Rewilding the World

Think kangaroos can’t hack it in the trees? Sure they can, with specially-adapted fur whorls to shed water, long claws for clinging, and an extra-long tail for balance. As long as no one cuts the trees down. Unfortunately for today’s Endangered All-Star, the Huon Tree Kangaroo (or Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo) is  Read More 

That was the cheery greeting in my Inbox this morning, along with an invite by the International Rhino Foundation to give $5 to help deserving pachyderms. (I did, and it feels great!) Today we come to the close of Rhino Week and the last of our critically-Endangered All-Stars, the Javan Rhino. Built like a tank ( Read More 

Sad news for Rhino-lovers: Ratu, a pregnant Sumatran Rhino in the care of Indonesia’s Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary suffered a miscarriage in April, crushing the hopes of conservationists. Once found throughout southeast Asia, today’s Endangered All-Star is now limited to six pockets on Borneo, Sumatra, and peninsular Malaysia. With only 200 left in the  Read More 

Reading the fund raising appeals of the top conservation organizations, you’d think that they had never cracked the problem of poaching. But both academic studies and painful experience pinpoint the solutions: Hire experienced park rangers, lots of them. Give them the training and resources (vehicles, weapons, radios, funding for undercover work and tips)  Read More 

With White Rhino populations recovering over the past decade, some conservationists felt that at least this one species might be out of the woods. But tragically, rhino poaching has ramped up again, affecting all species, including the White Rhino, today’s Endangered All-Star. Last year, in South Africa, considered a stronghold for both Black  Read More 

So says Mark Tercek, president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy—and former head of Goldman Sachs’ Center for Environmental Markets—in his comment on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill on Cool Green Science, TNC’s blog. Tercek outlines the TNC’s response, which includes the mobilization of its “shellfish restoration team.” What  Read More 

And who better to start with than the Black Rhino, today’s Critically Endangered All-Star? With poaching at a 15-year high in 2009, the Black Rhino needs committed conservation more than ever. CITES trained attention on the issue, and countries pledged better law-enforcement efforts. But promises are cheap. So far this year, the news has  Read More 

The Spoon-Billed Sandpiper, today’s Endangered All-Star, is an incredibly unique and gorgeous little shorebird, breeding in the Russian Far East, along the Kamchatka Peninsula, and wintering in Southeast Asia. This bird returns to the same nest faithfully each year, but its very existence has been threatened by degradation of habitat, pollution, and development,  Read More 

“A creature even mightier than the crocodile,” Pliny called the hippo, and right he was. But he was talking about the massive and always impressive full-sized hippo. Today’s Endangered All-Star is an altogether daintier and sadly more endangered animal. Perhaps 3,000 survive in the wild, their forests increasingly logged and converted to agriculture. The  Read More 

The Franciscan Manzanita, long thought to be extinct in the wild, has also been called “the ivory-billed woodpecker of the plant world” and “the blessed one.” The story of its rediscovery, by a conservation biologist who spotted the survivor while driving past it at 50mph, just prior to highway construction work that would have  Read More