The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has issued its first ever Extinction Alert statement for the endangered vaquita porpoise, whose population is estimated to have shrunk to 10 individuals. The IWC says that a 100 percent ban on gillnets is immediately necessary to stop the extinction of the world’s smallest marine mammal. “Recent studies show there […]
The rusty patched bumble bee is one of the many bees facing threats to its survival, from toxic insecticides to loss of habitat and global heating. Once prevalent throughout the upper midwestern and northeastern U.S., this unique bumble bee species has declined more than 85 percent and now lives only in the northernmost portion of […]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being sued for unlawfully reapproving toxic herbicides used to grow food that contain 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), an active ingredient used in the chemical weapon Agent Orange. The Center for Food Safety (CFS), Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) and Alianza Nacional De Campesinas, Inc., are suing the EPA […]
The shy, elusive vaquita is the smallest and most endangered porpoise in the world, with fewer than 20 remaining in their small range in the Gulf of California’s Sea of Cortez. Vaquitas have been hanging on against all odds, despite the consistent threat of entanglement in gillnets used to illegally catch totoaba, a large fish […]
The Australian and Queensland governments have introduced a more than $160 million package to phase out the commercial gill net fishing that damages the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world, as well as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Area. […]
Despite their iconic status and long association with humans, Asian elephants are one of the most endangered large mammals. Believed to number between 45,000 and 50,000 individuals worldwide, they are at risk throughout Asia due to human activities such as deforestation, mining, dam building and road construction, which have damaged numerous ecosystems.
On April 20, Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship exploded over the Gulf of Mexico three minutes into its inaugural launch. While the fiery spectacle caught the attention of the public, it was the eruptive ground-level portion of the launch that has been attracting more intense scrutiny from the government and environmentalists. Last Thursday’s blastoff from SpaceX’s […]
In a sign of hope for lions, conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Government of Chad were overjoyed when a remote camera captured the majestic image of a healthy female lion in Chad’s Sena Oura National Park, where not a single lion had been spotted in almost 20 years. Just a century […]
The amount of critically endangered fish species in Australia has recently doubled after nine species were newly categorized as critically endangered in March. All nine species are part of the galaxias genus, and an additional tenth galaxias species has been labeled as endangered. The findings present an urgent need to conserve these species. One major […]