A diseased and emaciated Tasmanian devil ( Sarcophilus harrisii ) was found last week on a golf course in the town of Zeehan on Tasmania's west coast.
Santa Cruz County in California could soon become the first county in the U.S. to ban the import, sale and possession of American bullfrogs ( Rana catesbeiana ).
Decades after polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)—once commonly used in pesticides, electrical transformers and coolants—were banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the toxic chemicals continue to linger in our country's soil and water...
"In my 24 years in the zoo business, this is one of the most exciting periods I've been through so far," says Jeff Ettling, curator of herpetology and aquatics at the Saint Louis Zoo.He's talking about the birth of 185 baby Ozark hellbender salamanders ( Cryptobranchus alleganiensis bishopi ) at the zoo's Ron Goellner Center for Hellbender Conservation, which has a dozen or so additional eggs ready to hatch...
The world's final 23 Hainan black-crested gibbons ( Nomascus hainanus ) are making what may be their last stand in China, where their jungle habitat is being wiped out at a rate of 200,000 square meters a day, according to a new report from Greenpeace International...
The Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson and the Center for Snake Conservation in Louisville, Colo., have put up a $500 reward for evidence that the South Florida rainbow snake ( Farancia erytrogramma seminola ) is not extinct, as the U.S...
Is the northern hairy-nosed wombat (Lasiorhinus krefftii ) the most interesting endangered species in the world? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't—but it has definitely attracted the attention of the Dos Equis beer commercial spokesperson known only as "the Most Interesting Man in the World."The television advertising icon and Dos Equis have launched an auction for a jar of what they call The Most Interesting Jam—a concoction made from ingredients suggested by Facebook fans and supposedly hand-mixed by the Most Interesting Man in the World himself—with all proceeds going to benefit the Wombat Foundation, an organization set up to protect the critically endangered northern hairy-nosed wombat...
More than 100 years after it was last seen, the giant Neptune's cup sponge ( Cliona patera ) has been rediscovered off the coast of southern Singapore.First discovered in 1822, the sponges grew so large—a meter or more in both height and diameter—that their cup-like structures were sometimes used as tubs for babies...
Just two weeks after the World Wildlife Fund declared the Vietnam Javan rhinoceros ( Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus ) extinct comes the announcement of another rhino extinction, this time the western black rhino ( Diceros bicornis longipes ) of Africa.The declaration came last week from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) as part of the latest update to its Red List of Threatened Species, which tracks the conservation status of endangered animals and plants around the world.The loss of the western black rhino was, sadly, expected...
What do you do when a species is rapidly disappearing in the wild and two of its most likely in-captivity studs decide to cuddle with each other instead of with eligible bachelorettes?T...
His name is Clay. He's a happy, creative 24-year-old male who prefers to live in solitude. Although most of the time he is peaceful, he has been known to become aggressive and violent in a manner that can terrify the people who love him.If Clay were human, he would probably have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)...
The U.K. Highways Agency plans to build a series of new "bat bridges" to help endangered bats fly across the busy A11 highway near Norfolk in eastern England without being killed by cars and trucks, but even though measures to protect bats from projects like this are required by law some politicians are balking at the cost.Five previous bat bridge projects built by the agency over the past few years carried a price tag of nearly $800,000...
The deadly fungal infection known as white-nose syndrome (WNS) has killed at least a million bats since it was first observed in 2006. In some areas more than 90 percent of the bats have been wiped out...
It's a fairly common practice to help certain endangered species in the wild by providing them with extra food or prey. But could these activities actually end up harming the very species conservationists are trying to help?Researchers from Spain's National Museum of Natural Sciences, the Doñana Biological Station and GIR Diagnostics asked that question in a recent study of the Spanish imperial eagle, also known as the Iberian imperial eagle or Adalbert's eagle ( Aquila adalberti )...
Sad news coming out of Vietnam today: the Javan rhinoceros subspecies ( Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus ), once endemic to Southeast Asia, has been confirmed as extinct, according to WWF International...
This week's release and death of more than 50 so-called "exotic" animals near Zanesville, Ohio, is a tragic reminder that the laws protecting wildlife in the U.S.
The unsustainable demand for the Chinese delicacy known as shark fin soup is directly responsible for the slaughter of more than 70 million sharks every year.
Are we looking at Asia's first pheasant extinction? The endangered Edwards's pheasant ( Lophura edwardsi ) has not been observed in the wild since 2000, and now surveys conducted by the World Pheasant Association (WPA) in the bird's two most likely habitats in Vietnam have failed to turn up any sign of the species.Edwards's pheasant was described as fairly common when it was first described and named by French ornithologist Alphonse Milne-Edwards in the 19th century...
In June 2010, an emaciated and disorientated female Amur tiger ( Panthera tigris altaica ) named Galia wandered into the Russian town of Terney seeking any prey she was still strong enough to kill...
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) this week granted the Ozark hellbender ( Cryptobranchus alleganiensis bishopi ) protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) but made the unusual decision not to declare critical habitat for the rare, giant salamanders because, it said, doing so could open it to threats from those who would illegally collect the species for the international pet trade.Ozark hellbenders are North America's largest amphibians, often topping off at 60 centimeters in length, and because of that size they are highly valued by collectors...
