May 27, 2023 -From majestic mammals to awe-inspiring marine life and delicate winged wonders, these extraordinary beings face the brink of extinction.

Their survival hangs in the balance, calling us to act and become their guardians. Join us on a journey to explore the world of these endangered species, raise awareness, ignite compassion, and inspire change.

May 25, 2023 - The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s authorization of the killing of up to 72 grizzly bears on public land just outside of Yellowstone National Park violated federal law.

Meant to accommodate private grazing operations in grizzly habitat, the 2019 grazing authorization would have allowed an unlimited percentage of females to be killed in response to livestock conflict, despite the significance of breeding bears to the species’ recovery. But now the court has remanded the decision to the agencies to fix the legal deficiencies.

May 24, 2023 -Off the coast of southeastern China, one particular fish species is booming: the oddly named Bombay duck, a long, slim fish with a distinctive, gaping jaw and a texture like jelly. When research ships trawl the seafloor off that coast, they now catch upwards of 440 pounds of the gelatinous fish per hour—a more than tenfold increase over a decade ago. “It’s monstrous,” says University of British Columbia fisheries researcher Daniel Pauly of the explosion in numbers.

The reason for this mass invasion, says Pauly, is extremely low oxygen levels in these polluted waters. Fish species that can’t cope with less oxygen have fled, while the Bombay duck, part of a small subset of species that is physiologically better able to deal with less oxygen, has moved in.

May 9, 2023 - Ecuador announced a record-setting deal on Tuesday designed to reduce its debt burden and free up hundreds of millions of dollars to fund marine conservation around the Galápagos Islands, an archipelago of unique biodiversity that’s famous for inspiring Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The arrangement, known as a debt-for-nature deal, is a bit like refinancing a mortgage, only for government bonds.

May 4, 2023 -Snails don’t travel long distances quickly, but five thousand hand-painted snails whooshed over 9,300 miles in an airplane to reach the tropical islands of Moorea and Tahiti. They weren’t going on vacation. They were on a mission: to bring balance to the ecosystem.

May 2, 2023 -The first time Jessica Pate swam beside a manta ray off Florida’s southern coast, the 8-foot-wide fish flipped belly-up and slowed to watch her. “I was kind of obsessed after that,” Pate says. The marine biologist was so hooked that she founded the conservation nonprofit Florida Manta Project and has dedicated the last seven years to studying mantas and their kin.

Her work is paying off. She and her colleagues have since discovered the first known manta nursery in Florida’s waters.

May 1, 2023 -Climate change, land-use intensification for agriculture and building development, and the spread of invasive species are working together to bring down insect numbers around the world, a team of international researchers concluded. This means detrimental consequences for ecosystems but it can still be addressed by fast and ambitious action, the team said.

Apr. 27, 2023 - A team of scientists led by a researcher from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) has discovered that over the past three centuries, the Asian elephant’s natural habitat has shrunk by a staggering 3 million square kilometers.

Click now for the details.

Apr. 26, 2023 - While the loss of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest gets a lot of attention, a nearby ecosystem is disappearing even faster: the vast grasslands that cover much of central Brazil.

Known as the Cerrado, the savanna is home to endangered species including the giant anteater and the maned wolf. It is also coveted by agribusiness as prime land for growing soybeans and grazing cattle. Each year, roughly 10,000 square kilometers of savanna is lost—an area almost the size of Connecticut. That’s means it’s vanishing 2.5 times faster than the Amazon’s forests.

Apr. 24, 2023 -A federal judge today halted logging and road construction for the large Knotty Pine timber sale project in the Kootenai National Forest. The project threatens a small, imperiled population of grizzly bears near the Montana-Canada border.

Today’s order prohibits the U.S. Forest Service from any ground-disturbing activities, previously set to begin next month, until the court can issue a final ruling on the merits of the case.

Apr. 21, 2023 -The Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission voted today to advance a petition seeking to protect Southern Resident orcas under the state Endangered Species Act.

The petition was brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and Whale and Dolphin Conservation.

Apr. 19, 2023 -Since early 2022, sea urchins have been mysteriously dying off across the Caribbean. Now scientists say they have identified the main culprit: a type of relatively large, single-celled marine microorganism called a scuticociliate.

Apr. 19, 2023 -When a species is pushed to the brink of extinction, it’s nearly impossible to bring it back. Consider the Southern Resident killer whales of the Pacific Northwest.

Some scientists hope to help avoid the last-gasp desperation that often accompanies such crises by creating a sort of early warning system alerting policymakers to species that are most likely to be in peril decades from now.

