By Barney Long, GWC director of species conservation In 2008, tigers were in trouble. Conservationists, who were giving up on the strategy of saving large areas of habitat where tigers could fulfill their ecological niche as top predators, were instead starting to consider a more protectionist strategy using only a handful of sites to slow…
By Kristin Arakawa It’s flightless. It’s nocturnal. It’s the world’s heaviest parrot. It’s possibly the world’s oldest living bird. It has a low-frequency mating ‘boom’ that can travel several kilometers. It has a sweet scent, similar to honey. This is how the New Zealand Department of Conservation describes the Kākāpō, a charismatic parrot species found…
By Drew T. Cronin, SMART Partnership Program Manager Big cats are some of the world’s most iconic and revered wildlife species, and the focus of this year’s World Wildlife Day on March 3. However, these species, from Jaguars in Latin America to tigers in far eastern Russia, face numerous threats, including habitat loss and degradation,…
By Don Church, Global Wildlife Conservation president Before we even had a chance to launch our first expedition this fall in Global Wildlife Conservation’s Search for Lost Species, we somehow amazingly struck gold in Guatemala. That gold was in the form of the brilliantly yellow-hued Jackson’s Climbing Salamander, a species missing to science since its…
By Brian Sheth Conservation has always been a major part of my life. Growing up I revered leaders like famous oceanographer Jacques Cousteau and conservationist Jane Goodall, and I dreamed of becoming a marine biologist one day. Some of my fondest memories are of exploring the forests of New England with my childhood friend, Wes…
Global Wildlife Conservation today embarks on the first phase of the Search for Lost Species, the largest-ever global quest to find and protect species that have not been seen in the wild in decades. The campaign will work with local partners to send scientific expeditions around the world to some of the most remote and…
After extensive camera trap surveys in key habitat failed to reveal a single fishing cat in Java, conservationists fear that the unique water-loving feline may be on the verge of extinction in Indonesia, if not already extirpated there. “If the fishing cat is gone from Indonesia, it is following the extinction of the Bali Tiger…
By Barney Long, Thomas Gray, Antony Lynam, Teak Seng, William Laurance, Lorraine Scotson, William Ripple Warning: The pictures in this story may be disturbing to some readers, especially young audiences. Reader discretion is advised. The diverse tropical forests of Southeast Asia are home to some of the most mysterious and beautiful wildlife species in the…
By Chris Jordan, GWC’s Nicaragua Programs Director (with editorial help from Gerald R. Urquhart, Assistant Professor at Michigan State University) November 24, 2016, is a day I will never forget. While many in the United States were sitting down to enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner, I was hunkered down with my forest patrol team in Nicaragua as…
One of the world’s most critical and irreplaceable areas for unique and threatened wildlife—in addition to the home to the last 200 – 300 members of the indigenous Batak tribe—has received the largest critical habitat designation in the Philippines. The newly declared Cleopatra’s Needle Critical Habitat, which protects more than 100,000 acres of forest on…
When amphibian conservation biologist Arturo Muñoz describes the 2015 die-offs of the Titicaca Water Frog (Telmatobius culeus) on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca, the details are grim: Dead frogs floating belly up in the shallow water as gulls pick them off for dinner. The smell of the sulfate pollution dredged up from the bottom…
Deep in the rainforests of Nicaragua’s beautiful Indio Maíz Biological Reserve, the indigenous Rama and afro-descendant Kriol people are resolutely fighting for their culture and traditions, which are increasingly threatened by the brazen destruction of the forest by land-grabbing cattle ranchers and land traffickers. The 2,639-square-kilometer [about 1,000 square miles] Indio Maíz Biological Reserve lies…
Dr. Andrew Short is a National Geographic Explorer and an assistant professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas. An entomologist by training, Short uses aquatic insects to study patterns of freshwater biodiversity in South America to inform both science and conservation. —- Today, an international team arrived in southern Guyana, near…
Dr. Andrew Short is a National Geographic Explorer and an assistant professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas. An entomologist by training, Short uses aquatic insects to study patterns of freshwater biodiversity in South America to inform both science and conservation. —- Today, an international team arrived in southern Guyana, near…