Endangered Species

Manatees, To Brighten Your Horizon

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Manatees are generally solitary creatures, but tend to gather at warm water sites in the winter.
Florida State Parks

After a Kolbert doomcloud, a bit of sunshine is needed. Here it is in the form of creatures so charismatic they make you see something other than darkness. Thanks to National Public Radio (USA):

A Florida park just saw a record number of manatees gather together in its waters

Legend has it that centuries ago, manatees used to be mistaken for mermaids, so a sight last week at one Florida state park would have put ancient sailors in shock.

Blue Spring State Park is home to one of the largest winter gathering sites for manatees in Florida, and recently, the park reached a new record when the number of manatees spotted in one group was nearly 1,000. Continue reading →

Cactus Conundrum

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Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker

Cactus is an infrequent topic in these pages, sometimes with attention to their beauty–and that leads to an environmental problem we had not been aware of:

Inside the Illegal Cactus Trade

As the craze for succulents continues, sometimes the smuggler and the conservationist are the same person.

The succulent Dudleya pachyphytum is known as the Cedros Island live-forever. It has also been called the panda bear of plants, on account of being so cute. It has sweet, chubby leaves, is pale, and is powdered as if with confectioner’s sugar, and its shape is most often that of a rose. D. pachyphytum grows slowly, as succulents generally do, and many specimens would fit in your coat pocket. Continue reading →

Dominica’s Whale Sanctuary

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Fewer than 500 sperm whales are estimated to live in the waters surrounding Dominica. Photograph: By Wildestanimal/Getty Images

This island is already known for sperm whales. Protecting their habitat strengthens Dominica’s reputation as the conservation leader in the region:

Dominica creates world’s first marine protected area for sperm whales

Nearly 300 sq miles of water on west of Caribbean island to be designated as a reserve for endangered animals

The tiny Caribbean island of Dominica is creating the world’s first marine protected area for one of Earth’s largest animals: the endangered sperm whale. Continue reading →

Endangered Eating By Sarah Lohman

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The author, culinary historian Sarah Lohman, came to our attention at the time her previous book was being published, and we are happy to see more of her work. From her own website:

American food traditions are in danger of being lost. How do we save them?

Apples, a common New England crop, have been called the United States’ “most endangered food.” The iconic Texas Longhorn Cattle is categorized at “critical” risk for extinction. Unique date palms, found nowhere else on the planet, grow in California’s Coachella Valley —but the family farms that caretake them are shutting down…

And the reviews suggest that the book is every bit as good as the author had hoped it would be.

Frogs, Western Ghats & Science

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Sathyabhama Das Biju (from left), James Hanken, Harvard’s Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology, and Sonali Garg during a June 2023 field trip to study amphibians in the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot in India. Photo by A.J. Joji

During our seven years living and working in the Western Ghats we came to appreciate frogs through the eyes of our family, those of our staff, as well as travelers and occasional scientific references (the man on the left in the photo to the left having shown up in our pages one of those times). Good to know that the science is being shared for good cause, thanks to Anne J. Manning in this article for the Harvard Gazette:

The Indian Purple Frog, first described by Sathyabhama Das Biju in 2003.

Who will fight for the frogs?

Indian herpetologists bring their life’s work to Harvard just as study shows a world increasingly hostile to the fate of amphibians

Having pulled themselves from the water 360 million years ago, amphibians are our ancient forebears, the first vertebrates to inhabit land.

After 136 years from its original description, Günther’s shrub frog was recently rediscovered in the wild. Credit: S.D. Biju and Sonali Garg

Now, this diverse group of animals faces existential threats from climate change, habitat destruction, and disease. Two Harvard-affiliated scientists from India are drawing on decades of study — and an enduring love for the natural world — to sound a call to action to protect amphibians, and in particular, frogs.

Sathyabhama Das Biju, the Hrdy Fellow at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and a professor at the University of Delhi, and his former student Sonali Garg, now a biodiversity postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, are co-authors of a sobering new study in Nature, featured on the journal’s print cover, that assesses the global status of amphibians. It is a follow-up to a 2004 study about amphibian declines.

