Rewilding the World

SAVE THEM ALL: If only the Common Seahorse were actually common! In fact, this All-Star is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, coveted by practitioners of Chinese medicine, aquarium enthusiasts, and tourists who buy them as souvenirs. In 2001, an estimated 24 million seahorses were removed from the sea, an unsustainable take. Since 2004, the  Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: The red apes of Borneo and Sumatra have been having some horrible seasons lately, and populations on both islands have fallen from 50-80% in recent years, victims of habitat loss, poaching, and the pet trade. So here’s a shout-out to our friends who are working to keep them in the  Read More 

A distressing report from the Hells Canyon Preservation Council blog provides an update on this deadly season in Idaho and Montana: 140 wolves killed, out of a total estimated population of 1,350 wolves. This is a new assault on a population that already faces a high mortality rate from a host of other natural and human-caused  Read More 

Batter Up: The Jaguar is today’s Endangered All-Star, thanks to the US Fish & Wildlife Service’s latest failure to respond to a court-ordered decision on establishing a critical habitat and recovery plan for the species. Listed as “Near Threatened” on the IUCN’s Red List, the jaguar is certainly endangered in the American  Read More 

“The Little Things That Run the World”—That’s how E. O. Wilson once referred to invertebrates, the objects of his affection and study. These creatures play a disproportionately powerful role in the affairs of the planet: In 1987, Wilson surmised that there were 42,580 species of vertebrates described by humankind—including a paltry 4000 mammals—versus 990,000  Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: While rafting on the Karnali River in Nepal, I was thrilled to come across this Gharial crocodile basking on a sandbank. Shy, retiring, and critically endangered, it is less mobile on land than the Nile crocodile of Africa and the saltwater crocs of Australia, and it is harmless to humans, its  Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: This is the Year of the Tiger, in the Chinese zodiac and in conservation. This Endangered All Star is waiting on us to make a commitment but cannot wait any longer: Perhaps as few as 1500 survive in the wild. The World Bank and the Global Environment Facility have launched a global  Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: Today’s Endangered All-Star deserves a break from the sushi scene: The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Wildlife Fund, and a host of conservation organizations agree that there should be an immediate trade ban on bluefin tuna. This critically endangered ocean carnivore is so overfished that populations have  Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: The Sonoran Desert Tortoise makes today’s Endangered All-Stars thanks to a campaign by WildEarth Guardians and the Western Watersheds Project to add the reptile to the Endangered Species List. The groups petitioned the government for ESA status in June, 2009, asserting that the species has lost 51% of its numbers in Arizona  Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: Topping our Endangered Species All-Stars list in the plant realm is the Wollemi pine. Long thought extinct, the Wollemi pine—not a true pine but a member of the Araucariaceae family, related to the Monkey Puzzle and Norfolk Island pines—was rediscovered by keen-eyed parks officer David Noble in 1994 in a  Read More