Efforts to protect many of the world's largest and most endangered wild relatives of cats and dogs recently moved a step closer to victory with a congressional hearing on the "Great Cats and Rare Canids" bill.
Ancient DNA harvested from pigs has allowed scientists, for the first time, to accurately determine the arrival of early farmers into Europe 11,000 years ago during the latter part of the Stone Age.
Starving snakes employ novel survival strategies not seen before in vertebrates, according to research conducted by a University of Arkansas biologist. These findings could be used in conservation strategies to determine the health of snake populations.
The Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society in cooperation with the United States Agency for International Development, the U.S. Embassy (Kabul), the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently provided training to the U.S. military in Afghanistan to help reduce illegal trade that threatens one of this nation's most precious natural resources"”its unique wildlife.
Whales, dolphins and porpoises in UK and adjacent waters are being adversely affected by various human generated activities. The precise significance of virtually all of these is poorly known and this situation is made even worse because we also know little of the distributions and habitat needs of these animals.
A University of Adelaide-led project will study the genetic makeup of one of Australia's most iconic animals, the echidna, to give an unprecedented insight into their sex life and behaviour.
For the first time, Cornell researchers have linked a specific aspect of the environment to the evolution of cooperative breeding in numerous bird species: unpredictable rainfall. Their findings on African starlings appear in the Aug. 21 issue of Current Biology.
Asian elephants don't carry photo identification, so scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and India's Nature Conservation Foundation are providing the service free of charge by creating a photographic archive of individual elephants, which can help save them as well.
Global warming is impacting more than the water levls in the Great Lakes. It could be the beginning of the end for the moose and wolves of Isle Royale. And if it is, a Michigan Technological University scientist places the blame squarely on the human race.
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are often hailed as a way to halt serious declines in the abundance of marine species that have been over-fished. But even as nations begin to set aside protected parcels of ocean for marine reserves, the effectiveness of the approach as a fisheries management tool remains unclear. Simon Thorrold, a fish ecologist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), would like to put MPAs to the test with a novel technique for tagging fish.
The Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society announced today that the government of Argentina will create a new marine park along its isolated and windswept Patagonia coast to safeguard more than half a million penguins and other rare seabirds.
A symposium on the biology of the Northern Flying Squirrel was held at the 86th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists. The northern flying squirrel is an arboreal species that relies on several attributes of older forests, which makes it an ideal model organism for studying impacts of broad-scale habitat loss and alteration from deforestation and natural disturbances.
An expedition led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to a remote corner of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has uncovered unique forests which, so far, have been found to contain six animal species new to science: a bat, a rodent, two shrews, and two frogs.
University of Washington scientists plan to attach satellite tracking devices to the backs of six penguins then trace their movements using satellites and the Internet.
Researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society have succeeded in placing satellite collars on wild parrots for the first time ever, allowing the scientists to track the birds across the wild landscape of Guatemala with earth-orbiting spacecraft.
A 400 million-year-old fossil of a coelacanth fin, the first finding of its kind, fills a shrinking evolutionary gap between fins and limbs. University of Chicago scientists describe the finding in a paper highlighted on the cover of the July/August 2007 issue of Evolution & Development.
To those in the conservation movement, Archie Carr was one of the great heroes of the 20th century. A pioneering biologist, ecologist and nature writer, he launched an international campaign to protect various species of migratory sea turtles all over the world. In so doing, Carr, who died in 1987, created the template for many successful environmental campaigns that followed.
A little-known species of deer called a large-antlered muntjac has been photographed for the first time in the wild, according to a survey team from the Nam Theun 2 Watershed Management and Protection Authority (WMPA) and the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) derived from fossil fuels are found throughout the world's waters. In particular, estuaries, the primary natal habitat for many marine species, are sinks for these compounds.
Honeybee queens tend to be promiscuous to produce genetically diverse colonies, report two Cornell researchers in the July 20 issue of Science. Such colonies are far more productive and hardy than genetically uniform colonies produced by monogamous queens, they report.
The rare El Segundo blue butterfly is back. Once relegated to a few small and fragile reserves, the nearly extinct butterfly with electric blue wings has expanded its territory to take up residence along the bluffs of a popular beach south of the Los Angeles International Airport, says University of Southern California research assistant professor Travis Longcore.
Fishing industry lines accidentally catch so many seabirds and turtles that their populations are being threatened. One solution offered by a Cornell researcher and an Australian government scientist is to assess fines when threatened species are caught and killed.
A team of researchers from the University of Alberta in Edmonton and the University of Quebec at Rimouski have gathered DNA evidence from adult foxes and their offspring that proves that some arctic foxes are mixing it up when it comes to mating.
Killer whales hold the gloomy record of being the most-polluted European arctic mammal, says a new study published in the latest issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. Levels of contaminants measured in whales near Norway were among the highest ever measured in marine mammals, exceeding levels found in harbor seals, polar bears, and white whales.
Current rules aimed at minimizing the number of nonnative species that hitchhike into the Great Lakes on oceangoing ships are inadequate and often impractical, a University of Michigan researcher and colleagues from five other U.S. and Canadian institutions have concluded.