Franky’s narrow-mouthed frog is among the threatened species. Credit: S.D. Biju and Sonali Garg

Biju and Garg are experts in frog biology who specialize in the discovery and description of new species. Through laborious fieldwork, they have documented more than 100 new frog species across India, Sri Lanka, and other parts of the subcontinent.

According to the Nature study, which evaluated more than 8,000 amphibian species worldwide, two out of every five amphibians are now threatened with extinction. Climate change is one of the main drivers. Continue reading →

Going The Extra Mile For Monarch Butterflies

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Ms. Elman collects butterfly eggs from milkweed plants growing wild along New York City’s highways. Karine Aigner

Some of the best stories are about people who go the extra mile for others:

To Save Monarch Butterflies, They Had to Silence the Lawn Mowers

An unlikely group of New Yorkers is winning small victories in the battle to protect butterfly habitats.

The small white dot under a milkweed plant is a monarch butterfly egg. Karine Aigner

The Long Island Expressway is not generally a place people linger, unless they’re stuck in traffic.

But during the summer, Robyn Elman can often be found walking alone near the highway’s shoulder, inspecting scraggly patches of overgrown milkweed. The plant is the only source of nutrition for monarch caterpillars before they transform into butterflies. Continue reading →

Stories from the Field: Spoon-billed Sandpiper

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In my previous post I’d written about birding with Clement Francis and how educational he was in so many ways – sparking my interest in birding, my abilities as a bird photographer, and not least, my understanding of the challenges that birds and other wildlife suffer in the face of climate change and human related habit destruction. The story of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper impacted me in a huge way.

This tiny bird travels between the Arctic Tundra and the South Asiatic regions. While they breed in the tundra, they migrate southwards during winters in a migratory route of 8000 kilometres. Just 200 pairs of this birds existed back then. Now due to human intervention and the implementation of captive breeding programmes, the population are reaching to a decent number.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)  has listed the Spoon-billed Sandpiper under the “critically endangered” species. During one of our trips Clement showed me the picture of the bird in its breeding plumage that was shot in Siberia. From that moment on my mind was set on seeing the bird. It may appear like an exaggeration, but the bird appeared in my dreams quite often and the desire to see it for myself grew stronger every day. At the time of our trip the bird was in migration to a small patch in the Sunderbans of Bangladesh,  but the numbers there were decreasing, and their path seemed to be shifting toward stopovers in Thailand instead. 

Continue reading →

Species-Specific Safe Spaces

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O’Keefe’s team designed bat boxes that offer a wide range of interior temperatures. Joy O’Keefe

We have pointed to stories about activism and entrepreneurship in the interest of protecting animal habitat plenty of times, but not so much on the science of the field work. As part of its Climate Desk collaboration Mother Jones shares this article originally published by Undark, written by Marta Zaraska, that addresses some of the science of species-specific safe spaces:

Inside Scientists’ Race to Create Safe Refuges for Animals

Climate crisis is destroying habitats. Can technology help create new ones?

Conservation ecologist Ox Lennon simulated stacks of rocks that would create crevices big enough for skinks, but too small for mice. Courtesy Ox Lennon

In 2016, Ox Lennon was trying to peek in the crevices inside a pile of rocks. They considered everything from injecting builders’ foam into the tiny spaces to create a mold to dumping a heap of stones into a CT scanner. Still, they couldn’t get the data they were after: how to stack rocks so that a mouse wouldn’t squeeze through, but a small lizard could hide safely inside. Continue reading →

More Cameras On The High Seas, Please

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A pair of humpback whales synchronized the release of bubbles to corral and consume sand eels.

This article by Ellie Duke, with photographs and video by Sutton Lynch, is a sort of bookend to another recent article. It makes one wish for more people skilled with cameras in the oceans, and fewer skilled in placing nets:

A school of bluefish forming a circle in shallow water.

The photographer Sutton Lynch is documenting a dramatic turning point off the coast of Long Island — a resurgence of sea life after decades of depletion.

