction 1,000 times above the natural extinction rate, raising concerns among field monitoring experts who worry they may be “writing the obituary of a dying planet.”
- The establishment of protected areas often depends on the ability of conservationists to effectively monitor and track land-based species — but is this happening fast enough?
- For this episode of “Problem Solved,” Mongabay breaks down three of the most innovative pieces of conservation technology and how they can advance the field of species monitoring, and ultimately, conservation.

Indonesia teams up with Germany on Sumatran rhino breeding efforts
- Indonesia and Germany will team up on advancing the science and technology for captive-breeding of critically endangered species in Indonesia, starting with the Sumatran rhino, to save them from extinction.
- The agreement, signed in May between Indonesia’s Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) and Germany’s Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), will see a newcenter for assisted reproductive technologies and a bio bank established at IPB.
- The initiative between the two research institutes also welcomes government officials, scientists, NGOs and private sector experts from around the world to get involved.
- Indonesia is the last refuge for the Sumatran rhino, whose total population may be as little as 30 individuals.

A helping hand for red-footed tortoises making a comeback in Argentina
- Conservationists are releasing red-footed tortoises back into El Impenetrable National Park in Argentina’s Chaco province, in an effort to reintroduce the species to the region.
- The species is so rarely seen in the Gran Chaco region of Argentina that it’s believed to be locally extinct there.
- Red-footed tortoises are under threat due to the illegal pet trade, habitat destruction, and hunting for meat consumption.
- The species is the latest being reintroduced by Rewilding Argentina, which has already brought back species like jaguars and marsh deer to El Impenetrable.

Can we save the spiky yellow woodlouse, one of the most endangered isopods? (commentary)
- Saint Helena Island’s spiky yellow woodlouse is a striking, critically endangered isopod that lives on tree ferns and black cabbage trees, high up in the peaks of Saint Helena’s cloud forests.
- The flax industry destroyed and fragmented most of the forests that the woodlouse depends on. Invasive species and climate change continue to affect them.
- The population of spiky yellow woodlouse is estimated to be at 980 individuals, so the Saint Helena National Trust is working to restore the forests on the island by clearing away the flax plants that were left behind and replanting more native flora.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Conservation win for Bangladesh as efforts to halt vulture decline pay off
- Concerted conservation actions since 2010 have helped halt the decline in vulture populations in Bangladesh.
- The country was previously home to seven vulture species, but one — the red-headed vulture (Sarcogyps calvus) — has now gone locally extinct, and two others are considered critically endangered.
- A key threat to the birds was the excessive use of veterinary drugs used in cattle, which proved deadly for the scavengers, but which have since been banned.
- Bangladesh has also declared several “vulture safe zones” across the country, where officials work with local communities to raise awareness about the importance of vultures to the environment and to protect breeding sites and habitats.

Can celebrities and social media influencers really ‘rewrite extinction’?
- A new conservation fundraising group, Rewriting Extinction, aims to increase awareness about the biodiversity crisis by reaching out to new audiences.
- The group has raised about $180,000 for a range of different schemes in South and Central America, Europe and Asia.
- Critics accuse it of misleading supporters as to how conservation really works and making exaggerated claims on what its fundraising can achieve.
- The real cost of tackling wildlife declines runs into the tens of billions of dollars, and some experts say Rewriting Extinction is selling a false narrative, while others support Rewriting Extinction’s efforts to raise awareness among people who would otherwise be indifferent to the issue.

Saving the near-extinct estuarine pipefish means protecting estuary health
- The critically endangered estuarine pipefish is known to inhabit only two estuaries on the eastern coast of South Africa.
- Recent studies are uncovering how the health of its estuarine habitat rests on a dynamic balance between freshwater inflows that support the food change, and salinity levels that promote growth of eelgrass habitat for pipefish and other species.
- Genetic analysis of the remaining estuarine pipefish populations has found low genetic diversity, highlighting a further risk to its conservation.
- Conservationists are working toward a plan to protect the species and the wider ecology of the estuaries it inhabits.

Wildlife don’t recognize borders, nor does climate change. Conservation should keep up
- A set of studies focused on the China-Vietnam border demonstrates that the impacts of climate change will make transboundary conservation even more important for endangered species like the Cao-Vit gibbon and tiger geckos.
- Conservation in transboundary areas is already challenging because of physical barriers, like fences and walls, as well as non-physical ones, such as different legal systems or conservation approaches between countries on either side.
- Changes in climatic factors such as temperature and rainfall are likely to mean that, for many species, suitable habitat may be in a different place than it is now — and in many cases, this could be in a different country

Podcast: Convention on Biological Diversity: progress, hope and hard work ahead
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we discuss the upcoming conference of the parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and what it will take to create a robust post-2020 global biodiversity framework.
- We speak with Elizabeth Mrema, an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. She tells us about the outcomes of the recently held Geneva talks, why the world failed to meet the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, and how COP15 (to be held in Kunming, China later this year) can provide a roadmap to actually halting biodiversity loss and safeguarding nature.
- We also speak with Jennifer Tauli Corpuz, a member of the Indigenous Caucus at the Convention on Biological Diversity talks. She gives us the Indigenous perspective on what’s currently in the draft biodiversity framework, what changes are needed to better support Indigenous land rights, and the overall importance of Indigenous leadership in preserving Earth’s biodiversity.

Death of last river dolphin in Laos rings alarm bells for Mekong population
- Earlier this year, the last Irrawaddy river dolphin in a transboundary pool between Cambodia and Laos became entangled in fishing gear and died, signifying the extinction of the species in Laos.
- The transboundary subpopulation had dwindled from 17 individuals in 1993, with experts blaming a range of factors — from the use of gill nets and other illegal fishing practices, to overfishing, genetic isolation, and the effects of upstream dams on river flow and prey availability.
- With the loss, there are now just an estimated 89 Irrawaddy dolphins left in the Mekong River, all within a 180-km (110-mi) stretch in Cambodia, where they face the same range of threats that wiped out the transboundary group.
- Authorities and conservationists say they are now resolved to strengthen protections and improve public awareness of the dolphins’ vulnerability to ensure the species has a future in the Mekong.

NGOs block gillnet fishing across 100,000 sq km of Great Barrier Reef
- In an effort to protect dugongs and other threatened species, WWF-Australia bought a commercial gillnet fishing license for a swath of ocean in the northern Great Barrier Reef, to establish a de-facto marine sanctuary spanning more than 100,000 km2 (38,600 mi2).
- Dugongs, turtles, dolphins and other marine animals are easily caught in gillnets, and experts say many fatalities go unreported.
- The newly protected region is an important feeding ground for dugongs, supporting a local population of about 7,000, experts say.
- WWF-Australia says it hopes the Australian and Queensland state governments will establish more permanent protections for dugongs on the Great Barrier Reef, and that Traditional Owners can use the area for sustainable fishing and tourism.

‘No planet B’: Groups call for $60bn increase in annual biodiversity funding
- A group of international conservation and environmental organizations is calling on wealthy countries to provide an extra $60 billion in funding a year to protect the planet’s species.
- They argue that the amount compensates for the toll exacted on biodiversity by international trade, which largely benefits rich nations.
- At a March 1 press conference, representatives of the organizations said the inclusion of Indigenous communities, known to be “nature’s best stewards,” would be critical, and they advocated for the bulk of the financing to be in the form of grants to these communities and other “grassroots” organizations.

One fish, two fish: New goby species described from the Philippines
- Scientists recently described two new-to-science species of freshwater fish from the Philippine island of Palawan: Rhinogobius estrellae and Rhinogobius tandikan.
- The tiny, blue-spotted fish are endemic to Palawan and each is confined to freshwater pools and streams in a single location.
- The fish were collected during surveys to document freshwater fish diversity on the island; both species belong to a genus previously only known from temperate and subtropical parts of Asia, with the new discovery extending its range south into the tropics.
- Due to their restricted range, the fish are deemed highly threatened and their habitats in need of safeguards against mining, road construction and invasive species.

In Panama, a tiny rainfrog named after Greta Thunberg endures
- A tiny tree frog, new to science, has been named after climate activist Greta Thunberg and her work highlighting the urgency of climate change.
- Scientists found the frog on an expedition to Panama’s Mount Chucantí, home to many unique and endemic species, but which has lost more than 30% of its forest cover in the past decade, mostly to small and medium-scale cattle ranchers.
- High-elevation species like the Greta Thunberg’s rainfrog (Pristimantis gretathunbergae) are vulnerable to fine-scale changes in the environment and climate change and “face a constant risk of extinction,” the study authors write.
- The Panamanian nonprofit Adopt a Rainforest Association created a privately patrolled nature preserve on the mountain where 56 undescribed species have been found by scientists. However, funding shortages made worse by COVID-19 have led to a lack of rangers to protect this unique, forested “sky island.”

Tiger farms doing little to end wild poaching, Vietnam consumer study shows
- More than 8,000 tigers are kept in captivity in China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam in commercial facilities ranging from residential basements to licensed venues operating under the guise of tourism, and battery-farm operations holding hundreds of tigers.
- Evidence shows that captive tigers and their body parts enter the legal and illegal trade, where they perpetuate the demand for tiger-based traditional medicines and decorative curios, primarily in China and Vietnam.
- A new study that investigates the motivations of consumers of “tiger bone glue” in Vietnam reveals that consumers prefer products from wild tigers and would carry on purchasing illegal wild products even if a legal farmed trade existed.
- The findings back up calls from conservationists and wildlife trade experts to phase out tiger farming entirely since it doesn’t alleviate pressure on wild tigers, and only encourages the consumption of tiger parts.

Top 15 species discoveries from 2021 (Photos)
- Science has only just begun to find and describe all of the species on Earth; by some estimates, only 20% have been described.
- This year, Mongabay reported on newly described species from nearly every continent, including an Ecuadoran ant whose name broke the gender binary, an acrobatic North American skunk, an Australian “killer tobacco,” a fuzzy orange bat from West Africa, tiny screech owls from Brazil, and more.
- Though a species may be new to science, that doesn’t mean it has not yet been found and given a name by local and Indigenous communities.

Decline of threatened bird highlights planning importance of bison releases
- In a recent study, a team of biologists found that the release of American bison (Bison bison) on a small section of North American grassland led to declines in a species of bird called the bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus), likely because the density of the bison in the fenced-in study area was too high.
- Bison once numbered in the tens of millions on the Great Plains, but hunting drove the population down to around a thousand by the end of the 1800s.
- Concerted efforts to protect remaining wild populations and reintroduce the animal to parts of the Plains has resulted in a resurgence, and the species is no longer in danger of imminent extinction.
- However, the results of the bobolink study reveals that bison releases and reintroductions must be done carefully to avoid negative impacts on the broader ecosystem.

DNA assessment confirms Gabon as last stronghold of forest elephants
- A new survey has found that there are more than 95,000 critically endangered forest elephants in Gabon, which is considered to be the last remaining stronghold for the species.
- The researchers came to this estimate after collecting elephant dung samples across Gabon and analyzing each sample’s genetic material.
- The survey found that forest elephants were present in about 90% of the country, in both protected and nonprotected areas.
- Forest elephants have been heavily poached in Gabon in the last couple of decades, with 25,000 killed in Gabon’s Minkébé National Park alone between 2004 and 2014.

Work starts on new sanctuary for captive breeding of Sumatran rhinos
- Indonesian conservation authorities have started building a new sanctuary for Sumatran rhinos in the Leuser Ecosystem on the northern tip of Sumatra.
- The facility will be the third in a network of Sumatran Rhino Sanctuaries (SRS), joining the Way Kambas SRS in southern Sumatra and the Kelian SRS in Indonesian Borneo.
- Conservationists plan to capture at least five rhinos from the wild in Leuser and move them to the new SRS as part of a captive-breeding program that’s seen as the best option for staving off the species’ extinction.
- There area currently seven rhinos at the Way Kambas SRS and one at the Kelian facility; in the wild, there are believed to be just 30-80 Sumatran rhinos left, all of them on Indonesia’s Sumatra and Borneo islands.

One of world’s last two northern white rhinos withdrawn from breeding program
- Scientists have decided to retire one of the world’s last two northern white rhinos from their assisted breeding program, which strives to save the subspecies from extinction.
- BioRescue will no longer harvest eggs from 32-year-old Najin, which makes her daughter, Fatu, the sole supplier of reproductive material for the assisted breeding program; the program has so far created 12 rhino embryos from Fatu’s eggs.
- The decision followed an in-depth ethical risk assessment that considered multiple factors, including Najin’s age, health and welfare.
- Experts say Najin will still play a crucial role in efforts to save her subspecies, such as passing on social and cultural knowledge to future offspring, and providing tissue samples for advanced stem cell research.

Wildlife releases have a mixed record, and climate change complicates things
- Translocation is a conservation technique that returns lost species to their previous habitats or moves then to new, safer areas in a bid to boost their wild populations.
- But research shows that it only works about half the time, with failures often linked to low numbers of individual animals being released, or the presence of invasive predators.
- Climate change is also a factor, rendering former habitats unsuitable for a species’ return, and necessitating finding a new home for the animals.
- But introducing species into areas where they didn’t historically occur can be dangerous too, as it’s difficult to predict whether they will survive, and whether they pose a threat to the native species already living there.

Two threatened whale groups had a mini baby boom, but not because of lockdown
- Two rare whale groups — southern resident killer whales in the Pacific Northwest, and North Atlantic right whales — have had mini baby booms since the start of the pandemic, raising hopes about their survival prospects.
- But experts say a reduction in human activity during this period isn’t the cause, and that the underlying threats pushing these whales toward extinction still persist.
- North Atlantic right whales are threatened by fishing gear entanglement and ship strikes, while the southern resident killer whales have seen stocks of their favorite prey, the Chinook salmon, decline.
- Experts say that policies to protect the whales, including regulating shipping, closing fisheries and restricting certain types of gear, are not keeping pace with whales’ changing dynamics, and that changes might need to be applied throughout their range.

