Vet examines spider monkey
Animal Care Wildlife Conservation Wildlife Rehabilitation

From Puppies to Primates: A Veterinarian’s Path to Saving Wildlife

By Ben Lybarger Back in 2018, I shared a dorm room in Bolivia with a veterinary surgeon from Italy, and at times also a baby macaw or squirrel monkey that he would wake up every couple of hours to feed. His name was Cristian Tirapelle, and we were both working with Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi (CIWY) at […]

Conservation Spotlight Wildlife Conservation Wildlife Rehabilitation

We train Colombian woolly monkeys to be wild again – and maybe save them from extinction

Woolly monkeys are hard to miss in Colombia’s jungles. Now, they face extinction. Top Photo Credit: Mónica Ramírez Authors: Mónica Alejandra Ramírez, Universidad de los Andes ; Manuel Lequerica Tamara, University of Sydney, and Pablo Stevenson, Universidad de los Andes Colombia’s Andes Mountains used to be loaded with wildlife, including South America’s sole bear species, […]

Anthropology Indigenous Communities Legal Personhood

What if nature, like corporations, had the rights and protections of a person?

Top photo: The forest around Lake Waikaremoana in New Zealand has been given legal status of a person because of its cultural significance. Paul Nelhams/flickr, CC BY-SA Author: Chip Colwell, University of Colorado Denver In recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court has solidified the concept of corporate personhood. Following rulings in such cases as Hobby […]

Biodiversity Land Conservation Wildlife Conservation

Scientists urge world leaders to scale up ambitions to protect global biodiversity

Research has shown that a sixth mass extinction event is underway and largely driven by human activities. With the global population set to balloon to 10 billion people by 2050, which will more than double the current demand for food and water, scientists are increasingly calling for mankind to set aside sufficient amounts of ecosystems […]

Conservation Biology Obituary Wildlife Conservation

The Voice of Jaguars: Remembering Alan Rabinowitz

Top photo: Alan Rabinowitz, PopTech 2010 by Kris Krüg (CC BY-SA 2.0) By Ben Lybarger Last month Alan Rabinowitz – zoologist, conservationist, and co-founder of Panthera – passed away at the age of 64. When he was just a painfully awkward child locked inside himself by a debilitating stutter, he’d often visit the big cats at the Bronx Zoo. […]

Avian Conservation Biodiversity Species Loss

8 species of birds have possibly gone extinct over past few decades

Top photo: A Spix’s Macaw. Image © Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation. Author: Shreya Dasgupta  A new study has found that eight species of birds are likely to have completely disappeared in the past couple of decades. Researchers recommend that three species currently listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List be reclassified as extinct, while one […]

Agriculture Food Production Land Conservation

How to conserve half the planet without going hungry

Top photo: Terraced rice fields in northwest Vietnam. (Shutterstock) Authors: Zia Mehrabi, University of British Columbia; Erle C. Ellis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Navin Ramankutty, University of British Columbia Every day there are roughly 386,000 new mouths to feed, and in that same 24 hours, scientists estimate between one and 100 species will […]

Global Trade Poaching Wildlife Trafficking

The fight against poaching must shift to empowering communities

Top Photo: Siegfried Modola/Reuters Annette Hübschle, University of Cape Town Wildlife crimes – like rhino poaching, overfishing or the harvesting of cycads – were once considered a “green” matter. But this has changed. Such crimes have moved higher up on global security and policy agendas. This is partly linked to concerns about the extinction of […]

Climate Change Deforestation Environment Human Rights Indigenous Communities

Indigenous forests could be a key to averting climate catastrophe

By Sue Branford and Maurício Torres This article originally appeared on Mongabay.com, 6 November 2017 (Republished under under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND).   A new study finds the world’s tropical forests may no longer be carbon sinks, with a net loss of 425 million tons of carbon from 2003 to 2014. Also, 1.1 billion metric tons of carbon is […]