Sutton Lynch rises most days before the sun, arriving at Atlantic Beach in Amagansett, N.Y., for the early-morning calm. It’s the same beach he’s been going to since he was a child, and where he worked as a lifeguard for years as a teenager. Now 23, he spends his mornings surveying the horizon. When he spots activity on the water’s surface, he sends out his drone. Continue reading →

Fireflies At Risk

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Fireflies in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. RADIM SCHREIBER

Fireflies being among the more charismatic insects, they and other glowing creatures have been covered in our pages second only to bees. Our thanks to Ted Williams, writing for Yale e360, for explaining their specific challenge:

A Summer Light Show Dims: Why Are Fireflies Disappearing?

Fireflies — whose shimmering, magical glows light up summer nights — are in trouble, threatened by habitat destruction, light pollution, and pesticide use. With 18 species now considered at risk of extinction in North America alone, recovery efforts are only just beginning.

For millions of people around the globe, fireflies have been a big part of the magic of spring and early summer nights. They certainly were in our family. When my children were young, our field in central Massachusetts blazed with fireflies. Continue reading →

Migratory Birds Across The Americas

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I rarely read comments from other readers on articles, but for some reason I did on this one; they are almost as interesting as the article itself:

For Migrating Birds, It’s the Flight of Their Lives

America’s birds are in trouble. Since 1970, nearly 3 billion birds have vanished from the skies over North America. Continue reading →

The Mind Of A Bee

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Bees’ brains are always of interest, and both the publisher below and the author above makes a good case for why this book matters:

Most of us are aware of the hive mind—the power of bees as an amazing collective. But do we know how uniquely intelligent bees are as individuals? In The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka draws from decades of research, including his own pioneering work, to argue that bees have remarkable cognitive abilities. He shows that they are profoundly smart, have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers and human faces, exhibit basic emotions, count, use simple tools, solve problems, and learn by observing others. They may even possess consciousness. Continue reading →

Huilo Huilo’s Hojarasca

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We first noticed this film contest three years ago, and have followed it since. The 3rd-place winner of this year’s film contest was made in the Huilo Huilo Biological Reserve, habitat of the endangered species pictured above. In 2009 I was in the middle of a two-year work engagement in southern Chile. During the middle of that year Amie, as well as Seth and Milo, were able to join me for a few months and we spent time in this reserve. I am happy to be reminded:

In a Chilean Forest Reserve, the Remarkable Darwin’s Frog Endures

Four emerging filmmakers from Latin America collaborated to film Darwin’s frog and the biologist who studies the endangered species in Chile’s Huilo Huilo Biological Reserve. “Hojarasca: The Hidden Hope” is the Third-Place Winner of the 2023 Yale Environment 360 Film Contest.

Worldwide, amphibians are going extinct — victims of habitat loss, climate change, pollution, and fungal diseases. Continue reading →

If Turtles Could Talk–A Short Documentary

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The film follows the perilous journey that sea turtles make to lay their eggs on their ancestral land on a beach in Kenya.

Above is a screenshot from the film by Juma Adero, with text by Natalie Meade, that will likely interest anyone who has been exposed to turtle conservation initiatives:

On a Tropical Beach, Conservationists and Poachers Collide

Juma Adero’s short documentary “If Turtles Could Talk” chronicles the effort to save endangered sea turtles near Mombasa, Kenya.

The shoreline where a green sea turtle hatches from her egg is often the same place she’ll return to nest for the first time. One such inlet is Jumba beach, which abuts the site of an old Swahili village near the bustling city of Mombasa, in southern Kenya. Continue reading →

California Bumble Bee Atlas

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Leif Richardson examines a queen bee. Grace Widyatmajda/NPR

Bumble bees need help and the California Bumble Bee Atlas Project is on it. Thanks to National Public Radio (USA) for bringing it to our attention:

Krystle Hickman, a bee photographer and volunteer for the Bumble Bee Atlas Project, carefully places a bee onto a flower.
Grace Widyatmadja/NPR

Nets, coolers and courage: A day in the life of a volunteer bee conservationist

I never realized how fuzzy a bumble bee is until I got to hold one between my fingertips. It feels like a furry black and yellow bear, buzzing with its tiny body, wriggling with its legs.