Creation of three new northern white rhinos embryos may indicate hope for other rhino species
- In July, BioRescue announced the creation of three new northern white rhino embryos, bringing the total to 12.
- Project leader Thomas Hildebrandt said he hopes to transfer a northern white rhino embryo into a female southern white rhino by the end of the year.
- Researchers and stakeholders are assessing whether it would be possible to employ similar methods to preserve genetic diversity in critically endangered Asian rhino species, weighing the risks of extracting eggs against the need for a backup plan.

Podcast: Are tuna doing as well as latest extinction risk assessments suggest? It’s complicated
- Today we look at some of the biggest news to emerge from the IUCN World Conservation Congress, which just took place in Marseilles, France.
- Mongabay staff writer Elizabeth Claire Alberts, who attended the Congress in-person, tells us about her experience at the pandemic-era “hybrid event,” why it was so important that Indigenous peoples were admitted as full voting members for the first time ever, and about two of the most important motions that were approved by IUCN members.
- Pew Charitable Trusts’ senior officer for international fisheries Grantly Galland discusses the reassessments of tuna extinction risks released by the IUCN during the Congress, and tells us why species-level assessments don’t tell us the whole story about tuna populations.

One in three tree species is in the red, new global assessment says
- Of the 60,000 known species of trees, 440 are critically endangered, an assessment spearheaded by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) has found.
- There are more threatened tree species in the world today than there are threatened mammal, reptile, bird and amphibian species combined.
- Among tree biodiversity hotspots, which boast a large number of indigenous trees, Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia fare poorly.
- Lack of in-country expertise is holding back such initiatives, Frank Mbago, a Tanzanian botanist, told Mongabay.

Scientists describe new tree frog in push to catalog Indonesia’s amphibians
- A recent study by researchers from Indonesia and Japan describes the molecular, morphological and acoustic traits of a new frog species from Java: Chirixalus pantaiselatan.
- Scientists recommend further research be conducted to evaluate the breeding traits, distribution and population size to determine IUCN and Indonesian national conservation status of the new species.
- Of the more than 400 frog species in Indonesia, only one amphibian, the bleeding toad (Leptophryne cruentata), is currently listed as an Indonesian protected species.
- Citizen science program Go ARK (Gerakan Observasi Amfibi Reptil Kita) is using the iNaturalist scientific data-sharing platform to contribute to a national database for amphibian and reptile research across the Indonesian archipelago.

Conservation needs more women, says Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak
- Razan Khalifa Al Mubarak is in the running to become the first woman from the Arab world to head the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Ms. Al Mubarak is up against two other candidates in the election, which will take place during IUCN’s World Conservation Congress, which starts this week.
- Having served as the managing director of three prominent institutions — the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi (EAD), a government agency; the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, the philanthropy funded by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi; and Emirates Nature, an NGO affiliated with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) — Ms. Al Mubarak would bring distinct experience to the helm 73-year-old conservation organization.
- In these roles Ms. Al Mubarak has been an advocate for improving inclusivity in conservation, providing resources to communities that have often been marginalized in the sector, including Indigenous peoples and women.
- “It is critical that women have an equal voice in decision-making when it comes to the sustainable use of land, water, and other natural resources,” she told Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler during a recent interview. “Women are not just lacking an equal seat at the table at a grassroots level. Like many fields dominated by men such as science, engineering, and government, women are also underrepresented in the conservation world.”

To count Sumatran rhinos in the wild, look for their poop, study says
- Sumatran rhino droppings could help researchers solve the decades-long question of how many of the critically endangered rhinos are left in the wild.
- This method allows researchers to collect DNA samples without bothering rhinos in the wild.
- For more accurate estimates, the researchers also identified “microsatellite markers” that they can use to help distinguish between individual animals.
- Current estimates suggest there are fewer than 80 Sumatran rhinos left on Earth, scattered in isolated populations on the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

Southeast Asia losing tigers as deadline looms to double population by 2022
- In 2010, government ministers from the 13 countries that still had wild tiger populations committed to implementing measures to double the number of the big cats by 2022.
- In Southeast Asia, it is highly unlikely that this goal will be met, with many countries in the region actually seeing their tiger populations go extinct or decline since the pledge was made.
- Population declines are driven by habitat loss due to logging, plantation expansion and extractive industries; illegal trade in tiger products; poaching and snaring.
- Conservation groups are calling on governments in Asia to phase out tiger “farms” that feed the trade in tiger parts, and to renew their commitments to boosting tiger numbers.

For species in the red, IUCN’s new Green Status signals conservation wins
- The IUCN will soon be launching the IUCN Green Status of Species, a new assessment tool that will illuminate the ecological functionality of species within their ranges, and also show how much a species has recovered due to conservation efforts.
- The new framework will classify species into nine recovery categories, and measure the impact of past and present conservation efforts and recovery potential in the short term and long term.
- A team of more than 200 international researchers presented preliminary Green Status assessments for 181 species in a new paper.
- The IUCN Green Status for Species will officially launch online at the start of the IUCN World Conservation Congress in September.

‘Mismanaged to death’: Mexico opens up sole vaquita habitat to fishing
- The Mexican government has eradicated a “no tolerance” zone in the Upper Gulf of California meant to protect the critically endangered vaquita porpoise.
- The former refuge will now be open for fishing and there will be minimal monitoring and enforcement of illegal activity, experts say.
- Conservationists say this move will certainly lead to the extinction of the vaquita, whose numbers have recently dwindled down to about nine.

Development of third Sumatran rhino sanctuary advances to save species
- The development of a highly anticipated sanctuary for the Sumatran rhinoceros in Indonesia’s Aceh province is advancing as part of conservation efforts to save the nearly extinct species.
- The planned facility will be the third in a network of Sumatran Rhino Sanctuaries to breed the species in captivity.
- Its location in the Leuser Ecosystem in northern Sumatra means it will have access to what is believed to be the largest population of the critically endangered species.
- Indonesia is now the only home in the world for Sumatran rhinos, a species decimated by a series of factors, from poaching to habitat loss and, more recently, insufficient births.

Reptile traffickers trawl scientific literature, target newly described species
- The descriptions and locations of new reptile species featured in scientific literature are frequently being used by traders to quickly hunt down, capture and sell these animals, allowing them to be monetized for handsome profits and threatening biodiversity.
- New reptile species are highly valued by collectors due to their novelty, and often appear on trade websites and at trade fairs within months after their first description in scientific journals.
- In the past 20 years, the Internet, combined with the ease and affordability of global travel, have made the problem of reptile trafficking rampant. Some taxonomists now call for restricted access to location information for the most in demand taxa such as geckos, turtles and pythons.
- Once a new species has been given CITES protection (typically a lengthy process), traders often keep the reptiles in “legal” commercial circulation by making false claims of “captive breeding” in order to launder wild-caught animals.

Madagascar’s vanishing trees
- Madagascar has a documented 2,900 endemic species of trees, but a new report shows that almost two-thirds of them are in danger of disappearing.
- Of the 3,118 species covered, more than 90% had never been systematically evaluated before, and one in 10 fell in the IUCN’s critically endangered category, a step away from going extinct in the wild.
- Though the island nation’s protected area network has expanded to more than 7 million hectares (17 million acres), a tenth of the tree species are found outside this safety net.
- Scientists are racing against the extinction clock to document this mind-boggling biodiversity and determine just how imperiled individual species are.

DiCaprio, conservationists launch $43M effort to restore Galápagos Islands
- A coalition of groups, including a newly formed organization backed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, have mobilized $40 million for efforts to restore degraded habitats in the Galápagos Islands, an archipelago renowned for its endemic species and central role in scientists’ understanding of ecology and evolution.
- The initiative involves more than 40 partners, ranging from local NGOs to governments to international organizations, leveraging decades of collective experience working across the archipelago. One of the groups leading the effort is Re:wild, an organization that was just formed between Global Wildlife Conservation and Leonardo DiCaprio, who is a founding board member of the new entity.
- The Galápagos initiative is Re:wild’s first project under its new brand, but the group plans to scale up its existing global work, putting renewed emphasis on the concept of rewilding, or restoring species and ecosystems to previous levels of abundance and health.

‘Profound ignorance’: Microbes, a missing piece in the biodiversity puzzle
- Researchers are certain that human activity has resulted in a decline in plant and animal species. But a huge unknown remains: what impacts have human actions —ranging from climate change, to ocean acidification, deforestation and land use change, nitrogen pollution, and more — had on the Earth’s microbes?
- A new paper poses this significant question, and offers a troubling answer: Science suffers from “profound ignorance” about the ways in which microbial biodiversity is being influenced by rapid environmental changes now happening on our planet.
- Researchers are supremely challenged by the microbial biodiversity question, finding it difficult to even define what a microbe species is, and uncertain how to effectively identify, analyze and track the behaviors of microbes on Earth —microorganisms estimated to be more numerous than stars in the known universe.
- We do know microbes play crucial roles — helping grow our food, aiding in the sequestering and release of soil carbon, curing and causing disease, and more. One thing researchers do agree on: knowing how human activities are influencing the microbial world could be very important to the future of humanity and our planet.

Island species and endemics will bear brunt if warming exceeds 3°C: Study
- Endemic species on islands, especially plant species, are at the greatest risk of disappearing because of climate change, a study has found.
- In general, species found exclusively in one region face a greater threat from a changing climate than native and introduced species, with the latter likely to face almost no negative effects at all.
- Places like the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean islands, including Madagascar and Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and biomes like India’s Western Ghats could be bereft of all their endemic plant life in three decades, according to the analysis.
- Introduced species could outcompete and replace endemic species in the world’s biodiversity hotspots if warming continues unchecked.

Life and new limbs: Creative thinking, 3D printers save injured wildlife
- Prosthetics for injured animals are becoming increasingly possible and accessible thanks to 3D printing. Historically, artificial devices for wildlife have been expensive and very time-consuming to produce. 3D printing is changing that calculus by making it easier to design and build better-fitting prosthetics.
- A team of dedicated caregivers with vision, creativity and persistence is often the common thread that is key to helping injured animals.
- While 3D printing of animal prosthetics allows for multiple iterations that helps improve the device so that the animal can function more normally, size and materials can limit their use.
- Today, the use of 3D printers to aid animals is expanding beyond prosthetics, with veterinary anesthesia masks for small primates and other experimental uses being tried.

New map shows where the 80% of species we don’t know about may be hiding
- A new study maps out the regions of the world most likely to hold the highest number of species unknown to science.
- The study found that tropical forests in countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar and Colombia had the highest potential for undescribed species, mostly reptiles and amphibians.
- According to the lead researcher, the main reason for species going undescribed is a lack of funding and taxonomic experts in some parts of the world.
- He added that it’s essential to learn about as many species as possible to protect them, but that undescribed species are currently not taken into account by governing bodies like the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Conservation actions see Iberian lynx claw back from brink of extinction
- By 2002, the Iberian lynx was extinct in its native Portugal and down to fewer than 100 animals in Spain, well on track to becoming the first cat species to go extinct since the saber-toothed tiger 12,000 years ago.
- But a battery of conservation measures targeting the wide range of threats to the species has seen it bounce back from the brink, with a wild population today of around 1,000.
- Reintroduction of captive-bred lynx has been complemented by rewilding of historical lynx ranges, along with boosting of prey species and the creation of wildlife corridors and highway tunnels to reduce deaths from road collisions.
- The species is one of a handful highlighted in a study showing how targeted conservation solutions can save species from going extinct, although threats still remain, including climate change.

Corals are struggling, but they’re too abundant to go extinct, study says
- A study has found that most reef-building coral species are not in imminent danger of being wiped off the planet because they are abundant and occupy vast ranges.
- It looked at 318 species across 900 reefs in the Pacific Ocean, from Indonesia to French Polynesia, and found half a trillion coral colonies in the region.
- The study authors are calling for a revision of the IUCN Red List, according to which a third of all reef-building corals face some degree of extinction risk.
- At the same time the new research underlines the fact that local extinctions and the loss of ecological function are real and present threats.

Mystery bird not seen in 172 years makes surprise reappearance in Borneo forest
- The black-browed babbler was recently sighted in Indonesia’s South Kalimantan province, on the island of Borneo, after being lost to science for 172 years.
- There is only one specimen of the species, collected sometime between 1843 and 1848.
- While little is known about the species, researchers are concerned that it might already be threatened with extinction.

Podcast: Where oh where are the Sumatran rhinos?
- Sumatran rhinos are one of the most endangered large mammals on the planet, with no more than 80 left in the wild.
- Not only that but biologists are challenged to even find them in the dense rainforests they call home in order to conserve them via captive breeding.
- To shed light on the animal’s precarious situation and mysterious whereabouts, this episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast series speaks with conservation biologist Wulan Pusparini.
- This ‘rhino search and rescue’ is a big challenge she tells host Mike DiGirolamo in this episode of the podcast.

Cat corridors between protected areas is key to survival of Cerrado’s jaguars
- Only 4% of the jaguar’s critical habitat is effectively protected across the Americas, and in Brazil’s Cerrado biome it’s just 2%.
- A survey in Emas National Park in the Cerrado biome concludes that the protected area isn’t large enough to sustain a viable jaguar population, and that jaguars moving in and out could be exposed to substantial extinction risk in the future.
- The study suggests that improving net immigration may be more important than increasing population sizes in small isolated populations, including by creating dispersal corridors.
- To ensure the corridors’ effectiveness, conservation efforts should focus on resolving the conflict between the jaguars and human communities.

Newly described chameleon from Madagascar may be world’s smallest reptile
- A newly described chameleon from Madagascar is the world’s tiniest chameleon, and possibly the smallest reptile.
- A male specimen of Brookesia nana measured a mere 14 mm (0.55 inches), small enough to perch on an aspirin tablet.
- Madagascar hosts more than 100 species of chameleons, and 30 species belonging to the Brookesia genus alone.
- Many of the chameleons, including B. nana, are only found in tiny patches of forest that are severely threatened by deforestation and degradation.

