Central America’s largest remaining forests are disappearing at a precipitous rate due to illegal cattle ranching, oil palm plantations, and other human-related activities, all of which are putting local communities and the region’s wildlife species at high risk.
Human-caused habitat loss looms as the greatest threat to some North American breeding birds over the next few decades. The problem will be most severe on their wintering grounds, according to a new study published in the journal Global Change Biology.
Just as “Shark Week” is gearing up, researchers have discovered a new species of shark 17 years in the making. Like finding a needle in a haystack, it was well worth the wait as this elusive creature is yet to be seen in the wild.
Hunting of pangolins, the world’s most illegally traded mammal, increased by a staggering 150 percent in Central African forests from 1970s up to 2014, according to a new study by the University of Sussex, WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society), and other groups.
Slower boat speeds reduce risks to manatees. Or do they? Not exactly, according to research that shows the very laws enacted to slow down boats in manatee habitats may actually be doing more harm than good.
Grasshopper mice, rodents known for their remarkably loud call, produce audible vocalizations in the same way that humans speak and wolves howl, according to new research.
Experts from WCS’s Global Conservation Programs and WCS’s Bronx Zoo assisted Cuban conservationists in the recent release of 10 Cuban crocodiles (Crocodylus rhombifer) into Cuba’s Zapata Swamp as part of an ongoing recovery strategy for this Critically Endangered species.
The first aerial assessment of the impact of Central African Republic’s recent conflict on wildlife and other natural resources in the northern part of the country shows that wildlife populations have been depleted in large areas of their former range, yet there is hope as some populations of Kordofan giraffe, giant eland, buffalo, roan, and other key species that still survive in low numbers.
A multi-year survey of the health of endangered southern resident killer whales suggests that up to two-thirds of pregnancies failed in this population from 2007 to 2014. The study links this orca population's low reproductive success to stress brought on by low abundance of Chinook salmon.
Scientists from WCS and other groups have found that the pig-nosed turtle (Carettochelys insculpta) has joined a select group of chatty chelonians that can vocalize.
WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society), in collaboration with Cambodia’s Fisheries Administration (FiA) and the Turtle Survival Alliance (TSA), released 150 Endangered Asian giant softshell turtle (Pelochelys cantorii) hatchlings into their natural habitat along the Mekong River.
Musk deer are small, shy, fanged deer targeted by poachers across Asia for the musk gland found in males, a substance that, gram from gram, is more valuable than gold.
In celebration of World Environment Day today, Wildlife Conservation Society Canada (WCS Canada) has released, “Securing a Wild Future: Planning for Landscape-scale Conservation of Yukon’s Boreal Mountains,” —a report mapping how best to conserve the globally important wild areas of Yukon’s Boreal Mountain region.
Northern Congo’s notorious elephant poacher and ivory trafficker Daring Dissaka, 39, has been convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment.
Will reductions in Arctic snow cover make tundra-dwelling wolverines more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought? That’s a question scientists hope an innovative method described in a new study co-authored by WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) will help answer.
Wolves and other top predators need large ranges to be able to control smaller predators whose populations have expanded, according to a study appearing May 23 in Nature Communications. The results were similar across three continents, showing that as top predators' ranges were cut back and fragmented, they were no longer able to control smaller predators.
A spider and an ant with names drawn from popular books, a pink katydid and an omnivorous rat made ESF's list of the Top 10 New Species for 2017. Also listed: a freshwater stingray, a bush tomato that appears to “bleed,” a devilish-looking orchid, a millipede with more than 400 legs, an amphibious centipede and a marine worm.
Whole genome sequencing (WGS), which is the process of determining an organism’s complete DNA sequence, can be used to identify DNA anomalies that cause disease. Identifying disease-causing DNA abnormalities allows clinicians to better predict an effective course of treatment for the patient. Now, in a series of recent studies, scientists at the University of Missouri are using whole genome sequencing through the 99 Lives Cat Genome Sequencing Consortium to identify genetic variants that cause rare diseases, such as progressive retinal atrophy and Niemann-Pick type 1, a fatal disorder in domestic cats. Findings from the study could help feline preservationists implement breeding strategies in captivity for rare and endangered species such as the African black-footed cat.