The conservation biologist Leif Richardson, who handed me this bee a moment ago, has some advice for holding it. “You’re going to squeeze harder than you think you need to, but not so hard that you hurt him.” Continue reading →

Tagging Large Land Animals

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The team secure a darted rhino with nylon rope, then take its temperature and use a pulsemeter to monitor its heart rate and blood oxygenation

We have previous links to articles on tagging animals, but few land animals this big:

How to tag a rhino? Use tech, tact … and plenty of caution – a photo essay

Fewer than 2,000 rhino remain in Kenya, and the country’s wildlife service needs to keep tabs on them to make sure they thrive. It’s a major undertaking, involving a helicopter, 4x4s and a lot of rangers

Here comes a chopper … a helicopter is used to dart the highly aggressive black rhino

Kenya has the world’s third largest rhinoceros population: a total of 1,890 including 966 black rhinos, 922 southern white and two northern white. But how to keep track of them and ensure the species are thriving? Every two or three years, Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) carries out an ear-notching exercise in all rhino sanctuaries in the country to ensure that at least 60% of the animals are uniquely identifiable. Continue reading →

Decline Of Mackerel Fisheries

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In the UK the Marine Conservation Society has issued this guideline on mackerel:

We’ve updated the environmental sustainability ratings on our Good Fish Guide in line with the latest scientific advice.

We reviewed 186 environmental ratings for seafood, with 20 seafood ratings moving to the ‘Fish to Avoid’ list and only 15 seafood ratings joining the green-rated, ‘Best Choice’ list with this season’s ratings update. Unfortunately, Northeast Atlantic mackerel has moved on to the amber list, having been on the charity’s green list since before 2011. Continue reading →

Op-Ed For Amphibians

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Photographs and video were taken by Bobby Altman at the Francis Marion National Forest, S.C., with assistance from Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, a national nonprofit.

Every now and then we link to a gem by Margaret Renkl, and these often calm the environmentally-rattled nerves, as is the case today:

Why Tiny Ponds and Singing Frogs Matter So Much

NASHVILLE — I wish you could hear what it sounds like to sleep near an ephemeral pond in early springtime on the Cumberland Plateau, especially on a rainy night. As darkness begins to fall, the small frogs called spring peepers begin to sing. At first their song is the sonic equivalent of the way popcorn pops: each peep a single sound, each sound buffered on either side by silence. Continue reading →

Leveraging Guarani Knowhow For Reforestation

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A Guarani man walks through a cleared patch of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest that the local Indigenous community is trying to reforest. DIEGO HERCULANO / NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

Thanks to Jill Langlois and Yale e360:

How Indigenous People Are Restoring Brazil’s Atlantic Forest

The Guarani Mbya people are working to restore the once-vast Atlantic Forest, which has been largely lost to development. Gaining official tenure of their lands, they hope, will boost their efforts, which range from planting native trees to reintroducing pollinators.

It was 2016 when Jurandir Jekupe noticed the bees were gone.

Their nests were once common in Yvy Porã, the Guarani Mbya village where Jekupe grew up and still lives. Continue reading →

Realities Of Rewilding

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Haweswater in the Lake District where the RSPB is running rewilding projects based around Naddle farm and the surrounding farmland. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

Rewilding has been a favorite topic in our pages for most of the last decade. We appreciate the nuances, described by Ben Martynoga, in this particular community’s efforts and challenges related to rewilding:

Staff and volunteers at Naddle farm, an ex-sheep barn which is now a tree nursery. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

‘The R-word can be alienating’: How Haweswater rewilding project aims to benefit all

On the Lake District’s north-eastern fringe, two farmsteads are restoring the landscape with a commitment to conservation and providing jobs

Until the last male golden eagle died in 2015, Haweswater, on the rugged north-eastern fringe of the Lake District, was England’s final refuge for the bird of prey. “Even now, whenever I go up Riggindale, it feels like something is missing,” says Spike Webb, a long-serving RSPB warden at its Haweswater site. Continue reading →