‘Race against time’: Saving the snakes and lizards of Brazil’s Cerrado
- Brazil’s Cerrado is among the world’s most biodiverse savannas, covering two million square kilometers (772,204 square miles), nearly a quarter of the country and half the size of Europe.
- Once thought of as a “wasteland,” scientists have counted 208 snake species, some 80 lizards, 40 worm lizards, seven turtles and four crocodile species — many recently logged in the biome’s grasslands, palm-covered riverscapes, lowland forests and dry plateaus.
- But half of the Cerrado’s natural vegetation has been lost to mechanized agribusiness and ranching, with native plants and wildlife also at risk from climate change, and more frequent and intense fires. Today’s biome is fragmented, with just 3% under strict protection, and another 5% “protected” in farmed, inhabited mixed-use areas
- While researchers agree that there is an urgent need to protect large swathes of remaining savanna, there is also a vital requirement to preserve patches of unique habitat where diverse, niche-specialized reptilians make their homes.

Rarely seen Sumatran rhinos are now even more elusive as threats close in
- The wild Sumatran rhinos of Way Kambas National Park in Indonesia are becoming even more elusive in response to changes to their habitat, according to rhino expert Arief Rubianto.
- Fires and poaching of other species for bushmeat pose a serious threat to the critically endangered rhinos.
- Way Kambas is believed to be one of the last strongholds of the Sumatran rhino, with estimates of 12 to 33 wild rhinos, out of a global population of less than 80.
- Indonesian officials and conservationists are carrying out a census to get a better idea of the species’ true population to help inform conservation strategies.

Historical data point to ‘imminent extinction’ of Tapanuli orangutan
- A new study indicates that the Tapanuli orangutan, already the world’s most threatened great ape species, faces a much greater risk of extinction than previously thought.
- It estimates the orangutans today occupy just 2.5% of their historical range, and attributes this to loss of habitat and hunting.
- Those threats persist today and are compounded by mining and infrastructure projects inside the Tapanuli orangutan’s last known habitat in northern Sumatra.
- At the current rates at which its habitat is being lost and the ape is being hunted, the extinction of the Tapanuli orangutan is inevitable, the researchers say.

Study warns of ‘biotic annihilation’ driven by hunting, habitat destruction
- Humans are driving wildlife to extinction 1,000 times faster than the natural rate, robbing the planet not just of species but also of functional and phylogenetic diversity, the authors of a new paper argue.
- Different kinds of human activities affect biodiversity differently, with hunting having the largest impact on terrestrial mammals, the research found.
- Millions of years of evolution are encoded into species that coexist with humans today; to lose them is also to lose that biological heritage.
- The research maps out the relationship between species richness and functional and phylogenetic loss for individual countries to aid national-level policymaking.

Widodo Ramono, the man on a mission to save Sumatran rhinos
- Indonesian biologist Widodo Ramono has dedicated a lifetime to conserving the country’s Sumatran rhinos from extinction.
- A former government official, Widodo now leads a rhino conservation group that oversees a captive-breeding program at a sanctuary for Sumatran rhinos.
- To save the species, found only in Indonesia, Widodo says protecting its habitats from deforestation and poaching is the most important thing.
- Mongabay Indonesia recently spoke with Widodo about the country’s plans for rhinos and the challenges those plans face.

Herd opportunity: Hundreds of elephants return to DRC’s Virunga
- A group of about 580 savanna elephants recently returned to Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after crossing over from Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda.
- The reappearance of the elephants brings hope to a park that’s been beset with civil unrest, violence, and poaching for decades.
- In May, Virunga National Park closed due to the spread of COVID-19, which caused serious financial damage to the park.

Crimefighting NGO tracks Brazil wildlife trade on WhatsApp and Facebook
- A nonprofit, the National Network Combating Wild Animal Trafficking (RENCTAS) was founded in 1999, and since then has won international awards and acclaim for its innovative approach to tracking and combating the global illegal wildlife trade, especially the sourcing of animals in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna biomes.
- The group’s pioneering strategy: use social media to track the sale and movement of animals out of Brazil, and turn over the data to law enforcement. In 1999, it identified nearly 6,000 ads featuring the illegal sale of animals on e-commerce platforms. By 2019, it reported 3.5 million advertisements for the illegal trade on social networks.
- The most trafficked Brazilian animals currently: the double-collared seedeater (Sporophila caerulescens); a small, finch-like songbird with a yellow bill that thrives in the southern Cerrado, and the white-cheeked spider monkey (Ateles marginatus), found across the Amazon basin. Sales of animals have been tracked to 200+ illegal trafficking organizations.
- Tragically, of the millions of Brazilian animals captured, sold, resold, and transported, only an estimated 1 in 10 ever reach Brazilian and foreign consumers alive. The rest, ripped from their homes, starved and abused, die in transit.

The riddle of Madagascar’s megafauna extinction just got trickier
- Madagascar saw a relatively recent mass extinction event about 1,000 years ago, when gorilla-sized lemurs, towering elephant birds, and grand tortoises were all wiped out from the island.
- A recently published paper complicates the widely-held understanding that humans were to blame for the crash, by drawing attention to a megadrought that the authors say also played a role.
- The new study uses geological evidence from Madagascar and Rodrigues, an island now part of Mauritius about 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) east of Madagascar, to construct a climatic record.
- Some scientists have questioned whether the geological record from Madagascar paints an accurate picture of past climate, or whether the data from Rodrigues can shed light on conditions in Madagascar.

Snare traps decline, but still pose a threat to Leuser’s Sumatran rhinos
- The number of wire snares being found in Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem has declined in recent years, but the traps continue to pose a severe threat to the region’s critically endangered rhinos.
- Poachers set the snares to catch anything ranging from wild boars for bushmeat to trophy animals — including the native Sumatran rhinos, elephants and tigers.
- Increased patrols have managed to reduce the numbers of snares found in Leuser, from 1,069 in 2016 to 241 in 2019.
- Conservationists say the Indonesian government must crack down harder on the entire supply chain of the illegal trade in Sumatran rhino parts, from poachers to buyers overseas.

Podcast: Lemur love and award-winning plant passion in Madagascar
- We’ve got recordings of indri lemurs and the architect of 11 new protected areas that aim to protect Madagascar’s rich biodiversity of plant life on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast.
- We’re joined by Jeannie Raharimampionana, a Malagasy botanist who has identified 80 priority areas for conservation of plant life in her country and has already turned 11 of those areas into officially decreed protected areas.
- We’re also joined by Valeria Torti, who uses bioacoustics to improve conservation of critically endangered indri lemurs in Madagascar’s Maromizaha forest. She plays for us a number of recordings of the primates’ songs.

Podcast: Saving the singing rhino
- Sumatran rhinos are one of the most endangered large mammals on the planet, with no more than 80 left in the wild.
- Small in stature and docile by nature, they sport a coat of fur and sing songs reminiscent of a whale or dolphin.
- To shed light on the animal’s precarious situation, this episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast series speaks with conservation biologist Wulan Pusparini and Mongabay senior correspondent Jeremy Hance about the unique challenges of conserving the creatures.
- They discuss the history of failed efforts, delayed actions, breakthroughs in conservation and breeding practices, and impactful efforts that are currently holding the line for this extremely vulnerable mammal.

Lemurs might never recover from COVID-19 (commentary)
- This World Lemur Day, it is worth pointing out that the Covid-19 pandemic poses a threat to Madagascar’s endemic primates, which are some of the planet’s most endangered species.
- Almost all 115 species of lemurs are threatened with extinction and their habitats are rapidly disappearing on the island nation.
- The pandemic and the resulting economic crisis has emerged as a moment of reckoning for conservation efforts, exposing the risks of relying heavily on foreign revenue and not focusing enough on communities at the frontline of safeguarding biodiversity.
- This post is a commentary: the views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Planned road projects threaten Sumatran rhino habitat, experts say
- Authorities in the Indonesian province of Aceh are planning 12 road-building projects through 2022, some of which will cut through the habitat of critically endangered Sumatran rhinos.
- The species is already under threat from forest fragmentation, which has isolated rhino subpopulations and led to the biggest threat to the animal: the inability to find other rhinos to mate with.
- Conservationists have called for full protection of the Leuser Ecosystem in Aceh to safeguard the rhinos’ habitat from the road projects.
- But even in a protected part of the ecosystem, Gunung Leuser National Park, deforestation is already taking place on the fringes.

At-risk Cerrado mammals need fully-protected parks to survive: Researchers
- A newly published camera trap study tracked 21 species of large mammal in Brazil’s Cerrado savanna biome from 2012-2017.
- The cameras were deployed in both fully protected state and federal parks and less protected mixed-use areas known as APAs where humans live, farm and ranch.
- The probability of finding large, threatened species in true reserves was 5 to 10 times higher than in the APAs for pumas, tapirs, giant anteaters, maned wolves, white-lipped and collared peccaries, and other Neotropical mammals.
- With half the Cerrado biome’s two million square kilometers of native vegetation already converted to cattle ranches, soy plantations and other croplands, conserving remaining habitat is urgent if large mammals are to survive there. The new study will help land managers better preserve biodiversity.

‘Luckiest people’: Encountering a newborn Sumatran rhino in the wild
- In 2018, five rangers had a rare encounter with a newborn Sumatran rhinoceros in the forests of Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem.
- Leuser is known as one of the last strongholds of the Sumatran rhino, one of the most endangered large mammals on Earth.
- Conservationists have called for beefing up security across the Leuser Ecosystem to allow the rhinos there to feel secure enough to continue breeding.
- The species is down to no more than 80 individuals in the wild, with forest fragmentation and a low birth rate driving it toward extinction.

Brazilian frog believed ‘extinct’ for 50+ years, found with eDNA testing
- A Brazilian frog species, Megaelosia bocainensis, thought to have gone extinct in 1968 has been found with eDNA testing, which picks up the traces of environmental DNA that are left behind by living organisms in soil, water and air.
- The missing frog’s eDNA was detected in the Atlantic Forest biome in Parque Nacional da Serra da Bocaina, its last known habitat in São Paulo state, Brazil.
- The researchers used metabarcoding — a form of rapid DNA sequencing — in order to monitor entire communities, rather than only specific rare target species.
- The innovative highly sensitive eDNA sampling technique provides a valuable tool for conservation scientists to evaluate the status of threatened species and to confirm the presence of species that are difficult to monitor and often go undetected using traditional methods.

As predators return to Sweden’s wild, ecotourism looks to change mindsets
- Top carnivores such as bears, wolves and lynxes are thriving in the wild in Sweden, where many of them were once extinct or nearly wiped out.
- Policies such as hunting restrictions and compensation for herders affected by livestock predation have allowed these species to recover.
- However, the growing presence of these animals, in particular the wolf, has been controversial, especially among farmers and hunters.
- Ecotourism operators, who expect the predator populations to hold steady over the long term, want locals to see that they can coexist with, and even profit from, the wildlife in their midst.

On World Rhino Day, ‘real work’ is still needed to save Sumatran rhinos
- September 22 marks World Rhino Day, which looks to bring attention to the protection of the two African and three Asian rhino species that exist today.
- Of these five species, the Sumatran rhino is in the greatest peril, described as the most endangered large mammal on Earth.
- Its population is estimated at fewer than 80 individuals living in small, isolated habitats in Indonesia, where a low birth rate (a result of their isolation due to habitat fragmentation) is now the biggest threat to their survival.
- Rhino experts have called on the Indonesian government to do “real work” to save the species, including on a captive-breeding program widely seen as the last feasible means of staving off extinction.

Global wildlife being decimated by human actions, WWF report warns
- Between 1970 and 2016, wild populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish shrank by 68% on average, according to a new report by WWF and the Zoological Society of London.
- The most catastrophic declines were documented from Latin America and the Caribbean, where populations of monitored species contracted by more than 90% during that 46-year period.
- Among the 3,741 populations of freshwater species they tracked, the researchers found overall declines of more than 80%, underlining the threat from excessive extraction of freshwater, pollution and the destructive impacts of damming waterways.
- The assessment aims to grab the attention of world leaders who will gather virtually for the U.N. General Assembly that kicks off Sept. 15.

Forest fires set by poachers threaten a refuge of the Sumatran rhino
- Fires set by poachers are a top cause of habitat degradation in Way Kambas National Park on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island.
- The park is home to critically endangered Sumatran rhinos, tigers and elephants, among hundreds of wildlife species.
- The burning on the fringes of the park spurs the growth of fresh grass, which draws the deer and boars that the poachers target.
- Park officials and conservationists are engaged with local communities to dissuade people from poaching, as well as replanting burned areas with hardier vegetation.

‘We are losing’: Q&A with The Orangutan Project’s Leif Cocks on saving the great ape
- For International Orangutan Day, Mongabay spoke with Leif Cocks, founder and president of The Orangutan Project, which seeks to protect the endangered orange-haired primates and their rapidly disappearing habitats in Southeast Asia.
- All three species of orangutans — Sumatran (Pongo abelii), Bornean (P. pygmaeus) and Tapanuli (P. tapanuliensis) are one step away from extinction.
- Deforestation is the biggest threat the primates face, and at the moment most conservation efforts have only been able to slow forest loss, not turn the tide around, Leif told Mongabay.
- Oil palm plantations replacing primary rainforests is a major problem in Malaysia and Indonesia, but Cocks says simply banning these plantations is not the answer; instead, he advocates for replacing exploitative production systems with those that recognize the services that these forests provide to the local communities and building on that.

How do we save charisma-challenged species? Start with a story
- The bulk of wildlife conservation funding goes to charismatic species, but there are ways to push charisma-challenged species as well.
- Researchers say that telling a species’ story including photos can help inspire people to save the small and forgotten species.
- Zoos have also proven critical in protecting less charismatic species, but will this change in our COVID-19 world?

New land snail species discovered in Hawaii offers ‘gem of hope’
- Scientists recently announced a new species of land snail, Auriculella gagneorum, which was found living in the Waianae Mountains in O‘ahu, Hawaii.
- There are three known populations of Auriculella perpusilla on O‘ahu, and a small number of snails were selected for a captive-breeding program to help conserve the species.
- Hawaii once had 752 species of land snails, but more than half of them are believed to have gone extinct due to habitat loss and invasive species.

Say hello to Madagascar’s newest mouse lemur, a pint-sized primate
- A new species of mouse lemur, considered the tiniest primates in the world, has been described from Madagascar.
- Microcebus jonahi is named for prominent Malagasy primatologist Jonah Ratsimbazafy, who has dedicated his life to studying and protecting Madagascar’s endemic lemurs.
- Scientists fear the species is already at risk of disappearing like almost all of the 107 other species of lemurs, primates that are native to Madagascar.
- Jonah’s mouse lemurs are found in an area half the size of Yosemite National Park, in a region where forests are fast disappearing.

