Dan Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs
By the late 1970s and early 1980s, rapid deforestation across Central America had made clear that a purely academic documentation effort could soon become a catalog of extinctions. When Janzen and Hallwachs turned their attention to Santa Rosa National Park in Costa Rica, they realized that small, isolated fragments of tropical dry forest would not […]
Trump rollback of U.S. forest protections could accelerate extinction of 400 endangered species
According to a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity, the rollback of the Bill Clinton-era “roadless rule” could put 7.4m acres of endangered-species habitat and nearly 1,800 miles of protected rivers and streams at risk, while opening more than 45m acres of national forests to roads, drilling and logging.
How one American couple ditched their lawn and created a wildlife haven—and you could, too
Novice gardeners James Reed McGuire and Crystal Fritz wanted to try something new when they moved out to the suburbs. Little did they know they were joining a nationwide movement. They designed layouts for their garden that would allow them to enjoy blooms for as much of the growing season as possible. Every year, they […]
Billions of sea stars have died. A Northwest tribe is helping to save the species.
Sunflower sea stars are critically endangered in the Pacific Ocean. University of Washington researchers are working with the Samish Indian Nation to bring this 24-armed creature back from the brink of extinction. Sunflower stars are one of the Pacific Ocean’s most endangered sea creatures.
‘Fearless and quietly astonishing’: the dragonfly that migrates further than any other insect
Whenever we see a dragonfly zipping through the airspace and devouring tiny insects with aplomb, we can appreciate they are so timelessly effective that they have barely needed to tweak their way of life in 200m years. Odonates are directly descended from some of the earliest winged insects, known as griffin flies, which evolved around […]
A vegan diet may begin changing gene activity in just 4 weeks
In a randomized clinical trial, researchers found that healthy adults who followed a vegan diet for one month developed changes in chemical markers attached to their DNA. Compared with participants eating a meat-rich diet, the vegan group showed patterns associated with reduced inflammation, altered metabolism, and slower biological aging.
‘Panda of the insect world’: the moscardón bumblebee creates buzz for invertebrate of the year
There are about 250 species of bumblebee and Bombus dahlbomii is the largest. The gloriously furry females can measure 4cm in length. These unusually heavy-bodied bumbles, weighing up to 1.5g, are found flying in the temperate forest-clad mountains of Patagonia, in Argentina and Chile.
It looked like a horse and acted like one, but this horse was different
The evolution of the horse is often presented as a simple, straight-line journey. In this familiar tale, Eohippus stands at the base of the family tree, followed by progressively larger species until the story reaches today’s horses (Equus)—the largest horses ever to exist. But the real story is far more complicated.
The world’s rarest Great Ape is worse off than we thought
When scientists identified the Tapanuli orangutan as its own species in 2017, it immediately became the world’s rarest great ape. A survey suggested there were fewer than 800 remaining. The animals had already been pushed into a forbidding mountainous territory about the size of Los Angeles in northern Sumatra, and were hemmed in by human […]
It was as heavy as 10 elephants, as long as a jumbo jet—and even T. rex wouldn’t have dared attack it…
Patagotitan is likely the biggest dinosaur to have ever lived. Millions of years ago, Earth was ruled by giants. Pterosaurs with 12m wingspans darkened the skies, dragonflies the size of widescreen televisions buzzed among the undergrowth and sauropods the length of a jumbo jet browsed the treetops.
U.S. declines to protect endangered monkeys used in medical research
Long-tailed macaques, monkeys native to Southeast Asia, have been listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List since 2022 after their populations declined by at least 50% over 30 years. Yet, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has twice now declined to consider protecting the species under the domestic Endangered Species Act. The most […]
The Great Lakes’ most emblematic fish could be consigned to history books
From the basement of the Sandusky library, page 29 of the book Sandusky of To-Day proclaims the town to be the “largest fresh water fish market in the world.” Two pages later, an image of the lake whitefish, referred to as “Sandusky’s pride,” takes up the entire page.