New York - May 9, 2017 – Brooklyn residents and visitors can get close-up glimpses of the region’s most mysterious inhabitants at Underwater Wildlife New York, a photo exhibit now underway at Brooklyn Bridge Park that showcases the region’s most fascinating marine species.
Scientists have identified a “princess pheromone” that tells an ant colony when a larva is preparing to become a queen.
Honeybees – employed to pollinate crops during the blooming season – encounter danger due to lingering and wandering pesticides, according to a new Cornell University study that analyzed the bee’s own food.
Our world seems to grow smaller by the day as biodiversity rapidly dwindles, but Mother Earth still has a surprise or two up her sleeve. An international team of researchers were the first to investigate a never before studied species a giant, black, mud dwelling, worm-like animal. The findings will be published online in the Apr. 17 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The sensory system in fish fins evolves in parallel to fin shape and mechanics, and is specifically tuned to work with the fish’s swimming behavior, according to new research from the University of Chicago. The researchers found these parallels across a wide range of fish species, suggesting that it may occur in other animals as well.
The ongoing recovery of the black-footed ferret is one of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's most successful conservation efforts.
Baby sea turtles don’t have an X or Y chromosome, and their sex is defined during development by the incubation environment. A crucial step in the conservation of these animals is estimating hatchling sex ratios, which remains imprecise because of their anatomical makeup.
When asked to name their favorite wildlife, Bahamian children chose feral cats, dogs and pigs - invasive species that can be more damaging in an island environment. However, island kids chose a wider variety of favorite species - including birds, lizards, fish and insects - than mainland children from North Carolina, who favored mammals such as deer, bears, rabbits, wolves and squirrels.
Savvy divers with just a pencil and an underwater slate can now participate in a WCS-led initiative to record coral bleaching observations around the world.
Ecologists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison are trying to understand why the midge population at an Icelandic lake can fluctuate by 100,000-fold across a decade, and what impact these massive swarms have on the surrounding landscape.
A new analysis by the University of Washington and Simon Fraser University is the first to document that "black swan" events also occur in animal populations and usually manifest as massive, unexpected die-offs.
The True´s beaked whale is a deep-diving mammal so rarely seen that it often defies recognition at sea by researchers. Scientists have now obtained the first images of a calf along with the first underwater video of these whales – helping to reveal the secrets of this species.
A new report says St-Barthélemy’s environment may be rapidly degrading, with major impacts stemming from land-based pollution, urbanization, and overfishing.
The Cross River State government’s announcement yesterday to drop a 12-mile buffer around a proposed superhighway though one of Nigeria’s last rainforests is still not enough to prevent the loss of important community forests and significant impacts to the region’s wildlife if the project moves forward, according to WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and its campaign effort to reroute the project entirely.
A team of scientists reporting in the journal Nature Climate Change say that negative impacts of climate change on threatened and endangered wildlife have been massively under reported.
The WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) announced today that Dr. Jonathan Slaght will be honored for his work in Russia to conserve the Blakiston’s fish owl, an endangered species and the largest owl in the world.
Research by scientists at the University of Bristol has found that man-made noise can hinder the response of animals to the warning signals given by other species, putting them at greater risk of death from predators.
Mountain regions of the world are under direct threat from human-induced climate change which could radically alter these fragile habitats, warn an international team of researchers.
The researchers found that insects engage in the largest continental migration on earth. Some 3.5 trillion insects in Southern Britain alone migrate each year – a biomass eight times that of bird migration.
The things we consume, from iPhones to cars to IKEA furniture, have costs that go well beyond their purchase price. What if the soybeans used to make that tofu you ate last night were grown in fields that were hewn out of tropical rainforests? Or if that tee-shirt you bought came from an industrial area that had been carved out of high-value habitat in Malaysia?
New research publishing December 27 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology characterizes the ability of populations to interbreed and exchange genes as a function of the level divergence of their genomes.
Spectral bats, also called false vampire bats for their imposing size—with a wingspan of over three feet—are the largest bats in the Americas and typically roost in trees in lowland forests. Vladimir Dinets, research assistant professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has discovered evidence that the species also can live in caves and is more adaptable than previously thought, thanks to personal observation and information gleaned from social media accounts of tourists.
The (WCS) Wildlife Conservation Society reports the publication of a plan to help guide multi-institutional efforts in conserving the jaguar (Panthera onca) in the Amazon basin.
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