Why are some endangered species ignored?
- Many critically endangered species receive no conservation action because they are deemed ‘uncharismatic’ and fail to attract funding.
- Charisma challenged species are often small, less colorful, and little known to the public.
- Scientists have long argued that umbrella species protect uncharismatic species, but is that true?

Sumatran rhino planned for capture is another female, Indonesian officials say
- Conservation officials in Indonesia have revealed that a wild Sumatran rhino planned for capture for a breeding program is a female, not a male.
- The rhino, named Pari, will join another female already at a breeding center in the Indonesian province on East Kalimantan.
- Female rhinos in captivity have been found to develop reproductive problems and infertility as a result of prolonged absence from a male, and conservationists fear this could happen to the rhino currently in captivity
- The Sumatran rhino is critically endangered, with fewer than 80 believed to be remaining in the wild.

Indonesia identifies rhino to capture for breeding, but will have to wait until next year
- Indonesian officials have identified a wild Sumatran rhino they plan to catch in Borneo for a captive-breeding program, but have not said whether it’s a male or female.
- The planned capture will have to wait until next year at least, with officials citing the COVID-19 pandemic as an obstacle.
- Officials already have a female Sumatran rhino at the Kelian Lestari captive-breeding facility in Borneo, and hope to either find her a mate from the wild or fertilize her eggs with sperm from rhinos held at the Way Kambas facility in Sumatra.
- The Sumatran and Bornean populations are distinct subspecies of the Sumatran rhino, and conservationists agree on the need to interbreed them to boost the genetic diversity of a species that numbers fewer than 80.

COVID-19 halts matchmaking attempt for female Sumatran rhino in Borneo
- Conservationists searching for a wild male Sumatran orangutan to join a lone female as part of a captive-breeding program have had to call off the search for the rest of the year.
- The field work by conservationists in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province has been halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, along with other activities.
- The captive breeding programs is believed by experts to be the most viable means left to save the global population of the nearly extinct species.
- Indonesia is now the last refuge for Sumatran rhinos, with a population of fewer than 80 individuals.

The first modern-day marine fish has officially gone extinct. More may follow
- The smooth handfish (Sympterichthys unipennis), an unusual species that could “walk” on its pectoral and pelvic fins, is the first marine bony fish to go extinct in modern times, likely due to habitat loss and destructive fishing practices.
- There was only ever one specimen of the smooth handfish known to scientists, which became the holotype for the entire species.
- The other 13 species of handfish are threatened with extinction due to habitat loss, pollution, destructive fishing practices, and other human-linked causes, and conservationists are stepping up efforts to protect them.
- Only four species of handfish have been spotted in the past 20 years, which has raised serious concerns for the future survival of these species.

In Hawai’i, researchers work to slow the rapid death of a beloved tree
- ʻŌhiʻa lehua trees are the most biologically and culturally important native tree in the Hawaiian Islands.
- They comprise most of the trees in native forests and support a variety of wildlife, including endangered Hylaeus bees and Hawaiian birds.
- Rapid ʻōhiʻa death, a fungal disease, has affected more than 71,000 hectares (175,000 acres) of forest on the Island of Hawai’i since around 2008, and has been detected on the islands of Kaua’i, Oʻahu, and Maui.
- Researchers say they are hopeful in the fight against ROD because some trees seem to show resilience against the disease, and they are exploring ways to limit its spread.

A new sanctuary for the Sumatran rhino is delayed amid COVID-19 measures
- Indonesia has been working on a new sanctuary for the captive breeding of Sumatran rhinos in the Leuser Ecosystem in Indonesia’s Aceh province.
- But measures imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic have slowed down the progress of the facility, which had been slated for completion next year.
- Aceh’s Leuser Ecosystem is touted by experts as the most promising habitat for wild rhinos because it’s believed to hold the largest population of the species, at about 12 individuals.
- Indonesia is now the last refuge for the world’s Sumatran rhino population, which numbers between 30 and 80 individuals.

‘New’ footage released of the last Tasmanian tiger
- The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) recently released a “new” clip of Benjamin, the thylacine that was displayed for five years at Beaumaris Zoo in Tasmania.
- The species, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, was officially declared extinct in 1982 by the IUCN, although the Australian government now considers it to have gone extinct in 1936, following Benjamin’s death.
- Despite the species’ extinction status, people continue to report sightings of the thylacine in the Tasmanian wilderness, although none of these sightings have been confirmed.

Reproductive woes spell need for more viable females in Sumatran rhino program
- A captive-breeding program for Sumatran rhinos should focus on trapping fertile females from the wild, scientists say in a new paper.
- The study looked at the high prevalence of reproductive diseases among captured female rhinos and determined that those in the wild were also susceptible to these conditions.
- The recommendation is markedly different from the Indonesian government’s current focus on capturing so-called doomed rhinos — those defined as living alone or in groups too small to sustain natural breeding in the wild.
- Even if more fertile females are captured, there’s no guarantee that they will go on to produce calves, according to the scientist who pioneered the captive-breeding process for the species.

As pangolin trade heats up, Nigeria urged to do more to crack down
- Authorities seized 113 tonnes of pangolin scales originating in Nigeria between 2016 and 2019, more than half of global seizures.
- Enforcement and prosecution of laws against wildlife trafficking remains weak, say experts, who emphasize the need to treat the matter as a transnational crime rather than as a conservation issue.
- Training of Nigerian officials and exchanges with their customs counterparts in destination countries including China and Vietnam are expected to improve intelligence sharing and curb trafficking.

Inside the fight to save the Niger Delta red colobus
- The Niger Delta red colobus (Piliocolobus epieni) is a critically endangered monkey that numbers as few as 500 in the wild, confined to a small patch of marshy forest in Nigeria’s Bayelsa state.
- Conservationists hoping to protect the species’ habitat by establishing it as a national park have been thwarted by the dire security situation in the region, which is home to armed militant groups.
- So they’ve turned to community-based conservation, engaging local residents in efforts to safeguard the forest and take on loggers and bushmeat hunters.

New right whale protection measures announced by Canadian government
- Canada has announced new protection measures for North Atlantic right whales, which face severe threats to their survival due to human activities off the Atlantic Coast of North America.
- Most recent right whale deaths have occurred in Canadian waters, which scientists attribute, at least partly, to the fact that the whales have moved into areas where there were no regulations in place to address threats like ship strikes and entanglement.
- Scientists say the new regulations proposed by the Canadian government are encouraging. Meanwhile, if the Trump Administration gets its way, the United States will be moving in the exact opposite direction on protections for whales in its waters.

‘Intense’ human pressure is widespread among terrestrial vertebrates, study finds
- A new study assessing the cumulative impacts of human activities on wildlife found that the vast majority of terrestrial species are facing “intense” pressure due to humanity’s footprint across the globe.
- Researchers looked at human pressures across the ranges of 20,529 terrestrial vertebrates and found that 85 percent of the animals included in the study, or some 17,517 species, are exposed to “intense human pressures” in half of their range. About 16 percent, or 3,328 species, are exposed to these pressures throughout their entire range.
- The researchers say that their results could help improve assessments of species’ vulnerability to extinction.

Extinction of a megafish: Can this spark action to save other migratory freshwater species? (commentary)
- The Chinese paddlefish, recently declared extinct by researchers, was likely the world’s longest freshwater fish – as well as one of the oldest, swimming the earth’s rivers since the time of the dinosaurs.
- It’s too late for this species, but there’s still time to save many of the world’s remaining migratory fish.
- Parties to the Convention on Migratory Species – who will meet in Gandhinagar, India, from February 15 to 22 – must address the growing threats to migratory freshwater fish, argues William Darwall, Head of the Freshwater Biodiversity Unit, IUCN Global Species Programme.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Lucky ducks: Once thought extinct, rare pochards take steps toward recovery
- 12 Madagascar pochard (Aythya innotata) ducklings were born in the wild in November.
- Conservationists had introduced 21 young adult pochards to Lake Sofia in northern Madagascar in December 2018, but did not expect them to reproduce so quickly.
- The pochard was once common in Madagascar’s highlands, but the population declined rapidly in the mid-20th century. Only a single pochard was spotted from 1970 until 2006.
- The new crop of ducklings marks a victory for conservation groups that have been working to save the species since then. However, the pochard’s future remains precarious due in part to a lack of food, with its total population measurable in the dozens.

Indonesia-WWF split puts rhino breeding project in Borneo in limbo
- A recent decision by Indonesia’s environment ministry to abruptly cut ties with WWF Indonesia has thrown a crucial effort to conserve Sumatran rhinos into limbo.
- WWF Indonesia had been deeply involved in an initiative to start a captive-breeding program for the species in Indonesian Borneo.
- Experts agree that captive-breeding of the species is the best way to boost a birth rate that has dropped below natural replacement levels, and the capture of wild rhinos from Borneo was seen as key to boosting the available genetic pool.
- It’s not clear how the program will now proceed, but WWF Indonesia says it remains open to supporting the government on the conservation cause.

Severe drought and other climate impacts are driving the platypus towards extinction
- According to a new study published in the journal Biological Conservation this month, severe drought conditions and heat, combined with habitat loss and other impacts of human activities, are pushing one of Australia’s most enigmatic and iconic endemic species, the duck-billed platypus, toward extinction.
- The study, led by researchers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, examines the potential impacts on platypus populations from the range of threats the animals are facing, including water resource development, fragmentation of river habitats by dams, land clearing for agriculture, invasive species, global climate change, and increasingly severe periods of drought.
- According to the research, current climatic conditions together with the impacts of human activities and other threats could lead to platypus abundance declining anywhere from 47% to 66% over the next 50 years and cause the extinction of local platypus populations across about 40% of the species’ range.

Our growing footprint, wildlife extinctions, and the importance of contraception (commentary)
- We’re not exactly treading lightly on planet Earth. A new study finds more than 20,000 land animal species are experiencing intense pressure from the global human footprint. It’s no wonder that last year the United Nations said that a million species may face extinction in the coming decades.
- Wildlife extinctions have been a fact of life on our planet for eons. But the extinction rates we’re seeing now are about 1,000 times higher than the background rate. Humans have never witnessed these kinds of large-scale die-offs — and it’s our own fault.
- Human population growth is a big part of the equation — we’ve more than doubled our numbers on the planet since 1970. We can start to address that by reducing unplanned pregnancies and promoting reproductive rights and contraception access for all.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

As we act on climate, we mustn’t neglect nature (commentary)
- The discussion of the environment has been unbalanced. While all the talk is about carbon and climate, that is actually only half the story when it comes to our environmental crisis. The other catastrophe is of course the destruction of the natural world, the ecological crisis which threatens a million species with extinction over the coming decades.
- These twin evils are as important and serious as each other, but you wouldn’t think it from a glance at the papers – media coverage of the ecological crisis is being completely eclipsed by the climate, which received eight times more press attention in recent years.
- This imbalance needs to be rectified, and we must start treating our twin crises equally, because we cannot address them in isolation. Natural ecosystems, such as forests, wetlands, and seagrass beds, store huge amounts of carbon, and protecting and restoring them is the cheapest and most effective action we can take to lessen the climate crisis. The trouble is, our efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change can seriously undermine these key natural ecosystems.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Update to biodiversity treaty proposes protecting at least 30% of Earth
- Global policymakers have proposed extending protections to at least 30% of terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems around the world.
- The coming decade of biodiversity protection looks to borrow from the Paris climate agreement by setting targets for protecting intact ecosystems, curbing the spread of invasive species, and halving pollution from organic and plastic waste.
- For biodiversity hotspots, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) calls for safeguarding 60% of these areas by bringing them under the protected area framework or other management mechanisms.
- Some groups have questioned whether offering protection to 30% of areas and strict protection to only 10% will be enough to curb the alarming loss of biodiversity being witnessed globally.

Indonesian officials wield sharia law in defense of Sumatran rhinos
- Indonesia’s Aceh province is considering a sharia, or Islamic, bylaw to strengthen punishment for the illegal wildlife trade, in a move that could help protect the critically endangered Sumatran rhino.
- The bylaw, if passed, would prescribe up to 100 lashes of the cane for anyone convicted of hunting, killing or trading in protected species, including rhinos.
- The province’s Leuser Ecosystem is believed to hold up to 50 of the maximum 80 Sumatran rhinos estimated to be left on Earth.
- The Indonesian government also plans to set up its third Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Leuser, part of a network of captive-breeding centers aimed at boosting the species’ population.

Rare plant species are especially vulnerable to climate change, and rarity is more common than previously understood
- Researchers from around the world spent 10 years compiling a database that now includes 20 million observational records of plant species occurrence, which they say is the largest dataset on botanical biodiversity ever created.
- They found that there are about 435,000 unique land plant species on planet Earth, and that a large fraction of them, 36.5% or some 158,535 species, can be considered “exceedingly rare,” meaning that they have only been observed and recorded anywhere in the world up to five times. In fact, 28.3% of the world’s plants, or 123,149 species, have been observed just three times or less, per the study.
- The research team found that rare species are clustered in a handful of rarity hotspots, and that global warming and the impacts of human land use are already disproportionately impacting the regions that harbor most of these rare plant species.

Audio: Ami Vitale on how meeting Sudan, the last male northern white rhino, changed her life
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Ami Vitale, a photographer for National Geographic who documented the death of the last male northern white rhino, Sudan.
- As celebrated as her nature and wildlife photography is, Vitale started off as a war zone photographer. She came to realize that humanity’s strained relationship with the natural world was behind each of the human conflicts she covered, however, and then, when she first met Sudan in 2009, she was moved to focus on nature photography.
- On today’s episode, Vitale tells us about how meeting Sudan changed her life and discusses a few more of the stories she’s documented throughout her highly decorated career, including China’s efforts to rehab its panda population and the wildlife sanctuary in Kenya that rescues orphaned elephants and helps them return to the wild.