Bu Mark Cocker, Apr. 17, 2023 -The UK has lost 40m birds since 1970 and Europe as a whole has lost 600m birds since 1980. The British figures, especially for farmland species such as skylark and lapwing, have long been the worst of any country in the region. The North American continent, meanwhile, but especially the US, has seen avian populations fall by almost a third since 1970, losing a cumulative 3bn birds.

Apr. 10, 2023 -“Saguaros aren’t regenerating and establishing populations in the wild anymore in the last 24 years,” Aya Pickett, a restoration project manager with the Tucson Audubon Society, told the group of volunteers before they set off to plant cactuses. “They really require specific weather conditions. A really good monsoon season. One really good winter. And then another really good monsoon season after that.”

Because of changing weather patterns due to climate change, she said, that hasn’t happened for over two decades.

Apr. 9, 2023 -In the early 1970s, things looked grim for India’s tigers. A wild population estimated in the tens of thousands at the time of independence in 1947 had shrunk to around 1,800. The tigers’ decline also held worrying implications for the nation’s environment because the apex predator is part of a complex but fragile ecosystem. Something had to be done.

As India celebrated the 50th anniversary of an intensive conservation effort known as Project Tiger, there was success to report: The tiger population had nearly doubled in the decades since, to 3,167.

Apr. 7, 2023 - There are roughly 18,000 species of birds in the world, many of which are at risk of extinction. A University of Washington study nearly doubles the previous estimates of the number of aves. Critically endangered listings include approximately 12% of the endangered population. This listing is the worst classification before “extinct in the wild.” Let’s take a look at 12 endangered birds most at risk of extinction.

Click now for the full story.

Mar. 27, 2023, (stamford advocate) -An environmental group filed a lawsuit Monday accusing the U.S. government of failing to protect 12 endangered coral species across the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean that have been decimated by warming waters, pollution and overfishing.

The Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity said it filed the lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service more than two years after the agency proposed to protect more than 6,000 square miles worth of coral habitat but never did so.

Mar. 27, 2023 -As scientists and the Chinese government ramp up efforts to protect the critically endangered Hainan gibbon, technology is playing an important part in helping track and monitor the species better.

Click now for the rest of the story.

Mar. 27, 2023 -It’s a familiar, dreaded scenario in many parts of Africa and Asia: An elephant shows up, wanders into farmers’ fields, and tramples and eats crops. Sometimes farmers fight back, and elephants are killed.

That series of events seemed likely to play out recently when a forest elephant bull emerged from the dense jungle surrounding Gbarnjala village in northwestern Liberia.

Mar. 27, 2023 -Most species of manta and devil rays (genus Mobula) are endangered, yet industrial purse seine fishing vessels unintentionally catch about 13,000 each year while hunting tuna, according to one scientific estimate.

New regulations, handling techniques and equipment aim to reduce this number.

Mar. 18, 2023 -A fungus that gruesomely kills frogs and other amphibians is responsible for the biggest decline in wildlife in recorded history. In the past 50 years since the first outbreaks were signaled by biologists, the disease, known as chytridiomycosis, has been linked to massive declines in populations (over 90%) and extinctions of hundreds of amphibian species.

Mar. 15, 2023 -“This is a clear win for endangered humpback whales, who face enough deadly threats in the water already,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Fishing gear and lines in migrating humpbacks’ habitat mean more entanglements, and the Fisheries Service shouldn’t have ignored those risks. These majestic animals deserve to live without lethal obstacles in their way. This victory will help them recover.”

Mar. 15, 2023 -One of the last wild rivers in Europe, home to more than 1,000 animal and plant species, has been declared a national park by the Albanian government, making the Vjosa the first of its kind on the continent.

The Vjosa River flows 168 miles (270kms) from the Pindus mountains in Greece through narrow canyons, plains and forests in Albania to the Adriatic coast. Free from dams or other artificial barriers, it is rich in aquatic species and supports myriad wildlife, including otters, the endangered Egyptian vulture and the critically endangered Balkan lynx, of which only 15 are estimated to remain in Albania.

Mar. 15, 2023 -Sunflower sea stars, huge starfish that until recently thrived in waters up and down the west coast of North America, are threatened with extinction and should be protected under the Endangered Species Act, federal officials said Wednesday.

Mar. 10, 2023 -The BBC has decided not to broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the rightwing press, the Guardian has been told.

The decision has angered the programmer-makers and some insiders at the BBC, who fear the corporation has bowed to pressure from lobbying groups with “dinosaurian ways”.

