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 …
The fossil record provides striking case studies of biodiversity loss and global ecosystem upheaval. Because of this, many studies have sought to assess the magnitude of the current biodiversity crisis relative to past crises—a task greatly complicated by the need to extrapolate extinction rates. Here we challenge this approach by …
When you think of wild animals, you usually think of the country or woodlands far away from human civilization. Now, though, researchers have found that cities may just host more threatened species than what can be found outside of urban areas. Our planet is currently facing a catastrophic species extinction …
Over a quarter of the bird species in the UK are now of "highest conservation concern" according to a new report, Birds of Conservation Concern 4. A total of 67 of the UK's 244 bird species are now on the report's Red List - 27% of species. The report was …
Estimates of extinction risk for Amazonian plant and animal species are rare and not often incorporated into land-use policy and conservation planning. We overlay spatial distribution models with historical and projected deforestation to show that at least 36% and up to 57% of all Amazonian tree species are likely to …
The past was a world of giants, with abundant whales in the sea and large animals roaming the land. However, that world came to an end following massive late-Quaternary megafauna extinctions on land and widespread population reductions in great whale populations over the past few centuries. These losses are likely …
Conservation group IUCN wants Indonesia and international donors to take urgent action to save ‘weirdest of all rhinos’ Earth’s last remaining Sumatran rhinos are edging perilously close to extinction, according to one of the world’s top conservation bodies. There are fewer than 100 of the animals left in the rainforests …
ABU DHABI // If Charles Darwin had a smartphone he would probably have downloaded the Collector for ArcGIS, a free app being used by the Environment Agency Abu Dhabi (EAD) to help record species of wildlife in the UAE. The app is created by Esri, a US-based supplier of geographic …
To biologists’ delight, the Azuay stubfoot toad, believed to be extinct after its last sighting in 2002, has just leapt back to life. Three independent teams of scientists were involved in the rediscovery of a small group of the toads living in mountain forests near Cuenca (map)—and most crucially, the …
Glacial episodes have been linked to Ordovician–Silurian extinction events, but cooling itself may not be solely responsible for these extinctions. Teratological (malformed) assemblages of fossil plankton that correlate precisely with the extinction events can help identify alternate drivers of extinction. Here we show that metal poisoning may have caused these …
The Sumatran rhinoceros is not plentiful on the planet: In fact, the Dicerorhinus sumatrensis is down to maybe 100 in the wild and nine in captivity, and most of them live in Indonesia. Scientists have recently concluded that that rhino is extinct in Malaysia, and they published their conclusions in …
Jakarta, Indonesia, 13th August - So rare that captive breeding centres have been robbed, the soaring prices and drop in availability of Black-winged Mynas in trade point to a species on the brink. Black-winged Mynas are prized in the cage bird trade for their striking black and white plumage, lively …
347 species of flora and 424 of fauna, including two reptiles have been discovered in the country in 2013-2014, Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar informed Lok Sabha today. "As per the studies conducted by scientists and taxonomists of Botanical Survey of India (BSI) and Zoological Survey of India (ZSI), 347 plant …
The elusive night parrot, a species thought to be extinct for about a century, has finally been captured and tagged in what has been hailed as a ‘holy grail’ moment. Aside from two dead parrots found over the past 25 years, the night parrot had not been captured since the …
Extinction events typically represent extended processes of decline that cannot be reconstructed using short-term studies. Long-term archives are necessary to determine past baselines and the extent of human-caused biodiversity change, but the capacity of historical datasets to provide predictive power for conservation must be assessed within a robust analytical framework. …
No, it isn't the End of Days, but we are likely living during what experts will later refer to as one of the largest extinction events in Earth's history - an unexpected addition to prehistory's "Big Five" mass extinctions. Conservationists and wildlife biologists alike are bound to be disappointed. A …
Scavengers, an inevitable part of our food chain, are on their way to extinction and have to be saved and preserved from disappearing from our skies as at present these natural scavengers are considered to be the most endangered bird species from falling prey to certain harmful substances in carcasses …
The Australian Government has set the new strategies to save its threatened wildlife. The Department of the Environment recently launched the new Threatened Species Strategy on Thursday, July 16, at the Threatened Species Summit in Melbourne in partnership with the local and private groups to protect Australia’s extinct animal and …
Mega hydropower projects in tropical forests pose a major emergent threat to terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity worldwide. Despite the unprecedented number of existing, under-construction and planned hydroelectric dams in lowland tropical forests, long-term effects on biodiversity have yet to be evaluated. We examine how medium and large-bodied assemblages of terrestrial …
The oft-repeated claim that Earth’s biota is entering a sixth “mass extinction” depends on clearly demonstrating that current extinction rates are far above the “background” rates prevailing in the five previous mass extinctions. Earlier estimates of extinction rates have been criticized for using assumptions that might overestimate the severity of …
Many suggest we are approaching a sixth mass extinction event, and yet estimates of how many species exist, and thus how many might become extinct, vary by as much as an order of magnitude. There are few statistically robust methods to estimate global species richness, and here we introduce several …