Killing gods: The last hope for the world’s rarest reptile
- After decades of dams, overhunting and pollution the Yangtze giant softshell turtle is down to three known individuals.
- But conservationists say if they can just locate a male and female, survival for the world’s biggest freshwater turtle is still possible.
- The plan would be to capture the animals and keep them in a semi-wild captive state, but more funding and resources are needed to move forward.

The long goodbye: Study declares ancient Chinese paddlefish extinct
- The Chinese paddlefish (Psephurus gladius) was last recorded by researchers in 2003. Subsequent local surveys failed to spot any individual.
- A new study based on a comprehensive large-scale survey in 2017 and 2018 and statistical analysis of previous records suggest that the species most likely went functionally extinct by 1993 and completely extinct by 2010.
- There’s always the possibility that individuals of a species declared extinct still survive somewhere, but in the case of the Chinese paddlefish that’s highly unlikely, researchers say.
- The factors that contributed to the paddlefish’s extinction, including the construction of a dam that split its population, also threaten other species unique to the Yangtze River basin.

Love triangle complicates efforts to breed Sumatran rhinos
- Efforts to breed the critically endangered Sumatran rhino in captivity have faced myriad challenges ranging from mysterious deaths and reproductive health problems to bureaucratic hurdles.
- Now, a sanctuary in Indonesia that has previously witnessed the birth of two healthy calves is facing a new, unexpected obstacle: relationship problems.
- One pair of rhinos, Andalas and Ratu, have successfully produced two calves. But after keepers attempted to mate Andalas with a second female, his previous mate now rejects him.
- Producing as many calves from the captive rhinos is a top priority in efforts to conserve the species, whose wild population is fewer than 80 individuals.

Mountain gorilla census reveals further increase in numbers
- A census of one of the two populations of mountain gorillas living in eastern Africa revealed an increase from 400 to at least 459 individuals, bringing the total count for the subspecies to 1,069 gorillas.
- Teams conducted the survey in the Bwindi-Sarambwe ecosystem straddling the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2018.
- An earlier survey of the other population living in the Virunga Mountains of DRC, Uganda and Rwanda showed that gorilla numbers there are also on the rise.
- That led to a change in the subspecies status on the IUCN Red List from critically endangered to endangered.

Encoded in the genes: Scientists devise a ‘lifespan clock’ for vertebrates
- A genetic tool described in the journal Scientific Reports allows scientists to predict the maximum lifespans of vertebrates, including mammals, whether long extinct or still alive today.
- Using the “lifespan clock,” the team from Australia predicted that Neanderthals could live until nearly 40 years, and woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) could survive up to 60 years.
- They identified 42 genes that are linked to longevity and developed a model in which the genetic information for a species can be inputted and an estimate for the maximum lifespan obtained.
- The model can help evaluate extinction risk to a species, gauge the threat posed by invasive species, and be used in sustainable fisheries management.

Indonesia to capture 3 wild Sumatran rhinos to add to breeding population
- Indonesia hopes to capture three Sumatran rhinos from the wild next year to stock up a captive-breeding sanctuary, in a bid to boost the population of the critically endangered species.
- The sanctuary, opened in 1996 to provide a heavily protected semi-wild habitat for captive rhinos to breed, is already home to seven rhinos, two of which were conceived and born there.
- Experts are also calling on the government to protect the last remaining wild habitats of the rhinos so that there’s somewhere to release them back into once the situation allows.
- Fewer than 80 Sumatran rhinos are believed to live in small populations scattered in the dwindling forests of Sumatra and Indonesian Borneo.

Why you should care about the current wave of mass extinctions (commentary)
- The extinction crisis we are witnessing is only the beginning of a wave of mass ecocide of non-human life on Earth, a process that could wipe out a million species of plants and ani-mals from our planet in the short term (read: decades). About 15 thousand scientific studies (!) support this terrifying conclusion, as it can be read in the assessment report produced by the independent UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosy-stem Services (IPBES).
- Certainly this is not what I dreamed of as a child in love with nature and wildlife. But how could I have ever imagined back then, in the 1970s, that during my first 50 years of life the global human population would literally double? That the global economy would increase four-fold, and that in parallel — and not by coincidence — wildlife populations would drop by a staggering 60 percent globally? How could I have ever imagined back then that I would personally witness and document, as a field conservationist, actual extinctions on the ground?
- In order to create a critical mass of awareness globally, there is still an important question to answer: Why should we care to conserve what is left of wild ecosystems and species of our planet? This is a question we should be ready to answer clearly, especially considering that most of the world population currently lives in urban centers, remains quite unaware of eco-logical matters, and is disconnected from nature — and therefore can’t fully appreciate how much our survival as a species is still deeply dependent on ecosystems and nature.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

New assessment method finds close to one-third of tropical Africa’s plants are potentially facing extinction
- A new study, published today in the journal Science Advances, uses a novel methodology based on key components of the IUCN Red List’s assessment process to discern the potential conservation status of tropical flora at the continental scale.
- Researchers tested the new assessment method using the recently developed RAINBIO database, which consists of over 600,000 geo-referenced occurrence records of more than 20,000 vascular plant species in tropical Africa.
- The research team found that 17.3 percent of the 22,036 vascular plant species included in the study are likely threatened, while 14.4 percent are potentially threatened. That means that nearly one-third — 31.7 percent — of tropical Africa’s vascular plant species might be at risk of going extinct.

Feral horses gallop to the rescue of butterflies in distress
- A new study suggests that returning feral horses to grasslands in Czech Republic could increase populations of some threatened butterfly species.
- The research shows that the horses’ grazing creates and maintains short grasslands that some butterfly species thrive in.
- The research points to the importance of considering the impacts of species introductions on the restoration of natural ecosystems.

Audio: Damian Aspinall on why he’s calling for zoos to be phased out within the next three decades
- On today’s episode, we speak with Damian Aspinall, chairman of the Aspinall Foundation, a UK charity that works to conserve endangered animals and return them to the wild.
- Back in June of this year we welcomed Jim Breheny onto the Mongabay Newscast. Breheny is director of the Bronx Zoo in New York City, and he told me that zoos not only preserve species for the future but support field work to protect species in the wild, as well, and for that reason are vital to wildlife conservation today.
- Aspinall does not agree that zoos are important for conservation of wild species. In fact, he argues that keeping animals in captivity in zoos is cruel, inhumane — and unnecessary. He appears on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast to discuss why he is calling for all zoos around the world to be closed down within the next 30 years, and how he says the work of preserving rare and endangered species could be better accomplished by in situ conservation interventions.

Indonesia plans IVF for recently captured Sumatran rhino
- In a bid to save the nearly extinct Sumatran rhino, Indonesia will attempt to harvest and fertilize an egg cell from a lone female at a captive-breeding center in Borneo.
- The sperm for the in vitro fertilization attempt will come from a male at a captive-breeding center in Sumatra; combining the Sumatran and Bornean lineages is expected to help boost the gene pool for an animal whose global population may be as low as 40.
- Conservationists anticipate obstacles, however: Pahu, the female, is quite old at about 25, and is possibly too small to be able to carry a regular-sized offspring to term.
- The planned attempt by Indonesia comes after conservationists in Malaysia tried and failed to carry out an IVF treatment there, with both the age of the female rhino and lack of access to quality sperm cited for the failure.

How Laos lost its tigers
- A new camera trap study finds that tigers vanished from Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area by 2014, their last stand in Laos.
- Leopards were killed off 10 years prior, making these big cats also extinct in Laos.
- Scientists believe it’s most likely that the last tigers and leopards of Laos succumbed to snares, which are proliferating in astounding numbers across Southeast Asian protected areas.
- The Indochinese tiger now only survives in Thailand and Myanmar, and may be on the edge of extinction.

Once close to extinction, western South Atlantic humpback population close to full recovery
- According to a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science last week, there were nearly 27,000 western South Atlantic humpbacks as of 1830, but the population was reduced by some 95 percent, to just 450 whales, by the mid-1950s. In the 12 years between 1904 and 1916 alone, the population lost approximately 25,000 individuals.
- Protection measures for humpbacks adopted in the 1960s and the broader moratorium on all commercial whaling adopted by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in the 1980s appear to have reversed that downward trajectory, however. There has been no hunting of the species since 1972, the report states, which is when the recovery really took off.
- “Once protected, [western South Atlantic] humpback whales have recovered strongly, and their current abundance is close to 25,000 whales,” the authors of the study write. That means that the current population is estimated to be at 93 percent of its numbers prior to the exploitation by whalers that nearly extirpated the entire population.

Malaysian attempt at Sumatran rhino IVF fails on low quality of sperm
- A recent effort to produce a Sumatran rhino embryo from egg and sperm samples taken from the last of the species in Malaysia has failed, officials said.
- The low quality of the sperm, extracted in 2015 and 2016 from an aging rhino that has since died, was cited as the main cause of the failure to fertilize the egg.
- Malaysian officials say they will continue to improve and attempt their in vitro fertilization attempts, and have called on Indonesia to send sperm samples from younger rhinos held in Sumatra.
- Indonesia has refused to send any samples, citing the need for a formal agreement, but conservationists say that captive-breeding of Sumatran rhinos is the only feasible solution to protect the species from extinction.

At India’s Assam Zoo, decades of experience lead to rhino-breeding success
- Assam State Zoo in northeastern India has been breeding greater one-horned rhinos in captivity since the 1960s.
- However, until 2011 the country lacked a formal, nationally coordinated program dedicated to maintaining a viable captive population of the species, which is considered by the IUCN to be vulnerable to extinction due to poaching.
- India launched an official captive-breeding initiative in 2011. One calf has already been born at the Assam Zoo as part of the program, and another is on the way. An additional six have been born in the Patna Zoo in India’s Bihar state.

Eight species, including Tapanuli orangutan, make first appearance on list of most endangered primates
- “Primates In Peril: The world’s 25 most endangered primates 2018-2020” is the tenth iteration of a report issued every two years documenting the primate species from across the globe that are facing the most severe threats of extinction.
- The report finds that the Tapanuli orangutan is one of the world’s most imperiled primates largely due to the impacts of human activities, and that it is hardly alone in that respect: Nearly 70 percent of the 704 known primate species and subspecies in the world are considered threatened; more than 40 percent are listed as Critically Endangered or Endangered.
- Many species are, like the Tapanuli orangutan, down to just a few hundred individuals or less. The Skywalker hoolock gibbon, for instance, was only elevated to full species status by scientists in 2017 and makes it first appearance on the list of the 25 most endangered primates this year because there are less than 150 left in the wild.

International wildlife trade sweeps across ‘tree of life,’ study finds
- About one in five land animals are caught up in the global wildlife trade, a new study has found.
- The research identified species traded as pets or for products they provide, and then mapped the animals’ home ranges, identifying “hotspots” around the world.
- The team also found that nearly 3,200 other species may be affected by the wildlife trade in the future.
- The study’s authors say they believe their work could help authorities protect species before trade drives their numbers down.

Bid to breed Sumatran rhino is handicapped by bureaucratic ‘quibbling’
- A group of international scientists working in Malaysia have successfully extracted an egg cell from the country’s last Sumatran rhino and injected sperm into it, in a last-ditch attempt at breeding the world’s most threatened rhino species.
- However, the scientists say the prospects of a successful fertilization are “not bright,” given the poor quality of the genetic samples they had to work with.
- They blame a bureaucratic impasse between Malaysia and Indonesia for depriving them of high-quality sperm from rhinos held in captivity in Indonesia, which they say would have given a better chance of fertilization.
- An Indonesian official says no exchange of genetic material, including sperm and eggs, can proceed until the requisite paperwork is signed, but conservationists say this is “quibbling” at a time when the species faces extinction.

Cheetahs, CITES, and illegal trade: Are consumer countries doing enough? (commentary)
- The capacity of CITES to fairly balance the voices of countries that harbor source populations of endangered species subject to international trafficking with the voices of consumer countries is vital.
- Cheetahs are a case in point: Confined to less than 10 percent of their former distributional range with only 7,000 individuals left, the species is facing a significant threat from illegal trade in parts of its range. A demand for live animals as pets, primarily as cubs, is fueled by social media that glamorizes the keeping of these animals, with the Gulf States identified as a key market for this trade. All international trade in wild-caught cheetah cubs violates CITES and is illegal, and the trade in cubs is thought to be a key driver of decline in the cheetah population in the Horn of Africa.
- Yet at the recent CITES CoP, countries chose to ignore these threats and downgraded efforts to combat illegal trade in cheetahs despite concerns raised by many African range states and conservation organizations.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Nigeria finds itself at the heart of the illegal pangolin trade
- Pangolins have long been hunted for food and traditional medicine. They are traded openly in bushmeat markets in Nigeria and neighboring Cameroon.
- Strong demand from Asia has attracted organized criminal syndicates to set up trafficking networks in Nigeria, and the illegal trade in pangolin parts has gone deeper underground.
- Hunters and traders tell Mongabay that the impact of increased trafficking on pangolin populations is becoming clear as they are increasingly difficult to find in the forest.
- Chinese buyers will pay anywhere between $3 and $20 for a pangolin — a relative fortune for local bushmeat traders. Traffickers can then get as much as $250 for the scales from one pangolin in markets in Asia.

Indonesia agrees to attempt Sumatran rhino IVF with eggs from Malaysia
- Conservationists have welcomed a long-awaited agreement by Indonesia and Malaysia to move ahead with assisted reproductive technology for the captive breeding of the nearly extinct Sumatran rhino.
- Indonesia has long balked at sending rhino sperm to Malaysia for use in artificial insemination, but has now agreed to accept eggs from Malaysia to carry out in vitro fertilization.
- If successful, the program would give the species a much-needed boost in genetic diversity.
- Scientists in Germany last year used IVF to successfully produced embryos — though not a baby — of white rhinos, an African species.

When it comes to captive breeding, not all Sumatran rhinos are equal
- A new partnership called Sumatran Rhino Rescue aims to capture critically endangered Sumatran rhinoceroses to reinvigorate a captive-breeding program.
- Most experts agree that captive breeding is necessary to prevent extinction; with wild populations small and fragmented, too few baby rhinos are being born to keep the species alive.
- The current plan approved by the Indonesian government focuses on capturing “doomed” or “isolated” animals in populations too small to survive in the long term.
- However, female Sumatran rhinos living in isolation are particularly susceptible to reproductive problems, leading some experts to argue that it makes more sense to focus on capturing rhinos from healthier populations where rhinos are known to be breeding successfully — perhaps at the risk of harming the survival prospects of those populations.

