The Conservation Corner with the Watering Hole
Florida’s manatees are having a rough year — 761 of them died in just one lagoon in the first 5 months of 2021. That’s 10% of the state’s population. The sunshine state’s iconic West Indian manatees have been starving to death because their main food source, seagrass, is unable to grow in the some of […] More
Human activities have threatened jaguars for decades, drastically reducing their original habitat across every continent where the animals appear. But in one region of South America, human intervention may actually be helping to save the largest jaguar on the planet. Stretching through Brazil and parts of Paraguay and Bolivia, the Pantanal region is considered the […] More
Years after a massive earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan’s Tōhoku region, we’re still seeing the effects, even here in the United States. Debris displaced by the storm have been washing up on U.S. shores, bringing on board a host of Japanese sea creatures. Nearly 300 species of invertebrates and fish have been turning up on […] More
One of the most breathtaking and incredible migrations on the planet is made by a creature you might not expect: the monarch butterfly. It is a sight to behold. Unable to survive the cold winters of North America, millions of these incredible butterflies travel 50-100 miles a day to reach the forests of central Mexico at […] More
Until recently, things had been looking pretty dire for the Sehuencas water frog. The species, officially known as Telmatobius yuracare, hadn’t been spotted in the wild for more than a decade, and scientists feared the frogs had been completely wiped out from the Bolivian cloud forests they once called home. Only Romeo, a single male that had […] More
This unusual, armadillo-like creature is the most trafficked animal on the planet — even more than rhinos and elephants — and now South Africans are trying to save it. Two conservation organizations recently announced plans to build a “pangalorium,” a pangolin refuge in Johannesburg that will help care for African pangolins seized by customs officers until […] More
Sudan, the last male northern white rhino — and perhaps the most famous rhino in the world — died on Monday, leaving his subspecies one step closer to extinction. He was 45 years old and had been suffering from age-related health issues and infections that left him unable to stand, causing his keepers to make the […] More
If you’ve ever seen a piece of coral someone’s brought back as a souvenir from an island vacation, you know what coral looks like when it dies. The process through which coral turns completely white is called bleaching, and it’s the first step toward the death of a reef. Essentially, the coral gets stressed — […] More
A rare Malaysian moth species that was previously known only from a 130-year-old specimen has been rediscovered by Polish researchers. The Oriental blue clearwing (Heterosphecia tawonoides) doesn’t look much like most moths. It mimics a bee, in both appearance and behavior, to avoid predators. The clearwing has elongated scales on its legs that look like […] More
Snow leopards are no longer officially an endangered species — but that doesn’t mean the cat is out of the woods yet. Scientists at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains a “red list” of endangered species around the globe, recently reclassified the leopard species as “vulnerable,” because there are actually more snow […] More
Elephants and humans have long lived side by side in Southeast Asia, but as the human population continues to grow in the region, conflicts between man and animal are increasing. The problem has perhaps never been clearer than in this photo showing a female elephant and her calf fleeing desperately after being set on fire […] More
This sea of garbage floating off the coast of an island in Honduras is just the latest visual example of how plastic is polluting the world’s oceans. Caroline Power, an underwater photographer and conservationist who lives on the Honduran island of Roatan, posted shocking images of the floating trash pile on Facebook. Stretching across miles […] More