Mar. 1, 2023 -Ecologists and conservationists trying to restore long-damaged habitats or revive nearly-extinct species are challenged to piece together accurate pictures of the natural world from decades or centuries ago. A flawed understanding of how natural systems once worked can stymie recovery.

Scientists in Washington state, for instance, turned to 150-year-old survey records from early colonists to get a better picture of what the region’s river habitat once looked like. The hope was that it could better guide how millions of dollars are spent to recover flagging salmon runs.

Mar. 7, 2023 -The climate and biodiversity crises are deeply linked, and scientists say they must be addressed together.The people behind Climate Forward looked at why some states can’t protect insects.

That lack of authority is a problem for at least two reasons: First, many insect species show alarming declines. Second, the rest of terrestrial life on this planet, including humans, relies on insects. Creatures like bees, butterflies and beetles pollinate plants, enrich soil and provide a critical source of protein for other species up the food chain.

Mar. 4, 2023, (Sarasota Herald-Tribune) -Seagrass acreage in Sarasota Bay dropped by 26% from 2016 to 2022, according to the head of the bay’s estuary preservation program.

This new information comes from aerial maps the Southwest Florida Water Management District made of the bay’s seagrass meadows.

The Sarasota Bay Estuary Program is able to learn about the health of the bay by tracking these plants. When water quality is poor, seagrasses die. Manatees, which rely on that vegetation for food, will then starve.

Mar. 4, 2023 -After two decades of planning and talks that culminated in a grueling race over the past few days in New York, a significant majority of nations agreed on language for a historic UN treaty that would protect ocean biodiversity.

As marine life faces threats from climate change, overfishing, the possibility of seabed mining and other dangers, the treaty would make it possible to create marine-protected areas and enact other conservation measures on the “high seas,” the immense expanse of ocean covering almost half the world.

Feb. 28, 2023 -First a North Atlantic right whale, a critically endangered species, washed ashore in Virginia. Then a humpback floated onto a beach in New Jersey. Not long afterward, a minke whale, swept in on the morning tide, landed on the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City.

In all, 23 dead whales have washed ashore along the East Coast since early December, including 12 in New Jersey and New York, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Feb. 22, 2023 -The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that it will protect the California spotted owl under the Endangered Species Act. The owls have seen their numbers dwindle because of logging and climate change, among other threats.

Today’s proposal would list the owl’s southern/coastal population as endangered. The Sierra Nevada population would receive threatened status, but a 4d loophole would exempt many logging operations from having to comply with the Act’s rules.

Feb. 22, 2023 -Toothy predators are celebrities of the animal kingdom. Whether it’s wolves in Montana, snow leopards in Central Asia, grizzlies in Alaska or lions in Africa, we are drawn to their displays of power, even when it comes with a tingle of fear. There’s a reason why that Disney blockbuster isn’t called “The Zebra King.”

That helps to explain why the release of such animals back into their native habitat is often accompanied by headlines and predictions that such animals will be ecological saviors or menaces. But after the animals have been set free, there is another question: Did it work?

Feb. 16, 2023 -Taryn Foster believes Australia’s dying coral reefs can still be rescued—if she can speed up efforts to save them. For years, biologists like her have been lending a hand to reefs struggling with rising temperatures and ocean acidity: They’ve collected coral fragments and cut them into pieces to propagate and grow them in nurseries on land; they’ve crossbred species to build in heat-resistance; they’ve experimented with probiotics as a defense against deadly diseases.

But even transplanting thousands of these healthy and upgraded corals onto damaged reefs will not be enough to save entire ecosystems, Foster says. “We need some way of deploying corals at scale.” Sounds like a job for some robots.

Feb. 9, 2023 -A fully grown male orca is one of the planet’s fiercest hunters. He’s a wily, streamlined torpedo who can weigh as much as 11 tons. No other animal preys on him. Yet in at least one population, these apex predators struggle to survive without their moms, who catch their food and even cut it up for them.

Feb. 7, 2023 -The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice today of its intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for delaying critically needed Endangered Species Act protection for 15 imperiled plants and animals. The species range from cactus ferruginous pygmy owls in the Sonoran Desert to tall western penstemons in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

“Every day that protection is delayed, these species are at a greater risk of extinction,” said Camila Cossío, a staff attorney at the Center. “These species highlight the range of biodiversity imperiled by the extinction crisis, from a tiny chipmunk in New Mexico to six Texas freshwater mussels who are vital to the health of central Texas rivers.”

