poaching

There were once so many giant tortoises living on Ecuador’s Galápagos Islands that Spanish explorers named the archipelago after the Spanish world for tortoise — galápago — when they first explored it in 1535, according to National Geographic. Yet hunting caused their numbers to plummet from at least 250,000 hundreds of years ago to only […]

A new report has found traders illegally selling donkey skins on social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. According to the investigation, donkey skins are in high demand for ejiao, a traditional Chinese remedy. Traders are ignoring bans on sales of donkey skins, including in Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, even […]

The critically endangered vaquita porpoise — a beautiful dolphin about four to five feet long with dark circles around its eyes and an upturned, seemingly smiling mouth — is the smallest marine mammal in the world. They’re also on the brink of extinction with an estimated fewer than ten vaquitas left in their small range […]

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 […]

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.

Oregon police are seeking assistance in the poisoning of eight wolves in the state since February. Conservation groups are also offering a $43,000 reward for information about the killings, The Guardian reported. “We are furious and appalled. These poisonings are a significant blow to wolf recovery in Oregon,” Defenders of Wildlife senior northwest representative Sristi […]

Thirty white rhinos have just made an incredible journey. The vulnerable mammals traveled more than 3,400 kilometers (approximately 2,113 miles) from South Africa to Rwanda in the “largest single rhino translocation in history,” African Parks announced on Monday. “Introductions to safe, intact wild landscapes are vital for the future of vulnerable species like white rhino, […]

During Mozambique’s civil war from 1977 to 1992, around 90 percent of the elephants in what is now the Gorongosa National Park were poached for ivory to finance the conflict. This widespread slaughter led to rapid evolution in the span of one generation. Before the conflict, less than a fifth of female elephants were born […]