Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Nayar river is vanishing - a yatra reveals conservation goes beyond science and policy" appearing in ‘The Down To Earth’ dated 03.06.2025. The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Nayar …
Reptiles being sold openly and illegally in Moroccan markets Several species of lizards, snakes, tortoise and crocodiles are being traded openly in Moroccan markets for use in traditional medicine. Much of the trade is illegal, researchers say. Since this trade is largely unregulated, scientists are yet to understand the effects …
“Mindless urbanisation” leading to a loss of the birds’ natural habitats, says Mohammed Dilawar. The house sparrow that was declared the ‘State Bird of Delhi’ in 2012 is edging towards extinction due to the lack of an emotional connect, says conservationist Mohammed Dilawar. Mr. Dilawar, who started the practice of …
Climate change continues to hit faunal biodiversity, leading to glaring changes in habitat and hastening up the generally long drawn process of extinction of species. Dr George Schaller, a pioneer in the field of biology conservation, while talking to The Tribune today, said climate change was affecting the wildlife and …
A group of rare ibis once thought extinct in China has been spotted in the southwestern province of Yunnan. Ten glossy ibis were photographed in the Dianchi Lake wetlands in the provincial capital of Kunming last month and they have remained there for over two weeks. Zoologists believed they had …
A rare frog that had not been seen in decades has been found in Zimbabwe, researchers have said. The Arthroleptis troglodytes, also known as the “cave squeaker” because of its preferred habitat, was discovered in 1962, but there were no reported sightings since then. An international red list of threatened …
In our recent perspective article, we noted that most (approximately 60 percent) terrestrial large carnivore and large herbivore species are now threatened with extinction, and we offered a 13-point declaration designed to promote and guide actions to save these iconic mammalian megafauna (Ripple et al. 2016). Some may worry that …
Functional trait diversity is increasingly used to model future changes in community structure despite a poor understanding of community disassembly's effects on functional diversity. By tracking the functional diversity of the North American large mammal fauna through the End-Pleistocene megafaunal extinction and up to the present, I show that contrary …
Islands are ideal systems to model temporal changes in biodiversity and reveal the influence of humans on natural communities. Although theory predicts biodiversity on islands tends towards an equilibrium value, the recent extinction of large proportions of island biotas complicates testing this model. The well-preserved subfossil record of Caribbean bats—involving …
He's over 100 years old, but his sex life is the stuff of legend. Diego the Tortoise is quite the ladies' man, and his exploits have helped save his species from extinction. Diego, a Galapagos giant tortoise, has fathered an estimated 800 offspring, almost single-handedly rebuilding the species' population on …
According to a new research loss of megaherbivores such as elephants and hippos could allow woody plants, non-grassy herbs and flowering plants to encroach the grasslands in African national parks. The study used isotopes in hippopotamus teeth to find a shift in the diet of hippos over the course of …
Fossil remains have been discovered in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area of Queensland, Australia, and appear to belong to a new kind of tiny marsupial lion. The long-extinct species was far more nimble than its bigger counterparts, with researchers suggesting that it would have travelled through the treetops of Australian …
Scientists say their research shows that two subspecies of songbirds found only on the Galápagos Islands should be elevated to full species status. There’s one big caveat, however: One of the two newly minted species may already be extinct. The researchers used molecular data from samples of museum specimens housed …
Many of the world's biggest and iconic animals such as the Bengal tiger could be extinct by the end of the century if drastic conservation measures are not taken, a new study has warned. The threat is particularly dire in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, where much of the world's …
Israel’s flora and fauna are quite diverse in relation to the country’s size, but they are rapidly dwindling, according to a report by the Environmental Protection Ministry. The report, prepared for the United Nations, notes that every five years, an area larger than the municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa is lost …
From the late Pleistocene to the Holocene and now the so-called Anthropocene, humans have been driving an ongoing series of species declines and extinctions. Large-bodied mammals are typically at a higher risk of extinction than smaller ones. However, in some circumstances, terrestrial megafauna populations have been able to recover some …
A new species of extinct flesh-eating marsupial that terrorised Australia's drying forests about 5 million years ago has been identified from a fossil discovered in remote northwestern Queensland. The hypercarnivore, which is thought to have weighed about 20 to 25 kilograms, is a distant and much bigger cousin of Australia's …
Scientists believe that the meteorite impact blamed for the extinction of most life on Earth at the time, may have actually kicked off a literal "Dark Age" that became the ultimate factor. Massive amounts of soot ejected from rocks following an asteroid impact caused global cooling and drought that may …
The mass extinction of life 66 million years ago at the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary, marked by the extinctions of dinosaurs and shallow marine organisms, is important because it led to the macroevolution of mammals and appearance of humans. The current hypothesis for the extinction is that an asteroid impact in present-day …
By quarrying limestone hills for raw materials, cement companies are invariably destroying the only habitat of many snails, wiping out entire species at one go, conservationists allege. Conservationists are fairly confident that at least three species of snails on Gunung Tenggek and Gunung Sagu are now extinct due to YTL …
Species across the world are rapidly going extinct due to human activities, but humans are also causing rapid evolution and the emergence of new species. A new study published today summarises the causes of manmade speciation, and discusses why newly evolved species cannot simply replace extinct wild species. The study …