Vaquita habitat now listed as ‘World Heritage in Danger’
- The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has decided to list the Sea of Cortez and its islands in Mexico’s Gulf of California, the only place where the critically endangered vaquita is known to occur, on the List of World Heritage in Danger.
- The porpoise’s numbers have dropped drastically, from around 300 in the mid-2000s to just 10 individuals, according to the latest estimate, mostly as a result of getting entangled in gillnets used in the poaching of totoaba fish.
- The continuing illegal totoaba trade poses a threat to the outstanding universal value of the World Heritage Site, the World Heritage Committee said, recommending that the site be placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger.

New film details wrenching impact of illegal rhino horn trade on families
- A new short film, titled Sides of a Horn, looks at the impacts of the illegal trade of rhino horn on a community in South Africa.
- The 17-minute film follows two brothers-in-law, one who is a wildlife ranger and another who contemplates poaching as a way to pay for his ailing wife’s medical care.
- A trip to South Africa in 2016 inspired British filmmaker Toby Wosskow to write and direct the short feature, which was publicly released June 25.

Documentary seeks to tip the scales against illegal pangolin trafficking
- New film aims to raise awareness and strengthen protection and conservation of pangolins.
- Hunting and trafficking of these animals in Africa has sharply intensified to meet demand from Asia in recent years.
- Pangolins have historically been used for traditional medicine, decoration and gift-giving across Africa.

Thousands of endangered snails raised in captivity returned to natural habitat in Bermuda
- Due mostly to predation by invasive species of carnivorous snails and flatworms, greater Bermuda land snails (Poecilozonites bermudensis) were driven nearly to extinction in their native habitat on the oceanic islands of Bermuda over the past several decades. In fact, the snails were believed to have disappeared altogether until 2014, when a small population was discovered.
- It’s believed that there are less than 200 of the snails remaining in the wild, but that population has now been joined by 4,000 individuals bred in captivity in the UK and reintroduced on Bermuda’s Nonsuch Island — a nature reserve with strict quarantine protocols designed to ensure that alien species detrimental to the snails will not be introduced to the island.
- Following the 2014 rediscovery of the greater Bermuda land snail, scientists at the UK’s Chester Zoo and the Zoological Society of London launched a collaborative captive breeding program for the snails at the request of the Bermudian government. Over the past three years, the breeding program has built up a population of the snails with sufficient numbers to begin reintroductions in the wild.

Audio: New CITES head on next COP, reining in online wildlife trafficking, and more
- On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast we speak with Ivonne Higuero, secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora — better known by its acronym, CITES.
- Signatories to CITES will meet later this summer for the eighteenth meeting of the Congress of the Parties (or COP). The meeting was originally to be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka last May, but a series of terrorist bombings in the South Asian country during Easter services in April forced CITES officials to postpone the meeting until August and move it to Geneva, Switzerland.
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Huigero, the first woman to ever serve as CITES secretary general, discusses how her background as an environmental economist informs her approach to the job, how CITES can tackle challenges like lack of enforcement of CITES statutes at the national level and the online wildlife trade, and what she expects to accomplish at the eighteenth congress of the parties to CITES.

Logging road construction has surged in the Congo Basin since 2003
- Logging road networks have expanded widely in the Congo Basin since 2003, according to a new study.
- The authors calculated that the length of logging roads doubled within concessions and rose by 40 percent outside of concessions in that time period, growing by 87,000 kilometers (54,000 miles).
- Combined with rising deforestation in the region since 2000, the increase in roads is concerning because road building is often followed by a pulse of settlement leading to deforestation, hunting and mining in forest ecosystems.

Chinese nationals arrested in US after smuggling totoaba swim bladders worth $3.7 million from Mexico
- According to a report this week by Quartz, two Chinese nationals were arrested last month in the state of California with $3.7-million-worth of totoaba swim bladders that they had smuggled from Mexico.
- More than 800 totoaba maws were confiscated by Mexican authorities last year in two separate busts of Chinese nationals who were attempting to smuggle the swim bladders out of the country. Also last year, Chinese customs officials confiscated 980 pounds of totoaba maws, estimated to be worth as much as $26 million.
- These enforcement actions are welcome news, Andrea Crosta, executive director of wildlife trade watchdog group Elephant Action League wrote in a commentary for Mongabay earlier this year. But he added that, without further action to directly disrupt the totoaba maw supply chain and the operations of the wildlife crime networks involved in the illegal trade, there is “absolutely no chance” to save the vaquita.

“Part of something bigger”: the social movement around New Zealand’s Predator-Free 2050 goal
- Trapping for invasive mammals that prey on New Zealand’s endemic, often flightless, native birds has been part of the country’s rural life for a long time.
- Through the national Predator-Free 2050 program, which aims to wipe out three particularly troublesome predators from the country by 2050, multiple projects are ramping up protective activities to rid areas of these predators and encourage people’s participation in enabling bird populations to recover.
- Apps and other technological developments have already made trapping easier and more efficient, allowed over 1,500 community trapping groups to record and share trap and bait station information with others, and record birdsong to monitor impacts of pest control efforts.
- Support for the Predator-Free 2050 goal isn’t universal, so involving indigenous Māori tribes, who now hunt the invasive predators instead of native birds, and other communities — through technologies and other means of engagement — will remain integral to the ambitious program’s success.

Sumatran rhinos to get a new sanctuary in Leuser Ecosystem
- A third captive-breeding sanctuary for the nearly extinct Sumatran rhino is set to be built in Indonesia, according to a top official.
- The facility, scheduled to open in 2021, will be located within the Leuser Ecosystem in northern Sumatra, home to what’s believed to be one of the largest populations of the critically endangered species.
- Global and local rhino conservation groups have welcomed the plan and pledge to help with financial and technical support for the new facility.
- Indonesia currently has two captive-breeding centers for the rhinos: in Sumatra’s Way Kambas National Park, which holds seven rhinos, and Borneo’s Kelian forest, which has a single rhino.

At least one species has been lost on more than half of Earth’s land area
- A study published in the journal Frontiers In Forests And Global Change last week largely supports the conclusions of the IPBES report released last month, determining that there is less intact habitat harboring its original community of life than has previously been estimated. And the authors of the study say their findings show that methods used to determine the most important areas for wildlife conservation using remote sensing and global datasets may not be accurately assessing faunal intactness.
- Researchers found that at least one species has gone extinct on 54.7 percent of our planet’s land area (not including Antarctica), with some sites losing as many as 52 species. Even many forests identified as being intact because they have intact canopies have lost species below the canopy, the researchers found.
- They conclude: “Recent papers have highlighted the small percentage of remaining wilderness or intact sites and yet our results indicate that truly intact sites with a full complement of species are likely to be much rarer still.”

Primates lose ground to surging commodity production in their habitats
- “Forest risk” commodities, such as beef, palm oil, and fossil fuels, led to a significant proportion of the 1.8 million square kilometers (695,000 square miles) of forest that was cleared between 2001 and 2017 — an area almost the size of Mexico.
- A previous study found that 60 percent of primates face extinction and 75 percent of species’ numbers are declining.
- The authors say that addressing the loss of primate habitat due to the production of commodities is possible, though it will require a global effort to “green” the international trade in these commodities.

Leopards get a $20m boost from Panthera pact with Saudi prince
- Big-cat conservation group Panthera has signed an agreement with Saudi prince and culture minister Bader bin Abdullah bin Mohammad bin Farhan Al Saud in which the latter’s royal commission has pledged $20 million to the protection of leopards around the world, including the Arabian leopard, over the next decade.
- The funds will support a survey of the animals in Saudi Arabia and a captive-breeding program.
- The coalition also hopes to reintroduce the Arabian leopard into the governorate of Al-Ula, which Bader heads and which the kingdom’s leaders believe could jump-start the local tourism sector.

Out on a limb: Unlikely collaboration boosts orangutans in Borneo
- Logging and hunting have decimated a population of Bornean orangutans in Bukit Baka Bukit Raya National Park in Indonesia.
- Help has recently come from a pair of unlikely allies: an animal welfare group and a human health care nonprofit.
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration to meet the needs of ecosystems and humans is becoming an important tool for overcoming seemingly intractable obstacles in conservation.

Lemur yoga: Fueling the capture of wild lemurs? (commentary)
- In April, the BBC published a fawning article about an English hotel that is offering lemur yoga classes featuring endangered ring-tailed lemurs. Knowing full well that this media coverage would negatively impact lemurs living in the wild, we contacted the BBC, hoping to mitigate the damage.
- In today’s digital age, every lemur kept in captivity, either in Madagascar or abroad, is fueling — directly and indirectly — the illegal extraction of lemurs from the wild.
- Not a week goes by without more news of the precipitous decline of Madagascar’s biodiversity. And while it will take tens of millions of dollars to protect what is left, refusing to engage in exploitative encounters and sharing your lemur selfie online is a good place to start.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Altered forests threaten sustainability of subsistence hunting
- In a commentary, two conservation scientists say that changes to the forests of Central and South America may mean that subsistence hunting there is no longer sustainable.
- Habitat loss and commercial hunting have put increasing pressure on species, leading to the loss of both biodiversity and a critical source of protein for these communities.
- The authors suggest that allowing the hunting of only certain species, strengthening parks and reserves, and helping communities find alternative livelihoods and sources of food could help address the problem, though they acknowledge the difficult nature of these solutions.

Conservation groups concerned as WHO recognizes traditional Chinese medicine
- The World Health Organization (WHO) will include traditional Chinese medicine in the revision of its influential International Classification of Diseases for the first time.
- The move concerns wildlife scientists and conservationists who say the WHO’s formal backing of traditional Chinese medicine could legitimize the hunting of wild animals for their parts, which are used in some remedies and treatments.
- The WHO has responded by saying that the inclusion of the practice in the volume doesn’t imply that the organization condones the contravention of international law aimed at protecting species like rhinos and tigers.

The health of penguin chicks points scientists to changes in the ocean
- A recent closure of commercial fishing around South Africa’s Robben Island gave scientists the chance to understand how fluctuations in prey fish populations affect endangered African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) absent pressure from humans.
- The researchers found that the more fish were available, the better the condition of the penguin chicks that rely on their parents for food.
- This link between prey abundance in the sea and the condition of penguin chicks on land could serve as an indicator of changes in the ecosystem.

Interest in protecting environment up since Pope’s 2015 encyclical
- New research into the usage of environmentally related search terms on Google suggests that interest in the environment has risen since Pope Francis released Laudato Si’ in 2015.
- Laudato Si’, a papal encyclical, argues that it is a moral imperative for humans to look after the environment.
- Researchers and scholars believe that the pope’s support for protecting the environment could ripple well beyond the 16 percent of the world’s population that is Catholic.

Public education could curb bushmeat demand in Laos, study finds
- A recent survey of markets in Laos found that the demand for bushmeat in urban areas was likely more than wildlife populations could bear.
- The enforcement of Laos’s laws controlling the wildlife trade appeared to do little to keep vendors from selling bushmeat, but fines did appear to potentially keep consumers from buying bushmeat.
- The researchers also found that consumers could be turned off of buying bushmeat when they learned of specific links between species and diseases.

Social media enables the illegal wildlife pet trade in Malaysia
- Conservationists say that prosecuting wildlife traffickers in Malaysia for trading in protected species isn’t easy, as traders have several loopholes to aid their efforts.
- One wildlife trafficker known as Kejora Pets has been operating in Peninsular Malaysia for years, selling “cute” pets to individuals through social media.
- Malaysia’s wildlife act doesn’t address the posting of protected animals for sale on social media, and operators like Kejora Pets appear to avoid ever being in possession of protected animals, allowing them to skirt statutes aimed at catching illicit traders.
- Proposed changes to Malaysia’s wildlife act could offer some relief to besieged populations of protected species by making it easier to prosecute online trafficking of protected animals.

Climate change is causing marine species to disappear from their habitat twice as fast as land animals
- New research finds that marine animals have disappeared from their habitat due to global warming at twice the rate of wildlife on land.
- According to the study, published late last month in Nature, the loss of whole populations of ocean-dwelling species not only depletes the genetic diversity of those species, but can also trigger a cascade of impacts on predators and prey, thereby altering entire marine ecosystems.
- The heightened vulnerability of marine life to global warming could have significant implications for the food supply and economies of seafood-reliant human communities.

’Unprecedented’ loss of biodiversity threatens humanity, report finds
- The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a summary of far-reaching research on the threats to biodiversity on May 6.
- The findings are dire, indicating that around 1 million species of plants and animals face extinction.
- The full 1,500-page report, to be released later this year, raises concerns about the impacts of collapsing biodiversity on human well-being.

In Ethiopia, a community leans on customs to save an antelope from extinction
- By 1992, the animal had been hunted almost to extinction in the Senkele Swayne’s Hartebeest Sanctuary, one of the last places where it’s found.
- Traditional leaders banded together to convince their community to end the hunting of the hartebeest for food, on the grounds that it went against their age-old customs.
- The Swayne’s hartebeest population has since rebounded, although threats to its survival remain, both from natural predation and from human activities.

Bird flu in Namibia’s penguins wanes, after killing nearly 500
- More than 450 African penguins, an IUCN-listed endangered animal, have died in an outbreak of bird flu on three islands off the coast of Namibia.
- The virus, H5N8, is thought to have been introduced to the colonies, which hold 96 percent of Namibia’s penguins, by another bird traveling from South Africa, where a similar outbreak occurred in 2018.
- The disease appears to be abating, and researchers are hopeful that the country’s penguins will recover.
- However, they continue to face threats from food shortages caused by overfishing and climate change.

Community buy-in stamps out elephant poaching in Zambian park
- No elephants were poached in Zambia’s North Luangwa National Park in 2018, and the surrounding area had a 50 percent decrease in poached carcasses found.
- The North Luangwa Conservation Programme, a partnership between the Frankfurt Zoological Society and the country’s Department of Parks and Wildlife, has been around since the late 1980s and has focused its efforts on community involvement in stopping poachers from going after elephants, rhinos and other wildlife in the park.
- Staff of the program say the participation of the communities living near the park’s borders is critical to protecting the elephants of North Luangwa.
- The broader Luangwa ecosystem is home to more than 63 percent of Zambia’s elephants.

