Endangered Animals News

June 13, 2025

Top Headlines

Why Past Mass Extinctions Didn't Break ecosystems—But This One Might

June 9, 2025 — For millions of years, large herbivores like mastodons and giant deer shaped the Earth's ecosystems, which astonishingly stayed stable despite extinctions and upheavals. A new study reveals that only twice in 60 million years did environmental ...

Extreme Weather Is Wiping out amphibians—Here’s Where It’s Worst

June 6, 2025 — Frogs, salamanders, and other amphibians are not just battling habitat loss and pollution they're now also contending with increasingly brutal heat waves and droughts. A sweeping 40-year study shows a direct link between the rise in extreme weather ...

DNA Floating in the Air Tracks Wildlife, Viruses -- Even Drugs

June 3, 2025 — Environmental DNA from the air, captured with simple air filters, can track everything from illegal drugs to the wildlife it was originally designed to ...

Different Phases of Evolution During Ice Age

May 23, 2025 — Cold-adapted animals started to evolve 2.6 million years ago when the permanent ice at the poles became more prevalent. There followed a time when the continental ice sheets expanded and contracted and around 700,000 years ago the cold periods ...

Climate Change Poses Severe Threat to Bowhead Whale Habitat

May 22, 2025 — New research examining 11,700 years of bowhead whale persistence throughout the Arctic projects that sea ice loss due to climate change will cause their habitat to severely contract by up to 75 per ...

Native Turtles Return to Yosemite After Removal of Invasive Bullfrogs

May 20, 2025 — After invasive American bullfrogs 'croak,' native turtles return to Yosemite, finds a new ...

Bees Facing New Threats, Putting Our Survival and Theirs at Risk

May 19, 2025 — A new report identifies the top 12 emerging threats that could accelerate pollinator losses within the next 5-15 years, according to ten of the world's leading ...

Thousands of Animal Species Threatened by Climate Change

May 20, 2025 — A novel analysis suggests more than 3,500 animal species are threatened by climate change and also sheds light on huge gaps in fully understanding the risk to the animal ...

Language a Barrier in Biodiversity Work

May 16, 2025 — A study has shown scientific knowledge on the conservation of endangered species is often overlooked when not presented in ...

Should We Protect Non-Native Species? A New Study Says Maybe

May 14, 2025 — A new study found that over a quarter of the world's naturalized plant species are threatened in parts of their native range -- raising questions about the role non-native populations may play in global conservation ...

Genome of Near-Extinct Northern White Rhino Offers Hope for Reviving the Species

May 14, 2025 — The northern white rhinoceros is one of the rarest animals on Earth, with just two females left and no natural way for the species to reproduce. Now, scientists have mapped the entire genome of a ...

First Fossil Evidence of Endangered Tropical Tree Discovered

May 9, 2025 — Scientists have discovered fossil evidence of an endangered, living tropical tree species. The unprecedented find was made in Brunei, a country on the large island of Borneo, and reveals a critical piece of the ancient history of Asia's rainforests, ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:05pm EDT

Red Alert for Our Closest Relatives

May 8, 2025 — New report shows drastic decline in endangered primates and calls for conservation ...

Just 30 Species of Tree Dominate World's Most Diverse Savanna

May 8, 2025 — Scientists have found that a mere 30 species of trees in the Cerrado -- the world's largest and most floristically diverse savanna -- account for nearly half of all its trees. The 'hyperdominance' by ...

Two New Crocodile Species Discovered

May 6, 2025 — Biologists have discovered two previously unknown species of crocodiles, one living on the island of Cozumel and the other on the atoll of Banco Chinchorro, both off the Yucat n Peninsula. The ...

Saving the Asian 'Unicorn' -- If It Still Exists

May 5, 2025 — The saola, an antelope-like bovine, is one of the world's rarest and most endangered mammals. In fact, it hasn't been observed in over 10 years. Researchers have now mapped the saola's complete ...

Ancient Poems Tell the Story of Charismatic River Porpoise's Decline Over the Past 1,400 Years

May 5, 2025 — Endemic to China's Yangtze River, the Yangtze finless porpoise is known for its intelligence and charismatic appearance; it looks like it has a ...

Chip-Shop Fish Among Key Seabed Engineers

Apr. 28, 2025 — Many of the fish we eat play a key role in maintaining the seabed -- and therefore our climate, new research ...

Invasive Rats and Rainforest Mammals Are Sharing Gut Microbes as Urban Areas Grow

May 1, 2025 — As urban development continues to creep further into Earth's oldest and most diverse rainforests, a study reveals native and invasive small mammals ...

Deciphering the Migratory Behavior and Connectivity of Mediterranean and Atlantic Cory's Shearwaters

Apr. 30, 2025 — A good wildlife management plan must include information on their migratory processes if the conservation of a species, particularly an endangered ...

Elephant Instead of Wild Boar? What Could Have Been in Europe

Apr. 28, 2025 — Even under today's climatic conditions, the long-extinct straight-tusked elephant could still live in Europe. This is the conclusion of a recent study. For this finding, the research group combined ...

