conservation

The last known female Yangtze giant softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) has died, putting the critically endangered species at risk for extinction. There are now only three left in the world. The turtle lived at Suzhou Zoo in China, where researchers attempted to artificially inseminate her Friday, according to the Suzhou Daily, as CNN reported. “Sadly […]

By Mason Adams The camera wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Clad in chest waders and camouflage, Kyle Hill stepped into the pond, reached into the shallow water, and lifted it from the post where it had been mounted. “They got it pretty good,” he said. A few hundred yards away were the culprits: […]

By Kaitlin Grable Under the restless surface of our seas, hundreds of miles from land, there’s a world of giants and hunters; ancient lifeforms and lost cities. These waters beyond national borders are home to creatures even more varied than in the tropical rainforests. They contain the highest and longest mountain range anywhere on our […]

A record number of pangolin scales were seized in Singapore in the past week, drawing renewed attention to the plight of the world’s most trafficked mammal. The National Parks Board, Singapore Customs and the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority found 14.2 tons of pangolin scales in a beef shipment April 3, on its own a record-breaking […]

For the first time in 140 years, wolves have an official home in the Netherlands. Ecologists told BBC Radio 4 that a female wolf they had been tracking had stayed in the country for six months and could therefore be called “established,” BBC News reported Tuesday. The ecologists had been tracking two females in the […]

An estimated 600 million birds are killed every year from collisions with some of the country’s largest skyscrapers, according to research from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Particularly deadly are those tall buildings found in three cities in particular. “Chicago, Houston, and Dallas are uniquely positioned in the heart of North America’s most trafficked aerial […]

What are the most dangerous U.S. cities for migratory birds? That’s the question answered by a new study published last week in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, which looked at the problem of light pollution. Seventy percent of bird species present in the U.S. are migratory, and more than 80 percent of those species […]

By Tara Lohan Last year a terrible accident in India made headlines around the world. Late one February night, a speeding train struck a herd of elephants crossing the tracks, instantly killing two adults and two calves. A third adult died soon after. It wasn’t an isolated incident. Over the past 30 years train collisions […]