DAILY KOS, Feb. 7, 2023 -Using 50 years of data it has collected from its network of 1,000 scientists, NatureServe scrutinized only the United States. Researchers for Biodiversity in Focus: United States Edition concluded that 40% of U.S. animals and 34% of plants are at risk of extinction. On top of this, 41% of ecosystems are collapsing from “habitat degradation and land conversion, invasive species, damming and polluting of rivers, and climate change.”

Feb. 6, 2023 -Last May biologists from the Yurok Tribe and Redwood National and State Parks released four captive-bred California condors into the wild. They were the first condors to soar above the towering coast redwood trees in Northern California in more than a century. The reintroduction effort had been years in the making.

Feb. 3, 2023 -It’s not often that scientists discover a new species of mammal, let alone one that reaches 40 feet in length, weighs up to 30 tons, and frequents the waters off a heavily populated area.

But that’s what happened in 2021 when scientists announced a new species: Rice’s whale, formerly thought to be a subspecies of Bryde’s whale.

Feb. 3, 2023 -A Eurasian eagle-owl named Flaco was the subject of an intense rescue effort late Friday after getting loose as a result of vandals having damaged his Central Park Zoo enclosure the night before, parks and zoo officials said.

Feb. 3, 2023 -The Biden administration is taking a step toward lifting federal protections for grizzly bears in the northern Rocky Mountains, which could open the door to hunting in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho in the future, wildlife officials said.”

The Amboseli Trust for Elephants aims to ensure the long-term conservation and welfare of Africa’s elephants in the context of human needs and pressures through scientific research, training, community outreach, public awareness and advocacy.

An international Animal Conservation Charity in Conjunction with Howletts and Port Lympne Wild Animal Parks.

Mission: to halt extinction of rare and endangered species and return them to the wild where possible.

It's the longest-running and most successful conservation project dedicated to cheetah survival.

Their signature programs, addressing human-wildlife conflict, livelihood development, education and habitat restoration, have stabilized the wild cheetah population of Namibia – the world’s largest — and have helped launch sister programs in several other cheetah range countries. None of this would not be possible without you.

Joel Sartore has traveled the world for more than 25 years, photographing subjects from tiny to terrifying.

These images are not to be missed.

Born from one family’s passion for Kenya and its wilderness, the Trust is today the most successful orphan-elephant rescue and rehabilitation program in the world and one of the pioneering conservation organizations for wildlife and habitat protection in East Africa.

The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International is dedicated to the conservation, protection and study of gorillas and their habitats in Africa. Our successful, integrated approach includes close collaboration with local governments and communities as well as partners from around the world

Explore 15,000 of the world’s endangered species. With over 100,000 photos and videos, discover what these animals, plants and fungi look like, what makes them special and why we should protect them.

The EDGE of Existence program is the only global conservation initiative to focus specifically on threatened species that represent a significant amount of unique evolutionary history.

See article upon article covering threats to the endangered natural world.

Set up to address fish & wildlife, hunting and game mamagement, fisheries, law enforcement, habitat ans species conservation and more.

We're counting on the commitment of our members to help our fight to uphold the Endangered Species Act and defend the wild plants, animals and places we all love.

The Endangered Species Act has an unmatched record of success and has put hundreds of species on the path to recovery, but countless plants and animals are still clinging to existence. Their futures depend on the Center for Biological Diversity and the strength of the Endangered Species Act, and we depend on you.

World of the Wild is a unique game that gives users an opportunity to participate in fun gameplay while contributing to real life wildlife conservation efforts. This app gamifies the concept of saving animals and allows you to rescue, rehabilitate and care for animals and habitats within your own carefully crafted world. Each animal in the app represents a real-life charity!

Partnered with 18 charities, World of the Wild offers unique facts and pop quizzes and will allow users to rescue animals in need! The game will empower the global community and transform online culture while restoring the natural world. It's a change to the status quo; utilising online activism to achieve tangible results in conservation.

The (NWPR) is a 22,000 square foot office and warehouse located northeast of Denver, Colorado at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. The facility is responsible for receiving wildlife items that have been forfeited or abandoned to the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service.

By law, these items are stored in a secure environment, many of which are donated to educational facilities, nonprofit organizations, and conservation agencies to aid in teaching about endangered species and other wildlife.

Learn about the earth's species and how they are endangered.

Planet Earth teems with life. And now you can meet some of its stars!

Established in 1964, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global extinction risk status of animal, fungus and plant species.

Humans are generating climate-altering greenhouse gases at a rate that will forever alter our world’s ecosystem...

There Statement: “It’s very simple: We cannot condone the dilution of the role of science in protecting endangered and threatened wildlife,” said WCS President and CEO Cristián Samper.