Wildlife Conservation

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 […]

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — A flurry of subdecrees released through the end of July and early August show that the Cambodian government has approved he addition of more than a million hectares of land, or 2.5 million acres, to the country’s protected areas. But amid the ongoing deforestation and privatization of Cambodia’s protected areas, civil […]

“When we caught it, we all just looked at it and said, ‘You look ridiculous. Look how big your nose leaf is,’” Jon Flanders, director of endangered species interventions at Bat Conservation International, told Mongabay. The odd-looking creature in their net was a Hill’s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus hilli)—the first seen since 1981. “We feared the […]

Urban development projects surrounding a protected lake in Paraguay are threatening the recovery of local ecosystems and raising questions about the government’s ability to circumvent conservation mandates. Wetlands around Lake Ypacaraí are being filled in to allow for the construction of housing and tourism projects despite a series of environmental recovery measures that prohibit development […]

An Afro-Colombian community on the southwest coast of Colombia has helped establish a new marine protected area that will create more sustainable fishing and hunting practices while ensuring that one of the country’s most undisturbed ecosystems withstands outside threats of deforestation and pollution long into the future. The Isla Ají marine protected area, which covers […]

Eagles, regarded by some as a symbol for American freedom, are being poisoned by lead from ammunition. Scientists sampled the blood from 1,210 living and dead bald eagles (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) across 38 U.S. states over eight years. Nearly half of all the sampled birds showed evidence of repeated lead exposure, according to […]

In late 2021, the Mexican government made a controversial announcement that many of the country’s major infrastructure projects, most notably the Tren Maya project being built across the Yucatán Peninsula, were now a matter of “national security.” Among other things, the announcement meant that the nearly 200 billion peso ($9.6 billion) railway project could bypass […]

One of the most poisonous animals on earth, the golden dart frog carries enough toxins in its body to kill 10 people. If it enters the blood stream, the toxin paralyzes the nervous system and, in only a few minutes, stops the heart from beating. The golden dart frog (Phyllobates terribilis) is found only in […]