Rewilding the World

Trade these two predator/prey cards together: Yesterday’s Ethiopian Wolf and Today’s Endangered All-Star, the Big-Headed Mole Rat. Evolving together in the high-alpine meadows of Ethiopia’s Bale Mountains, wolf and rodent serve each others’ purposes, with the Mole Rat providing the preferred meal of the wolf and keeping the rolling grasslands  Read More 

Today’s Endangered All-Star is the Ethiopian Wolf, the world’s most threatened canid, with scattered populations totaling around 550 animals left on earth. The species has fallen victim to habitat fragmentation, with remaining wolves left on mountaintops, surrounded by lands converted to agriculture. Conservationists recently organized an urgent vaccination program to protect the population  Read More 

Today’s Endangered All-Star, the Camouflage Grouper, celebrates the mimics and disguise-artists of the natural world. Coveted by Hong Kong chefs and threatened by the degradation of tropical coral reefs worldwide, the Grouper needs better management: strengthening of a sales ban already in place and better enforcement to prevent overfishing. For more, see the  Read More 

one green planet: The Maldives - A Floating Country in the Making I recently blogged about New Moore Island which was a part of the first generation of islands to have disappeared under water due to rising sea levels. Being uninhabited, the loss of land did not affect any lives, at least not human.  Read More 

Mascot of the Olympics and the most endangered species in Canada is the Vancouver Island Marmot. Recently reduced to a population of 25 by extensive logging and destruction of habitat, this evolutionary wonder, which became a distinct species while cut off by glaciation from the rest of North America, is springing back with the help  Read More 

Together, yesterday’s and Today’s Endangered All-Stars represent a matched set: a native tree and the moth that feeds on and pollinates it. Blackburn’s Sphinx Moth, the largest native insect in the Hawaiian islands, was thought to be extinct by the 1970s until a population was found on Maui. Subsequently, the moth  Read More 

There are only 150 of these tiny subcontinental pigs left in the world, so Today’s Endangered All-Star, the Pygmy Hog, could really use your help. Found only in the Indian state of Assam, in Manas National Park, this diminutive porker has lost ground due to destruction of habitat for tea plantations and other forms  Read More 

Kaiser’s Spotted Newt, also called Luristan’s Newt, is Today’s Endangered All-Star, highlighting the terrible toll taken on wildlife by the international pet trade. The species is limited to four streams in one mountain range, and its tiny fragmented populations in the Zagros Mountains of Iran have been whittled away by eighty  Read More 

Controversy has erupted over the planned reintroduction of the White-Tailed Sea Eagle, Today’s Endangered All-Star, to the Suffolk region, on the coast northeast of London. The Guardian reports that the plan, launched by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, initially met with approval from most residents, but when free-range chicken and  Read More 

The Small-Flowered Nothocestrum, today’s Endangered All-Star, has been termed the homeliest of all Hawai’i’s spectacular plants. Noted botanist Joseph Rock called them, “the most ugly trees which the Hawaiian Islands possess.” But the tree bears a tiny, intensely sweet, jasmine-scented flower that sends its fragrance far afield, tempting travelers and an  Read More