Ecosystems, species protection, forests and water.
56 articles
The climate crisis and biodiversity loss are two faces of one problem: in a warming world species shift, ecosystems lose their capacity to store carbon, and forest loss accelerates the warming in turn. This section covers forests and water, whether protected areas actually protect, long-term monitoring of species populations, and the law meant to hold it all together.
India's tiger population has rebounded to roughly 3,682 animals, but with a third now living outside protected reserves, a wave of attacks in Karnataka is testing how conservationists manage the spread into farmland.
1 min
Brazil is paving a 540-mile road through largely untouched rainforest, and scientists warn it could unlock a wave of deforestation far beyond the road itself.
1 min
Whale populations have recovered since commercial whaling ended, but an increasingly efficient krill fishing fleet is competing for the same food source.
1 min
The African dwarf crocodile has gone three decades without a conservation reassessment even as bushmeat markets increasingly target it.
1 min
Gray whale numbers have halved in a decade as a warming Arctic starves them of food, and they still lack Endangered Species Act protection.
1 min
El Nino-driven fires have burned tens of thousands of hectares in Indonesian Borneo this year, forcing rescuers to save orangutans suffering smoke exposure as their forest habitat disappears.
1 min
Fewer than 30 giant ground pangolins remain in Kenya, and most of the recent deaths have come from electrocution on farm fences, not trafficking, pushing Maasai communities to start deactivating the fences' lower wires.
1 min
Biologists riding along on Panama's industrial fishing boats are training crews to release sharks and rays caught as bycatch, as lawmakers debate a bill to protect the country's declining shark populations.
1 min
Researchers have counted around 20 Ganges river dolphins living in Bangladesh's Buriganga River, one of the most polluted waterways on Earth, raising questions about how the species is persisting there.
1 min
Fishing nations meeting in Lisbon agreed to a long-term harvest strategy for Pacific bluefin tuna, which has rebounded from near-collapse, but failed to reach a deal covering three other major tuna species.
1 min
A formalized mining operation in Peru's Madre de Dios region is testing mercury-free, solar-powered gold extraction, but sustaining it will require government support the miners say they don't have.
1 min
Scientists have formally described a new mouse species in Sri Lanka's Knuckles Mountain Range, more than two decades after burnt coconut bait first lured it into a trap.
1 min