Cities may save some species from extinction, but they don’t save species’ ecological functions
- Some species are not only able to adapt to life in urban areas but actually thrive and grow more abundant than they might have in their natural surroundings.
- Thus some cities have been declared urban conservation hotspots — but research published last year shows that while those cities might help preserve robust populations of otherwise threatened species, they do not help preserve the crucial ecological functions of those species.
- If species and the ecological functions they provide are allowed to disappear altogether from natural habitats and only continue to persist in urban areas, that could have “long-term, unexpected effects on ecosystems,” researchers say.

To rescue Sumatran rhinos, Indonesia starts by counting them first
- In February, authorities in Indonesia held an exercise for Sumatran rhino researchers to track and tally the remaining wild population of the species.
- The government aims to finalize an official count of the critically endangered rhino within three years, according to the environment ministry.
- Natural breeding for the rhinos has been particularly difficult as the remaining individuals live in fragmented lowland forests away from each other. On top of that, rhinos are slow breeders and the females have a short fertility period.
- Estimates of the current size of the wild Sumatran rhino population range from 30 to 100 individuals. Another nine live in captivity in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Scientists urge overhaul of the world’s parks to protect biodiversity
- A team of scientists argues that we should evaluate the effectiveness of protected areas based on the outcomes for biodiversity, not simple the area of land or ocean they protect.
- In a paper published April 11 in the journal Science, they outline the weaknesses of Aichi Biodiversity Target 11, which set goals of protecting 17 percent of the earth’s surface and 10 percent of its oceans by 2020.
- They propose monitoring the outcomes of protected areas that measure changes in biodiversity in comparison to agreed-upon “reference” levels and then using those figures to determine how well they are performing.

Planning without action will see the Javan rhino go extinct (commentary)
- Ujung Kulon National Park in Indonesia’s Java island is the last remaining habitat on Earth for the critically endangered Javan rhinoceros.
- The rhino population is holding steady, but its survival is threatened by natural disasters and a genetic bottleneck due to its small population.
- Conservation efforts, particularly finding a second home for these creatures in a lower-risk area, have long been planned, and now is the time to implement all of them to protect the rhinos from extinction.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

To stop extinctions, start with these 169 islands, new study finds
- New research shows that culling invasive, non-native animals on just 169 islands around the world over roughly the next decade could help save almost 10 percent of island-dwelling animals at risk of extinction.
- A team of scientists surveyed nearly 1,300 islands where 1,184 threatened native animals have collided with 184 invasive mammals.
- Their analyses gave them a list of 107 islands where conservationists could start eradication projects by 2020, potentially keeping 80 threatened species from sliding closer to extinction.

Crab season to be cut short in California to protect whales and turtles
- A settlement between the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife will close California’s Dungeness crab fishery three months early in 2019 to reduce the chances that whales and other sea life will become entangled in fishing gear.
- The crabbing season in 2020 and 2021 will also be shuttered early in places where high concentrations of whales come to feed in the spring, such as Monterey Bay.
- Conservationists applauded the changes, saying that they will save animals’ lives.
- The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations was also involved in hammering out the settlement, and its representative said that the new rules, while “challenging,” would help the industry move toward a “resilient, prosperous, and protective fishery.”

Suspected totoaba poachers shot by authorities in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez
- Three suspected totoaba poachers were reportedly shot yesterday by Mexican marines following a confrontation over illegal gillnets that had been confiscated.
- According to local news outlet Fronteras, the governor of the Mexican state of Baja California, Francisco Vega, has confirmed that three people were injured in a shootout between suspected poachers and Mexican marines early Thursday morning in San Felipe, a small fishing town on the coast of the Sea of Cortez.
- Gillnets are a piece of fishing tackle that have been banned in the Sea of Cortez because vaquita, a small porpoise considered the most endangered mammal on the planet, become entangled in them and drown. It is believed there are only 10 vaquita left in the Sea of Cortez, also known as the Upper Gulf of California, the vaquita’s only known range.

Malaysian state chief: Highway construction must not destroy forest
- The chief minister of Sabah, one of two Malaysian states on the island of Borneo, said that the Pan Borneo Highway project should expand existing roads where possible to minimize environmental impact.
- A coalition of local NGOs and scientific organizations applauded the announcement, saying that it could usher in a new era of collaboration between the government and civil society to look out for Sabah’s people and forests.
- These groups have raised concerns about the impacts on wildlife and communities of the proposed path of the highway, which will cover some 5,300 kilometers (3,300 miles) in the states of Sabah and Sarawak.

Protecting small, old-growth forests fails to preserve bird diversity: Study
- Recent research suggests that designating small fragments of old-growth temperate forests as protected areas is not sufficient to halt loss of bird diversity, and that better monitoring and management of forests is required to achieve conservation goals.
- A research team led by Jeffrey Brown, a doctoral student at Rutgers University in the U.S., used data spanning a 40-year time period to study bird populations in Mettler’s Woods, a 64-acre old-growth forest within the Rutgers-owned William L. Hutcheson Memorial Forest in the state of New Jersey.
- Mettler’s Woods is one of the last uncut stands of oak-hickory forest to be found in the United States. It would, on its surface, appear to provide ideal habitat for many bird species. But nine birds known to historically inhabit the forest no longer nest there, and many other species have lower populations than expected.

Possible vaquita death accompanies announcement that only 10 are left
- The environmental organization Sea Shepherd said it found a dead vaquita in a gillnet on March 12.
- One day later, scientists from the group CIRVA announced that around 10 — as many as 22 or as few as six — vaquitas survive in the Gulf of California.
- Despite a ban on gillnets used catch totoaba, a fish prized for its swim bladders used in traditional Chinese medicine, vaquita numbers have continued to decline.

New maps show where humans are pushing species closer to extinction
- A new study maps out how disruptive human changes to the environment affect the individual ranges of more than 5,400 mammal, bird and amphibian species around the world.
- Almost a quarter of the species are threatened by human impacts in more than 90 percent of their range, and at least one human impact occurred in an average of 38 percent of the range of a given species.
- The study also identified “cool” spots, where concentrations of species aren’t negatively impacted by humans.
- The researchers say these “refugia” are good targets for conservation efforts.

Encounters with the Javan rhino (commentary)
- Relatively little is known about the behavior of the Javan rhinoceros, a famously elusive species with a global population of less than 70 individuals.
- Understanding the rhinos’ behavior and how they interact with their environment is key to conservation efforts.
- In this commentary, researcher Haeruddin Sadjudin looks back on four decades of work with rhinos to compile anecdotes that shed light on some characteristics of the species.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Iran’s endangered cheetahs and imperiled conservationists (commentary)
- Eight Iranian wildlife conservationists have been imprisoned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps since January 2018, facing charges of espionage. All those in detention — Niloufar Bayani, Taher Ghadirian, Houman Jowkar, Sepideh Kashani, Amirhossein Khaleghi Hamidi, Abdolreza Kouhpayeh, Sam Radjabi and Morad Tahbaz — are among the most knowledgeable, experienced, and capable conservationists working in Iran.
- All are accused of spying under the guise of conducting cheetah surveys by using camera traps to collect sensitive information. But camera-traps are an extremely poor tool for spying. They are indispensable for monitoring shy species like Asiatic cheetahs, but the cat must pass within the sensor’s very limited range — around 5-10 meters — to trigger the unit.
- We hope that their body of excellent work is presented during the trials. We also hope that the Iranian authorities consider their profound contribution to conserving Iran’s magnificent natural heritage, and that these authorities agree with us that the future of the cheetah and of conservation in Iran relies on these very people being able to continue their vital work.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

Proximity to towns stretches giraffe home ranges
- A recent study found that female giraffes that live close to towns have larger home ranges than those living further afield.
- The study’s authors believe that large human settlements reduce giraffes’ access to food and water.
- The team cites the importance of understanding the size of the area that giraffe populations need to survive to address the precipitous decline in the animal’s numbers across Africa in the past 30 years.

You’re gonna need a smaller boat: Media obscures shrinking ‘newsworthy’ fish
- The sizes of certain species of fish that qualify as “newsworthy” have diminished over time, a new study has found.
- The authors scoured English-language newspapers going back to 1869, searching for terms like “massive” and “giant” in mentions of noteworthy fish landings, and compared the reported lengths with the largest specimens on record for that species.
- They found that for some “charismatic megafish,” such as whale sharks and manta rays, the size that qualified as large has declined over time.
- That shifting baseline could pose a problem for conservation efforts because it gives the impression that “there are still a lot of very large fish in the sea,” marine ecologist Isabelle Côté said.

As extinction looms, can Javan rhinos survive in Ujung Kulon? (Commentary)
- Indonesia’s Javan rhinos were widely hunted until they were protected by a Colonial-era law in 1910. Even then, enforcement was limited.
- Since 1921, the Ujung Kulon peninsula in western Java has been protected as a reserve for Javan rhinos. It is now the species’ sole remaining habitat.
- Ujung Kulon’s rhino population faces numerous challenges including invasive plants, competition from wild cattle and the risk of natural disasters and disease.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Indigenous hunters vital to robust food webs in Australia
- A new study has found that the removal of indigenous hunters from a food web in the Australian desert contributed to the local extinction of mammal species.
- The Martu people had subsisted in the deserts of western Australia for millennia before the government resettled them to make space for a missile test range in the 1950s.
- A team of researchers modeled the effects of this loss, revealing that the hunting fires used by the Martu helped maintain a diverse landscape that supported a variety of mammals and kept invasive species in check.

Vaquita still doomed without further disruption of totoaba cartels (commentary)
- According to our sources on the ground in Baja California, recent arrests of totoaba traffickers in China and pressure on the Chinese traders in Mexico are beginning to have an effect on the illegal totoaba supply chain.
- This is the most important news for the vaquita, the world’s smallest and most threatened porpoise, in years, and a result of — and proof that — intelligence activities and law enforcement can disrupt these criminal enterprises and significantly slow their illegal operations. Intelligence operations produce results.
- Without these efforts aimed at direct disruption of the supply chain itself and the operations of the wildlife crime networks involved, there is absolutely no chance to win the war in the Sea of Cortez, save the vaquita, and save the rest of the region’s extraordinary marine life.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

What’s in a name? The role of defining ‘wilderness’ in conservation
- In a recent opinion piece published in the journal Nature, several ecologists question recent efforts to delineate areas of wilderness and intactness around the world to define conservation targets.
- They argue that it would be better to build broadly supported consensus that includes the perspectives of local and indigenous communities.
- But the leader of a team that recently mapped out the remaining wilderness on land and in the ocean said that identifying these areas and developing new targets that incorporate their conservation is critical because current international agreements do not prioritize their protection.

Wildlife rangers in DRC park report waning motivation, job satisfaction
- Surveys of more than 60 rangers in Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo cite poor salaries, few chances for advancement, and security concerns as reasons for their low satisfaction with their jobs.
- The authors of the study, published in the journal Oryx, believe that the rangers’ discontentment leads to waning motivation in protecting the park and its wildlife, which includes the critically endangered Grauer’s gorilla.
- Improved conditions, in the form of better salaries, opportunities for promotion, and better support from the judicial and legal authorities, could translate into improved protections for the park, the researchers write.

Marine mammal and sea turtle populations benefitting from Endangered Species Act listing
- New research published in the journal PLoS ONE this month finds that the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) is effectively aiding in the recovery of beleaguered populations of marine mammals and sea turtles.
- Marine mammals and sea turtles comprise 62 of the 163 marine species that are currently afforded ESA protections. Researchers collected annual abundance estimates for populations of all 62 of those marine mammal and sea turtle species in order to analyze population trends and the magnitude of observed changes in population numbers.
- The research team hypothesized that populations that have been listed under the ESA for longer periods of time would be more likely to be recovering than those species listed recently, regardless of whether they were listed as “threatened” or the more severe “endangered,” and that’s exactly what they found.

Romeo finally found his Juliet, and an endangered frog has new prospects for survival
- When Valentine’s Day rolled around last year, Romeo found himself without a date. That’s because Romeo is a Sehuencas water frog and, as far as scientists knew at the time, he was the last surviving member of his species. The last time he even bothered calling for a mate was apparently some time in late 2017.
- So last year, the teams at the Museo de Historia Natural Alcide d’Orbigny and the NGO Global Wildlife Conservation set up a dating profile for Romeo on Match.com as a means of raising money to fund an expedition into Bolivia’s cloud forests in search of a Juliet.
- That expedition led to the rediscovery of the Sehuencas water frog in the wild and the collection of three males and two females, all of whom were taken to the Museo de Historia Natural Alcide d’Orbigny’s K’ayra Center for Research and Conservation of Threatened Amphibians. Once the quarantine period is over, Romeo will finally meet his Juliet — and the species just might make a comeback from the brink of extinction.

Audio: IUCN’s Inger Andersen: “Women represent 3.5 billion solutions”
- On today’s episode, we talk with the Director General of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Inger Andersen.
- Founded in 1948 and headquartered in Switzerland, the IUCN is probably best known for its Red List of Threatened Species, a vital resource on the conservation statuses and extinction risks of tens of thousands of species with whom we share planet Earth. But the IUCN does much more than just maintain the Red List, as Inger Andersen, the organization’s director general, explains.
- Andersen also discusses how updates are made to the Red List (and what updates we can expect to the List in 2019), the importance of empowering women in conservation and sustainable development, the need to tackle unsustainable production and consumption patterns, and why the 2020 installment of the IUCN’s World Conservation Congress will be perhaps the most important yet.