Paying Fishers to Release Endangered Catches Can Aid Conservation, but Only If Done Right

Apr. 23, 2025 — A new study has revealed that an incentive program increased live releases of endangered species caught as bycatch. However, unexpectedly, the ...

How Changes in Lemur Brains Made Some Mean Girls Nice

Apr. 21, 2025 — If there was a contest for biggest female bullies of the animal world, lemurs would be near the top of the list. It's the ladies who get their way and keep males in line. In one branch of the ...

Secret to Crocodylian Longevity

Apr. 16, 2025 — Researchers examined teeth and skulls of 99 extinct crocodylomorph species and 20 living crocodylian species to reconstruct their dietary ecology and identify characteristics that helped some groups ...

Prehistoric Rhinos Lived in Super-Herds

Apr. 9, 2025 — Rhinos that flourished across much of North America 12 million years ago gathered in huge herds, according to a new ...

Declining Insect Biodiversity in the Tropics

Apr. 8, 2025 — Ecologists are investigating the decline of insect populations in the world's tropical forests. Insects, the most abundant and diverse group of animals on Earth, are experiencing alarming ...

What's on the Menu for Ryukyu's Minute Mammals?

Apr. 8, 2025 — Japan's Ryukyu Islands, which includes Okinawa, are the exclusive home to two rare mammals, the Amami rabbit and Ryukyu long-furred rat. These animals are hard to observe, but conservationists ...

Century-Old Clues Reveal Hidden Threat to Australian Songbird

Apr. 4, 2025 — A hidden threat facing one of Australia's most iconic birds has been uncovered in a new study. The critically endangered regent honeyeater once numbered in the hundreds of thousands, but their ...

Animal Behavioral Diversity at Risk in the Face of Declining Biodiversity

Apr. 3, 2025 — Drastic declines in biodiversity due to human activities present risks to understanding animal behaviors such as tool use, according to new research. Shrinking animal populations make the study of ...

The Devastating Human Impact on Biodiversity

Mar. 26, 2025 — Humans are having a highly detrimental impact on biodiversity worldwide. Not only is the number of species declining, but the composition of species communities is also changing. This is one of the ...

Red Coral Colonies Survive a Decade After Being Transplanted in the Medes Islands

Mar. 18, 2025 — The red coral colonies that were transplanted a decade ago on the seabed of the Medes Islands have survived successfully. They are very similar to the original communities and have contributed to the ...

Conservation Efforts Are Bringing Species Back from the Brink, Even as Overall Biodiversity Falls

Mar. 18, 2025 — A major review of over 67,000 animal species has found that while the natural world continues to face a biodiversity crisis, targeted conservation efforts are helping bring many species back from the ...

Conservation Efforts Analysis Reveals Which Actions Are Most Helpful for Endangered Species Status

Mar. 18, 2025 — Targeted conservation actions are essential to prevent wildlife extinctions, but more efforts are needed to fully recover biodiversity, according to a new ...

Wolves Make a Rapid Recovery in Europe

Mar. 17, 2025 — Wolf populations in Europe increased by nearly 60 percent in a decade, according to a new ...

New Name for One of the World's Rarest Rhinoceroses

Mar. 13, 2025 — A recent study has reclassified the species commonly known as the Javan rhinoceros, proposing a more precise scientific name: Eurhinoceros sondaicus. The research highlights key differences in body ...

New Species of Killifish from Kenya Already Critically Endangered

Mar. 12, 2025 — A critically endangered new species of killifish sampled from an ancient forest in Kenya in 2017 and 2018 has now been described. Nothobranchius sylvaticus, from the Latin meaning 'pertaining to ...

Rare Frog Rediscovered After 130 Years

Mar. 11, 2025 — A team of researchers has rediscovered a frog species which has not been seen in more than 130 years. First described in 1902, Alsodes vittatus had evaded detection since then, despite multiple ...

Growing Consumption of the American Eel May Lead to It Being Critically Endangered Like Its European Counterpart

Mar. 10, 2025 — To investigate the prevalence and consumption of endangered eels, a research team examined 327 individual eel products purchased across 86 retailers throughout Singapore. The team discovered ...

Nearly Half of Popular Tropical Plant Group Related to Birds-of-Paradise and Bananas Are Threatened With Extinction

Mar. 7, 2025 — A new analysis reveals that nearly half of the genus Heliconia, a group of tropical plants popular for their bright, beak-shaped flowers, are threatened with ...

Caribou Migration Patterns Are Shrinking

Mar. 5, 2025 — The study shows caribou herds changed their migratory duration, distance or elevation over 35 years of radio tag ...

The Pot Is Already Boiling for 2% of the World's Amphibians

Mar. 5, 2025 — Amphibians are increasingly vulnerable to global warming, according to new ...

1,400 Species Found in Guts of Asian Hornets

Mar. 4, 2025 — A study of Asian hornets has found about 1,400 different species in their ...