endangered species

It’s no secret that fishing gear often results in the entanglement of untargeted marine species, including those that are endangered, threatened and protected like seabirds, sea turtles, sharks and marine mammals. Gillnets are one of the most widely used types of fishing gear in the world and are often the culprit in this unwanted bycatch. […]

The San Diego Zoo Safari Park announced a “difficult loss” last week.  A newborn Masai giraffe had to be euthanized just two days after his birth.  “It is with heavy hearts that we report the passing of a 2-day-old male Masai giraffe calf born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park this week,” the park […]

Anyone who has ever spent a cozy afternoon in the presence of a beloved grandparent knows that the wisdom of age can have a calming influence. It turns out that this is true for elephants as well. A new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in December found that male elephants […]

Peru has demanded compensation for an oil spill that has been dubbed an “ecological disaster” by the Peruvian government, Reuters reported. A tanker owned by the Spanish oil company Repsol was unloading oil at La Pampilla refinery when unusually high waves from the volcanic explosion near Tonga caused the spill.

After an 18 year absence, endangered salmon have returned to a Bay Area stream. A Salmon Protection And Watershed Network (SPAWN) biologist spotted coho salmon in Montezuma Creek for the first time since 2004. The fish were also spotted in Larsen Creek for the first time since 2006 as well as in other tributaries of […]

What’s around five inches, olive yellow with dark blotches and apparently no longer extinct in the state of Ohio? The answer is the longhead darter, a small-to-medium size fish which was spotted in the state for the first time since 1939, as the Ohio Division of Wildlife announced on Facebook January 6. 

One of the rarest animals in the world, the saola is so elusive that no biologist has ever observed one in the wild. The critically endangered species was photographed via a camera trap in Vietnam in 2013, which was the first time the ‘Asian unicorn’ had been seen there in the wild for 15 years, the Daily Mail reported. The saola wasn’t even discovered as a species until 1992, the first to be added to the scientific roster of large mammals in more than 50 years, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

To protect endangered species, scientists and conservationists need to know where these species exist. But that’s not always easy to do, as lower population numbers make it hard to find such vulnerable animals. But in two new studies, scientists have found ways to vacuum animal DNA from the air, making it easier to track down endangered species.