Rhett Ayers Butler
Today is Wildlife Conservation Day Nature documentaries and conservation campaigns paint an image of Earth teeming with wildlife, but the numbers tell a different story. A February 2023 study, published in PNAS, quantified the biomass of the worldâs mammals and revealed an ecosystem heavily dominated by humanity and its livestock. A few striking figures from […]
Today is International Jaguar Day đ International Jaguar Day is dedicated to a predator whose presence shapes forests, rivers, and plains from northern Mexico to Argentina. The jaguar, Panthera onca, is a creature of paradox: elusive yet emblematic, ferocious yet vulnerable. As the Americasâ largest big cat, its muscular frame and distinctive rosette-patterned coat symbolize […]
In the twilight of their lives, the worldâs oldest creatures carry the weight of wisdom, experience, and resilience. Yet, these eldersâfish that spawn in abundance, coral that shelters marine life, or elephants that guide their herdsâare vanishing. The causes are disturbingly familiar: overfishing, habitat destruction, trophy hunting, and climate change. A new review led by […]
The slender-billed curlew, Numenius tenuirostris, slipped from the world in the way of rare things: gradually, quietly, and irretrievably. Once it coursed over the steppes of Siberia and wintered along Mediterranean shores, its migratory path a delicate thread connecting continents. Its last confirmed sighting, in Morocco in 1995, marked the end of a lineage and […]
Birdsong has long captivated scientists and poets alike, but the evolutionary and ecological forces that shape its dazzling diversity remain incompletely understood. A recent study led by H S Sathya Chandra Sagar sheds light on these mysteries, leveraging a dataset of over 140,000 recordings from 8,450 speciesânearly 80% of the world’s avian diversity. The findings, […]
I prepare obituary sketches for high-profile conservation figures and species-on-the-brink in advance, to be held until theyâre needed to be developed into full obituaries. The following is one I hope to never publish, though as of today, fewer than ten vaquitasâgentle porpoises no larger than a childâare believed to remain in the wild. đŹđŹđŹđŹđŹđŹ The […]
Today is World Lemur Day Lemurs, Madagascarâs iconic residents, encompass over 100 species. Exclusively endemic to the island (one species was introduced to a neighboring island), these fascinating creatures have evolved into one of the most diverse primate groups on the planet. To celebrate World Lemur Day, here are five lesser-known facts about these remarkable […]
With United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 16) starting today in Cali, I thought a fitting way to mark Reptile Appreciation Day would be to highlight the blue anole (https://mongabay.cc/4Ycrmm), endemic to the island of Gorgona, located off the Pacific coast of Colombia, not far from Cali. Gorgona, long noted for its biodiversity, hosts this vibrant […]
Today is International Sloth Day đŠ„ Sloths, as a group, might be said to epitomize the concept of taking life slowly. The six species, found mainly in Central and South America, spend most of their days hanging from trees, moving deliberately to conserve energyâa strategy shaped by a diet of nutrient-poor leaves. Yet, contrary to […]
Once formidable predators in the worldâs coastal and estuarine waters, sawfishâmembers of the ray family with their distinctive, toothed “saws”ânow find themselves on the verge of vanishing. On International Sawfish Day, it is worth highlighting a creature whose form is as memorable as its fate is precarious. Sawfish, which can grow up to 7.6 meters […]
Yesterday the latest Living Planet Index (LPI) report was released by WWF and Zoological Society of London (ZSL). It paints a sobering picture: wildlife populations have plummeted by an average of 73% over the past half-century. Based on nearly 35,000 monitored population trends spanning 5,495 species, LPI documents a collapse in biodiversity that extends across […]
On World Octopus Day đ, it seems fitting to reflect on a creature whose intelligence is as intriguing as its ability to blend into its surroundings. The octopus, a soft-bodied mollusc with eight limbs, has long mesmerized audiences ranging from scientists and storytellers. With over 300 species scattered across the oceansâfrom shallow coral reefs to […]
Today is World Gorilla Day The lush forests of equatorial Africa, once a riot of life teeming with an unimaginable richness of plants and creatures, are yielding to a more ordered worldâtrees and crops planted in straight lines, forest sounds replaced by the hum of chainsaws and motorbikes, the rich, earthy scent of understory vegetation […]
Today is International Rhino Day We share the planet with five rhino species: the white and black rhinos of Africa, and the Sumatran, Javan, and Indian (Greater One-Horned) rhinos of Asia. While the Indian and southern white rhinos have seen significant recoveries, most rhinos remain critically endangered, teetering on the edge of extinction. The Northern […]
Today is World Manta Day. In conservation, economic valuation is increasingly recognized as a potent tool to incentivize species protection. Manta rays exemplify how their worth, alive, far surpasses the value placed on their body parts in global fisheries. Both the reef manta (Manta alfredi) and the giant manta (Manta birostris) face significant threats, particularly […]
Today is International Vulture Awareness Day. That makes it a fitting moment to recognize the crucial role these birds of prey play in our world. Vultures, long maligned as harbingers of death, are emerging as unsung heroes in the field of public health. In India, their precipitous decline in the 1990sâcaused by the veterinary use […]
The amphibian apocalypse, it seems, has been momentarily postponed. Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans, or Bsal, a fungal pathogen that has wreaked havoc on amphibian populations globally, remains conspicuously absent from North America. For a decade, scientists from the North American Bsal Task Force have combed forests and swabbed salamanders, searching for any trace of the pathogen. Their […]
Today is International Whale Shark Day. In a world that often exalts the loud, the fast, and the fierce, there exists a creature that quietly defies convention. The whale shark, the largest fish in the ocean, glides through warm seas with an elegance that belies its immense size. Despite their bulkâreaching up to 40 feet […]
In the shadow of the Andes, a quiet revolution is unfolding, reports James Hall for Mongabay News. The Queuña forests, once covering vast stretches of the mountains, have dwindled to a mere fraction of their former glory, leaving behind a landscape where biodiversity and water security hang in the balance. This ecological collapse has triggered […]
I’m sorry. I’m sorry for letting you down, for letting the world down, and for letting a creature that once roamed the earth for millions of years slip away. The Sumatran rhino, with its thick coat of bristling hair and mournful song, is no longer a living testament to our planet’s wild past. Instead, it […]
On this World Orangutan Day, it’s worth pausing to reflect on the profound connection between these creatures and the ecosystems they inhabit. Orangutans, our distant relatives who share 97% of their DNA with us, inhabit a world vastly different from ours, yet one that mirrors important aspects of our own. In the dense, rain-soaked forests […]