A sociological approach to global biodiversity loss (commentary)
- The connections between social processes and environmental processes that generate biodiversity loss are very unclear compared to climate change, or even other environmental problems like oil spills or the clear-cutting of forests.
- In our recent article published in the journal Social Currents, we show that, because of these difficulties, the global crisis of anthropogenic biodiversity loss should, first and foremost, be explained historically. This means paying attention to how large scale social processes, for instance the increasing commodification of global agriculture or changes in international banking, interact with large scale environmental processes, for example the entire size of a species’ habitat.
- Overall, we believe that sociology can become an important contributor to research on biodiversity loss. For this to happen, however, it should be based on analysis of how broad social and environmental structures contribute to biodiversity loss, as well as the ways in which actual species extinctions are dependent upon a specific historical context.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Rapid population drop weakened the Grauer’s gorilla gene pool
- The loss of 80 percent of all Grauer’s, or eastern lowland, gorillas in the past two decades has led to a severe reduction in the subspecies’ genetic diversity, new research has found.
- That slide could make it more difficult for the fewer than 4,000 remaining Grauer’s gorillas to adapt to changes in their environment.
- Scientists look for signs of hope in the animal’s sister subspecies, the mountain gorilla, which, studies suggest, has adapted to its own low levels of genetic diversity.

The long journey to saving the Sumatran rhino, via Borneo (commentary)
- The presence of near-extinct Sumatran rhinos in Indonesian Borneo was for a long time the stuff of legend, with no hard evidence to support it. Still, wildlife experts spared no effort to investigate every scrap of information.
- Those rumors eventually bore fruit with the capture of two individuals by conservationists in the past two years. The first rhino, however, died of injuries sustained before its capture.
- Today, a facility in eastern Borneo holds the other rhino, a female, with around-the-clock care from vets and experts, as part of a wider effort to kick-start a captive-breeding program.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Audio: The true story of how 96 critically endangered sea turtle hatchlings survived New York City
- On this episode, the true story of how 96 critically endangered sea turtles survived a New York City beach — with a little help from some dedicated conservationists.
- This past summer, beachgoers in New York City spotted a nesting Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle on West Beach, which is on National Park Service land.
- Luckily, two of those beachgoers had the presence of mind to call the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation’s 24-hour hotline to report the nesting turtle — which very likely saved the lives of 96 Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle hatchlings.

As the mammal tree of life suffers hits, should we prioritize which species to save?
- More than 300 mammal species have gone extinct since shortly before the last ice age, a loss of more than 2.5 billion years of evolutionary history across all ancestral lines, a sweeping study reports.
- Even in the best-case scenario — we completely stop climate change and extinctions within 50 years — evolution would need at least three million years to redevelop that lost biodiversity.
- Choosing to save the most distinct at-risk species is one way to minimize ongoing damage to the mammal tree of life.

First wild Sumatran rhino in Borneo captured for breeding campaign
- A female Sumatran rhinoceros has been captured in Indonesian Borneo and moved to a local sanctuary as part of an initiative to conserve the near-extinct species through captive breeding.
- A team of veterinarians and rhino experts is now caring for the rhino around the clock, and will seek to establish whether she is viable for breeding.
- Conservationists and government officials have welcomed news of the capture and rescue, a key step toward replenishing a species whose total population may be as low as 30 individuals.
- The capture comes two years after another female rhino was trapped in the same district, only to die less than a month later.

‘Not all hope is lost’ as outlook for mountain gorillas brightens
- The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) changed the status of mountain gorillas from Critically Endangered to Endangered today.
- The new assessment cites the subspecies’ growing numbers, now at around 1,000 individuals, and the conservation efforts on its behalf.
- Scientists say that, while this is an important milestone, mountain gorillas’ survival depends on continued conservation.

Trapper, turned conservationist: Bill Wood (obituary)
- Bill Wood, a trapper who turned his expertise to save scores of species from extinction, died October 10, 2018 at the age of 84.
- Bill worked for Island Conservation for almost two decades, hunting and trapping invasive species on remote islands.
- Bill directly and personally saved over 180 animals and plant species from extinction though his work.

It’s déjà vu for orangutans, devastated by climate change and hunting once before
- The fossil record shows that orangutan numbers and range declined rapidly in the late Pleistocene area; by 12,000 years ago they remained in only around 20 percent of their original range.
- A recent study concludes that the twin pressures of climate change and human hunting were responsible for this rapid decline.
- The study’s authors say their research indicates that humans and orangutans have co-existed for millennia, and can continue to do so if proper conservation measures are taken.
- Their research suggests that far more attention needs to be paid to the impact human hunting has on modern orangutan populations.

Indonesian government puts off Sumatran rhino IVF program
- Indonesia says a long-awaited program to breed Sumatran rhinos through IVF has been postponed, citing the lack of viable eggs from a female rhino in Malaysia.
- The news becomes the latest setback in the years-long saga between the two countries, with some conservationists in Malaysia blaming the Indonesian government inaction for the dwindling odds of a successful artificial insemination attempt.
- There are only an estimated 40 to 100 Sumatran rhinos left in the world, scattered on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

Int’l protections not stopping pangolin overexploitation in Cameroon
- A recent report indicates that the 2016 listing of pangolins under CITES Appendix I, outlawing their international trade, is not translating into protections for the anteater-like animal at the local level in Central Africa.
- The study used data gathered from an investigation in Cameroon.
- Pangolins are considered the world’s “most illegally traded wild mammal” by the IUCN, and scientific research in 2017 found that between 420,000 and 2.71 million pangolins are hunted from Central African forests each year.

Frogs coping with fatal fungus in Panamanian forest, study finds
- Scientists discovered that frogs in the El Copé forest appear to have found a way to live with chytrid (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis), a fungus that is still devastating amphibian populations in other parts of the world.
- The team found that surviving frog species had similar survival rates whether they were infected with chytrid or not.
- The results offer the possibility that frog communities, though altered, can stabilize after these catastrophic events.

95 percent of all lemur species face high risk of extinction, experts say
- More than 50 experts in primate conservation from around the world recently convened in Antananarivo to review the conservation status of the 111 species and subspecies of lemurs, all endemic to Madagascar, and provide updated threat assessments for the IUCN Red List.
- They found that 105 lemurs — 95 percent of all known lemur species and subspecies — might qualify as critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable to extinction in the wild.
- The updated assessments produced by the IUCN Species Survival Commission Primate Specialist Group must still undergo a review process before they are fully validated, but the group’s findings would increase the number of lemurs listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List from 24 to 38.

Securing a future for Grevy’s zebras and the cultures of northern Kenya (commentary)
- Grevy’s zebras were once widespread across the Horn of Africa, but their numbers were decimated by poaching and civil unrest during the 1970s and 80s. Fewer than 3,000 endangered Grevy’s zebras remain worldwide today.
- Habitat loss and competition with people and livestock for water and pasture pose a bigger threat than poaching to the species’ survival today.
- Conservation initiatives devised and implemented at the grassroots level hold the key to the species’ future. Local efforts by the Grevy’s Zebra Trust (GZT) seek to promote sustainable grazing practices and employ local communities in monitoring zebra movements, thereby safeguarding both the area’s natural and cultural heritage.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Scientists urge Indonesian president to nix dam in orangutan habitat
- Twenty-five of the world’s top environmental scientists have sent a letter to Indonesia’s president, seeking a halt to a planned hydroelectric dam in the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, the rarest species of great ape on Earth.
- The scientists also slammed the Chinese government for funding the project as a part of its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, saying it has disregarded the environmental consequences of building and operating the dam.
- The developers of the project have dismissed the criticism, saying they will enforce strong environmental safeguards to protect the critically endangered Tapanuli orangutan.

Orangutan forest school in Indonesia takes on its first eight students
- A forest school in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province, funded by the Vienna-based animal welfare organization Four Paws and run by the local organization Jejak Pulang, has just started training its first eight orangutan orphans to learn the skills they need to live independently in the forest.
- Borneo’s orangutans are in crisis, with more than 100,000 lost since 1999 through direct killings and loss of habitat, particularly to oil palm and pulpwood plantations.
- Security forces often confiscate juvenile orangutans under 7 years of age, and without their mothers to teach them the skills they need, they cannot be released back into the forest.
- Jejak Pulang’s team of 15 orangutan caretakers, a biologist, two veterinarians and the center’s director aim to prepare the orphaned orangutans for independence.

Puan, the world’s oldest Sumatran orangutan, dies at 62
- Puan, the world’s oldest living Sumatran orangutan, was euthanized on June 18 at Perth Zoo in Australia due to age-related complications.
- Her death left an incredible legacy of 11 children and a total of 54 descendants across the world, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the global Sumatran orangutan zoo population.
- Due to her genetic legacy, Puan played a vital role in ensuring the survival of the species, which has been categorized as critically endangered.

Renowned wildlife conservationist Russell Mittermeier awarded 2018 Indianapolis Prize
- Mittermeier, a primatologist, herpetologist, and highly accomplished conservationist, is the seventh recipient of the prestigious prize, which has been awarded by the Indianapolis Zoological Society along with $250,000 in prize money every two years since 2006 to “the most successful animal conservationist in the world.”
- He spent 11 years at WWF–U.S. before becoming president of Conservation International (CI) in 1989. It was while he was at CI that Mittermeier first heard of the concept of “biodiversity hotspots” — a concept he would go on to popularize and utilize to achieve a number of conservation successes.
- “Russ Mittermeier is a consummate scientist, a visionary leader, a deft policy advocate and an inspiring mentor to many,” Michael Crowther, chief executive officer of the Indianapolis Zoological Society, said in a statement. “Perhaps most important, he is a consistent winner in the battles for species and ecosystem survival.”

East Africa’s mountain gorilla population now numbers more than 1,000
- According to the results of a census released last week, the mountain gorilla population in East Africa’s Virunga Mountains numbered 604 as of June 2016, up from from 480 in 2010. The population hit an all-time low of 242 individuals in 1981.
- The mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) is a subspecies of the eastern gorilla with two distinct sub-populations: one in the Virunga Mountains and another in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. A census conducted in 2011 found approximately 400 gorillas living in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, meaning that the total number of mountain gorillas is now believed to be more than 1,000 individuals.
- Conservationists were quick to celebrate the increasing mountain gorilla population as a much-needed instance of good news, even if they remain wary of the many persistent and looming threats the subspecies must still contend with.

Bolivia’s Madidi National Park home to world’s largest array of land life, survey finds
- A two-and-a-half-year biological survey of Madidi National Park in Bolivia added 1,382 species and subspecies of plants and animals to the list of those living in the park.
- The team believes that 124 species and subspecies may be new to science.
- WCS, the organization that led the study, said the 18,958-square-kilometer (7,320-square-mile) park is the world’s most biodiverse protected area.

Geneticists: It’s time to mix the Sumatran rhino subspecies
- The Sumatran rhino populations living in Borneo and Sumatra have been genetically separated for hundreds of thousands of years.
- The species as a whole has no more than 100 living individuals in the wild, and perhaps as few as 30. Another nine are in captivity.
- In a recent study of Sumatran rhinos’ mitochondrial DNA, geneticists argue it’s time to combine the subspecies, despite the potential risks and drawbacks.
- The question is given extra urgency with plans afoot to capture a female rhino in Indonesian Borneo.

Biomass study finds people are wiping out wild mammals
- A team of scientists mined previous studies for estimates of the total mass of carbon found in each group of organisms on Earth as a way to measure relative biomass.
- Plants house some 450 gigatons of the 550 gigatons — or about 80 percent — of the carbon found in all of Earth’s life-forms, the team found, and bacteria account for another 15 percent.
- Humans represent just a hundredth of a percent of the Earth’s biomass, but we’ve driven down the biomass of land animals by 85 percent and marine mammals by about 80 percent since the beginning of the last major extinction about 50,000 years ago.

Making the most of conservation science (commentary)
- Increasing numbers of scientific papers on conservation are published every year, but for many people these remain inaccessible behind paywalls, difficult to locate in a vast ocean of research, or time-consuming to read.
- There are increasing attempts to bring the evidence for particular questions together in digestible formats, such as systematic reviews or Mongabay’s Conservation Effectiveness series. One such enterprise is the Conservation Evidence project, which assesses the evidence for the effectiveness of conservation interventions.
- A new edition of the book ‘What Works in Conservation,’ produced by Conservation Evidence, is available and free to download. This book helps us to see which conservation interventions have been shown to work, which have been shown not to work, and where we need more evidence.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

TV host Ellen DeGeneres to visit Rwanda in mountain gorilla conservation effort
- Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres earlier this year established a fund that will finance the building of a campus in Rwanda to support conservation and protection efforts for the critically endangered mountain gorilla.
- The campus is being built in collaboration with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and DeGeneres is scheduled to visit the site in the Virunga Mountains next week.
- The initiative has been welcomed by conservationists and Rwandan government officials, and has received financial support and endorsements from prominent figures in Hollywood.

Humans are leaving their mark on the world’s protected areas, study finds
- About one-third of the world’s total protected area — around 6 million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles) — bears the scars of substantial degradation at the hands of humans, according to research published in the journal Science.
- The researchers found that large parks and reserves held to the toughest standards are doing significantly better than those with laxer controls.
- The authors argue that assessments of the effectiveness of protected areas should be considered, especially as governments try to meet one of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets calling for protecting 17 percent of the Earth’s land area by 2020.

Scientists find ‘ground zero’ of deadly frog pandemic
- First observed by scientists in the 1970s, the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) had spread around the world by the early 2000s. The fungus kills frogs by colonizing their skin and impairing their ability to absorb water and electrolytes.
- By 2007, Bd infection had led to the decline or extinction of around 200 species of frogs, and today is considered one of the biggest single threats to amphibians worldwide.
- For a new study, researchers genetically analyzed hundreds of Bd samples; their results suggest that the fungus is from the Korean peninsula and began spreading between 50-120 years ago with the expansion of international trade.
- The researchers say the pet trade needs much stronger regulations if the spread of Bd – as well as the emerging salamander-killing fungus B. salamandrivorans – is to be stopped before it causes more devastation.

Black rhinos return to Zakouma National Park in Chad
- The NGO African Parks and its partners in South Africa and Chad reintroduced six black rhinos to Zakouma National Park on May 4.
- Chad’s oldest national park had not had rhinos since the early 1970s, when they were wiped out by hunting.
- After a brief acclimation period in transitional bomas, or enclosures, the rhinos will be released into a protected sanctuary in the park.
- Around 5,000 black rhinos remain on the African continent, and poaching for their horns, used in traditional Asian medicine, continues to be a threat to their survival as a species.

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