A decade ago, we set out to unravel deep ocean crime scenes we weren’t even sure existed. The crime? Endangered Steller sea lions were rapidly disappearing in parts of Alaska. Their numbers dropped by…
Slow, lazy, stupid? It’s time to update your impression of the crocodilians. These animals are up to amazing things that we’re only beginning to observe and recognize.
Australia’s north is home to many pristine rivers, but most national parks are focused on land-based conservation.
Carole Mackinney/Wikimedia Commons
R. Keller Kopf, Charles Sturt University; Nicole McCasker, Charles Sturt University et Paul Humphries, Charles Sturt University
Freshwater ecosystems such as rivers, lakes and wetlands are precious. They contain several-times more vertebrate species per unit area than land and ocean environments, and they are more degraded. Protected…
Marine parks need to be big enough to safeguard wide-ranging species, like the sharks being studied here.
Manu San Felix/National Geographic Pristine Seas Expedition
Top scientists, senior government managers, industry representatives, conservationists and even some nations’ presidents are currently in Sydney for the World Parks Congress. This major international meeting…
Kakadu National Park is Australia’s largest – but we need to make sure parks are actually protecting wildlife from threats.
Rita Willaert/Flickr
While we can never know for sure, an extraordinary number of animals and plants are threatened with extinction — up to a third of all mammals and over a tenth of all birds. And the problem is getting worse…
This pangolin was rescued in Thailand but most captive creatures aren’t so lucky.
EPA
Few people are familiar with the pangolin. It is a shy creature, about as big as a medium-sized dog, and its diet consists of ants and termites. Most distinctively, it has armoured plates and will curl…
What do Beyonce, Hitler, David Attenborough, Darth Vader and GoldenPalace.com all have in common? They all have species named after them. In the case of Beyonce it is an Australian horse fly whose striking…
The Tasmanian devil was once found beyond Tasmania.
Sarah Peck
Most people probably know the Tasmanian devil as the iconic animal from Australia’s island state of Tasmania. Fewer know that, up until a few thousand years ago, devils were widespread across mainland…
The quoll, one of the mammal species that calls Kakadu home.
Jonathan Webb/supplied
Kakadu National Park in Australia’s tropical north is one of the world’s premier conservation reserves. However, it is partly failing in one of its principal purposes. The past two to three decades have…
As the electric saw cuts into the base of the horn of the live rhino lying at my feet, I feel an uncomfortable guilt. The rhino shakes and judders and there is an unpleasant smell reminiscent of burning…
Zoos provide succor for species having a tough time of it in the wild.
B. A. Minteer
Today, many zoos promote the protection of biodiversity as a significant part of their mission. As conservation “arks” for endangered species and, increasingly, as leaders in field conservation projects…
Where the rainforest meets the plantation: there are probably a lot more insects.
Ryan Woo for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR)
Palm oil plantations have an overall negative impact on biodiversity, according to research released this week. The study, published in Nature Communications, found palm oil plantations are home to fewer…
It should be possible to enjoy your holiday and give the planet a break.
lazyllama/Shutterstock
Australians love to travel. About 9 million Australians travelled overseas last year, 60% of them on holiday. For most tourists, sustainable development and climate change were probably not high on their…
During a speech in Parliament on October 17 1996 — 18 years ago today — then Liberal MP Richard Evans called for the “total eradication of domestic and feral cats from the Australian mainland and offshore…
Indigenous rangers at the Fish River Station in the Northern Territory.
Indigenous Land Corporation
There are places in Australia that are awe-inspiring, spectacular, mysterious; they touch our spirit and help define our nation. Kakadu is one, Uluru another, the magnificent red sandy deserts, the Kimberley…
Australia’s Commonwealth marine parks were designed to protect marine life, including important foraging areas for sea birds.
In June 2012 the Labor government announced the “world’s largest” system of marine parks, adding 2.3 million square kilometres and taking the overall size of Australia’s Commonwealth marine reserves to…
Western Australia has killed two great white sharks after a surfer was seriously injured last week.
Sharkdiver.com/Wikimedia Commons
When I used to tell people that I did my PhD on the politics of shark attacks, they would ask, “Is there a politics to shark attacks?” Nobody asks that any more. Now they just say, “Oh, like in Western…
Feral cats are a triple threat to our wildlife through predation, competition and diseases such as toxoplasmosis.
Eddie Van 3000/Wikimedia Commons
Feral cats are a huge threat to our native wildlife, hunting and killing an estimated 75 million animals across Australia each and every night. But the killing spree doesn’t end there. There’s a parasite…
People are becoming more aware of the wold’s biodiversity, but the crisis continues.
Chris Ford/Flickr
James Whitmore, The Conversation et Nadia Wu, The Conversation
Globally, biodiversity is in trouble, and new research shows that the situation is unlikely to improve over the next five years. Researchers from around the world analysed global progress towards meeting…
Going, going, gone: wildlife like the loris are disappearing.
N. A. Naseer
Full marks to colleagues at the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London for the Living Planet Report 2014 and its headline message which one hopes ought to shock the world out of its complacency…