A new University of Maryland study reports that high powered sonar, like that used by U.S. Navy ships, did not harm test fish, including their hearing, in a controlled setting.
With the surge of global tourism comes the possibility of exposure to rabies. A new review of the current rabies considerations for travelers is published in the latest issue of Wilderness Medicine.
Caring but careless boaters are the greatest threat to Florida's manatees, according to a new University of Florida study that caught more than half of boat drivers speeding through conservation zones despite their professed support for the endangered animals.
Cornell's Carl D. Hopkins and a former undergraduate student have discovered that African electric fish couples not only use specific electrical signals to court but also engage in a sort of dueling 'electric duet.'
Argentavis maginicens glided over Andes Mountains more than 6 million years ago.
While the shiny material of pearls and abalone shells has long been prized for its iridescence and aesthetic value in jewelry and decorations, scientists admire mother-of-pearl for other physical properties as well.
A University of Adelaide project led by zoologist Dr Jeremy Austin is investigating whether the world-fabled Tasmanian Tiger may have survived beyond its reported extinction in the late 1930s.
Two heretofore undiscovered penguin species - one of which was over 5 feet tall -reached equatorial regions tens of millions of years earlier than expected and during a period when the earth was much warmer than it is now.
Are Asian elk hard-wired to fear the Siberian tigers who stalk them? When wolves disappear from the forest, are moose still afraid of them? No, according to a study by Wildlife Conservation Society scientist Dr. Joel Berger, who says that several large prey species, including moose, caribou and elk, only fear predators they regularly encounter.
Joseph Kunkel, professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has received a two-year, $200,000 grant from the New England Lobster Research Initiative to study shell disease in lobsters.
New research from the University of Alberta and the Canadian Forest Service has revealed the humble rove beetle may actually have a lot to tell us about the effects of harvesting on forests species. Rove beetles can be used as indicators of clear-cut harvesting and regeneration practices and can be used as an example as to how species react to harvesting.
Aerial surveys by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society confirm the existence of more than 1.2 million white-eared kob, tiang antelope and Mongalla gazelle in Southern Sudan, where wildlife was thought to have vanished as a result of decades-long conflict.
A new finding by an undergraduate scientist and a senior bee researcher gives new insight on the weird, leaderless organization of honeybee colonies, which exhibit behavior rivaling human cultures in social complexity. The finding may help researchers understand similar complex phenomena, including brain function and terrorist networks.
Eleven years ago, a special issue from Chelonian Conservation and Biology focused on leatherback turtles changed the tide in a positive direction for species recovery. This year's special focus issue details the latest in research and efforts to restore the leatherback population across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Japan and Iceland have once again failed in their attempts to lift regulations protecting whales, as their proposals to the regulatory body responsible for international trade in endangered species were today resoundingly defeated
A team of researchers from Arizona State University, Purdue University and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences has discovered evidence that honeybees have adopted a phylogenetically old molecular cascade "“ TOR (target of rapamycin), linked to nutrient and energy sensing "“ and put it to use in caste development.
Penguins have been spotted periodically in the wild in the Northern Hemisphere during the last 50 years. Two biologists now conclude they probably got so far from home aboard fishing boats, not by swimming.
In the wake of the U.S. government's watershed decision to propose listing the polar bear as "Threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is launching a bold initiative to save the Earth's largest terrestrial predator, not by following the bears themselves, but the receding sea ice habitat that may drastically shrink as a result of global warming.
Mule deer are giving new meaning to watching out for other mothers' kids. An intriguing study of mule deer and whitetail deer conducted by the University of Alberta and the University of Lethbridge showed that both species responded to the recorded distress calls of fawns, but unlike whitetail deer, the mule deer mothers responded to both whitetail and mule deer calls, even when their own fawn stood next to them.
More than 70 countries are gathered to decide the fate of the world's great whales when the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meets between 28th and 31st of May in Anchorage, Alaska.
On behalf of its territory Greenland, the Danish government has submitted a proposal to the 59th International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting for a renewal of Greenland's Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling (ASW) quota.
A lethal fish virus in the Great Lakes and neighboring waterways is approaching epidemic proportions, according to Paul Bowser, Cornell professor of aquatic animal medicine in the College of Veterinary Medicine. The viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV), which causes anemia and hemorrhaging in fish, has now been identified in 19 species and poses a potential threat to New York's $1.2 billion sport-fishing industry.
Parasites, pathogens and pesticides are all possible suspects in the staggering decline of honeybees, said Cornell associate professor of entomology Nicholas Calderone, during a media teleconference May 10.
Coral reef fish hatchlings dispersed by ocean currents are able to make their way back to their home reefs again to spawn, says a groundbreaking study published today in the journal Science. The study, whose findings are considered a major advance for fish conservation biology, was conducted by an international team of scientists from Australia, France, and the U.S.
The fate of ocean fish larvae has remained a mystery to science until now, but a University of Arkansas researcher and his colleagues have used a novel technique to directly explore their journey from egg to adult for the first time. Their findings, which also may help governments and marine organizations better manage marine protected areas, appear in the May 4 issue of the journal Science.
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