Turn off taps on poachers: Financial crimes linked to illegal wildlife, timber trade in EU going unpunished, flags report

Criminal assets remaining in the hands of poachers, giving them the liberty to invest in more illicit operations

Link as old as time

Considered an enigma today, cheetah is an integral part of Indian history, notes wildlife expert Divyabhanusinh in The Story of India’s …

Shrinking lion numbers in Africa: 40% geographic populations have 50 or fewer big cats

Somalian and Malawian lion populations most fragile; Paper points to need for including socio-political aspects along with ecology for lion …

Half of Africa’s white rhino population is in private hands — It’s time for a new conservation approach

Additional revenue streams are needed to incentivise private and community rhino custodians

‘Vermin, serious threat to children’s lives’: Kerala state child rights body moves SC for culling stray dogs

Also asks for strict action against those abandoning animals; 6,276 attacks reported in state this year

Why did primates evolve such big brains? First study of its kind says it wasn’t for finding food

Perhaps it has to do with memory

Adopt ‘traditional knowledge’ indicators for monitoring global biodiversity framework: Amnesty International

Existing indicators overlook Indigenous rights, fail to recognise these communuities’ essential role in conserving biodiversity

Seagrass meadows are rapidly expanding near inhabited islands in Maldives — here’s why

Seagrass is surprisingly three times more likely to be found next to inhabited islands, rather than uninhabited

Simply Put: En route to Vantara

Nearly 180,000 of Africa’s great apes face threats due to mining: Study

About 20% of mining areas intersect with critical habitats

Frans de Waal showed non-human species are more complex than they are given credit for: Anindya Sinha

Down To Earth spoke to Sinha, one of India’s leading primate experts, about the legacy of the Dutch-American primatologist, who passed …

Conducive climate, beach this year: In February, large number of Olive Ridley turtles expected to lay eggs in Rushikulya

Low coastal erosion this time due to lack of floods may add to favourable climatic conditions for nesting, say experts

Bird species in northeastern India shifting to higher elevations, face threat of extinction

Researchers say certain bird species shifting to degraded forest systems for climate change adaptation may go extinct  

Tigers in the Terai’s sugarcane fields are developing into an ecotype of their own: Rahul Shukla

Down To Earth speaks to conservationist who has documented and written about tigers growing up and surviving in the Terai landscape of northern India

Snow Leopard: Enigmatic big cat of High Asia now National Symbol of Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyz president Sadyr Zhaparov signed decree on December 30, asking his Cabinet to safeguard the species and promote it  

Blame Stamford Raffles: How the British ended the Malayan tiger’s reign over Singapore

Island has lost 37% of its biodiversity in the 200 years since it was first colonised, says new study; this includes the Malayan tiger  

Birders’ network finds rare pelagic birds on Karnataka’s coast

Birders also found that the density of pelagic birds had come down from 2022, pointing to declining fish stocks near the coast

India lost 204 tigers in 2023, most of them in Maharashtra: WPSI

India’s tiger population increased by 200 from 2018 to 2022, according to new figures released this year

Book Excerpt: When Assam seemed unwilling to share its rhinos

Arupjyoti Saikia relates the circumstances surrounding the translocation of rhinos from Kaziranga to Dudhwa in the early 1980s in his new book

Free-ranging domestic cats threat to conservation, eat 2,084 species globally & pushing some to extinction: Study

Almost half of the species were birds, followed by reptiles and mammals  

Miracle on the Steppe: The Saiga has beaten extinction for now, finds new IUCN Red List

Only 6% of the population was left in 2003, a decade after the break-up of the Soviet Union

Mountain chicken frog vanishes from Dominica

This species is facing imminent extinction in the wild, yet it was in a healthy state only a couple of decades ago. Its fate sends us a very …

Two of five amphibians threatened with extinction; climate change emerging as primary driver: Study

Habitat loss, diseases and climate change are majorly deteriorating the status of vertebrates

Simply Put: World Lion Day 2023

Uttarakhand, land of the Rudrapayag maneater, will see more human-leopard conflict in future, warns report

Training of forest staff, timely compensations and awareness among local communities can help alleviate the problem, says report released by …