Biodiversity

Nepal has a lofty goal: The country wants to have at least 250 Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) within its borders by the year 2022. They've already made pretty amazing progress, growing the population from 121 in 2009 to 198 in 2013.

By analyzing “environmental DNA,” scientists are homing in on marine life in unprecedented detail

It's not easy to get a glimpse of the critically endangered Saharan cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus hecki), the rarest of the six cheetah subspecies.

This 2007 photograph of a fire ant brandishing her stinger is among the most heavily circulated images from my collection. Since several people have asked how I managed to coax the animal into such a dramatic pose, I bring you the following recipe.

To a human, two billion years is an unfathomable interval. But that, a team of European, Gabonese, and American scientists now say, is how long ago a recently discovered hoard of fossils suggests Earth’s first big life evolved — large enough to see with the naked eye, and in a spectrum of forms that tease [...]

Some time in the late 1940s, a very patient, elderly beaver called Geronimo was put in a box, flown to an altitude of between 150 and 200 metres, and tossed out the side of an aeroplane.

Last summer, researchers demonstrated that non-invasive imaging combined with a staining technique enables the fast comparison and study of earthworm species and other animals in unprecedented detail.

South Africa has finally finished compiling its report on the number of rhinos poached in the country last year and, as expected, the news is terrible.

Five years go an impressive, international group of scientists unveiled nine biological and environmental "boundaries" that humankind should not cross in order to keep the earth a livable place.

North America's smallest and rarest wolves will finally have the full protection of the Endangered Species Act. Well, almost. Mexican gray wolves (Canis lupus baileyi) nearly went extinct 40 years ago.

“Why is it that an animal that is actively trying to kill us, such as a lion, gets more respect than one that is only trying to nibble on us a little, without causing much harm?” -Piotr Naskrecki Biologist Piotr Naskrecki, who traveled with me to Belize last year, returned home to find himself incubating [...]

Editor's Note: "Along the Tiger's Trail" is a  series about the efforts to monitor tigers and their prey in the Malenad landscape in southwestern India that harbors one of the world's largest population of wild tigers.