endangered species

JAKARTA — Despite various commitments from global brands and the government to protect Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem, home to some of the rarest species on Earth, development of new palm oil plantations and drainage of carbon-rich peatlands continue in the ecosystem, a new investigation finds. At the same time, deforestation in Rawa Singkil Wildlife Reserve, a […]

An expedition team has found a rare Brazilian tree that botanists thought might be extinct after nearly two centuries without a confirmed sighting. The Pernambuco holly tree (Ilex sapiiformis), which can grow to a height of 12 meters (nearly 40 feet), was found again in March in northeast Brazil by a team led by ecologist […]

PANAMA CITY — Panama has been gripped by mass protests against a government deal with Central America’s largest copper mine amid claims it sacrifices national sovereignty and will damage the environment and the country’s vital shipping canal. Demonstrations started in early August in Panama City and quickly expanded nationwide, bringing together environmentalists, students, workers’ unions, […]

In Ecuador’s Jama-Coaque Reserve (JCR), nearly every surface is encased with life: moss, ferns,  epiphytes and orchids — a color wheel of green in three dimensions. Amid the green, chestnut-headed oropendola nests hang like woven teardrops from towering trees, troops of howler monkeys shout their boundaries and hummingbirds dive-bomb from branch to blossom. JCR protects […]

HOLBOX, Mexico — The tour I’d arranged in Holbox wasn’t one of the usual packages. It isn’t advertised on social media or sold at the dozens of stalls along the white coral beach. The environmentalists who organized it didn’t take me swimming with whale sharks or to the lagoon where you can see caimans by […]

MONDULKIRI, Cambodia — In a rare win for conservationists and Cambodia’s Indigenous communities, the Ministry of Environment has opted to suspend a planned marble mining operation within a wildlife sanctuary along the border with Vietnam. A letter dated June 27 from then-environment minister Say Samal ordered that the mining exploration operation be suspended before it […]

The world’s largest limpet, Scutellastra mexicana, is making its last stand on a group of islands off Mexico, with experts warning that it may slip into extinction without urgent conservation action. Researchers counted the limpets, a species of sea snail, around Mexico’s María Madre Island, a prison until 2019. They found only around 2,300 individuals, at […]

Remember Indiana Jones’ famous line “Snakes! Why’d it have to be snakes?” in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark? That iconic moment has taken on a new twist as the actor behind the adventurous archaeologist, Harrison Ford, has become the namesake of a newly described snake species. In the forests of Otishi National […]

As more people are born onto this great green planet, the demand for food grows. Feeding the nearly 8 billion of us here today is a challenge, not only because of the amount of food required but because the climate crisis is making growing conditions more difficult and unpredictable. To withstand droughts, heat, floods, and […]

In November 2011, when a pregnant beaked whale drifted ashore on New Zealand’s Waiatoto Spit, Ramari Stewart, an Indigenous whale watcher, noticed that the whale looked slightly different to those usually stranded. It measured about 5 meters (17 feet) long, and after its skeleton was prepared and featured in the National Museum of New Zealand, […]