Social Media Ideas for George Schaller

Mel Sunquist, field biologist and mentor to generations of conservationists

In the 1970s, studying wild tigers still involved more nerve than equipment. A biologist could not rely on camera traps, GPS collars, or satellite-linked data. To understand where...

Community more crucial than snow leopard counting: Interview with Rodney Jackson

KATHMANDU — Rodney Jackson pioneered the radio-tracking study of snow leopards in Nepal’s Langu Valley in the early 1980s and has, since then, worked across the species’ range from...

How silk caterpillars became a tool for conservation in Madagascar

When Catherine Craig first went to Gombe in 1972, she was not thinking about silk. She was an undergraduate in a four-seat plane with Jane Goodall, flying over the Tanzanian forest...

Conserving Sierra Leone’s western chimpanzees: Interview with Tacugama’s Willie Tucker

In Sierra Leone, the critically endangered western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) faces growing threats from habitat loss, deforestation, illegal wildlife trade and expanding h...

Tanapa steps up conservation efforts for Gombe chimpanzees

The population of Gombe National Park’s chimpanzees has fallen by nearly 50 percent since the early years of research by Jane Goodall in the 1960s, raising concerns about the futur...

Before tourists can see bonobos, trackers must earn their trust

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. In Salonga National Park in the Democratic Repub...

What It’s Like to Be a Panda

“What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” Stephen Hawking wondered, recognizing the quixotic nature of his quest for a theory of...

Great Koala National Park tests whether protected forests can stay connected

Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries. The case for Australia’s new Great Koala Nationa...

A Pangolin Pup Found in a Cardboard Box

Inside a car boot in Johannesburg, a three-month-old pangolin pup lay curled in a cardboard box, a cabbage leaf beside him — the trafficker's well-meaning but useless gesture towar...

Stunning Camera Trap Survey Captures Elusive Snow Leopards Across China

A camera trap survey led by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in remote parts of China has shed light on the elusive snow leopard. [Read More]

Gelada monkeys huddle in the cold: Photo of the week

A group of geladas monkeys (Theropithecus gelada), pictured above, huddle to keep warm on a cold day in the Wilhelma Zoo in Stuttgart, Germany. Endemic to Ethiopia’s cold Afroalpin...

Lydia Möcklinghoff, champion of the giant anteater, has died in a plane crash. She was 45

The giant anteater is easy to turn into a curiosity. Its head narrows into a long tube. It sees poorly. It opens termite mounds with strong claws and gathers insects with a tongue...

Incredibly Rare Bongos Found in Area They Were Thought to be Extinct

A single trail camera photograph has confirmed what conservationists feared was lost forever: mountain bongos still roam the Maasai Mau forest in Kenya, a region where the rare ant...

Robert Ricklefs, ecologist who helped generations understand nature, has died at 83

At the mouth of the Carmel River, a teacher set up a spotting scope and let a boy look through it. The birds were the first thing he saw. The habit of looking came next. He saw tha...

Park Ranger Keeps Hikers Safe From Approaching Grizzly @ Glacier National Park

A ‘symphony’ of wildlife suggests carbon financing is working in Sierra Leone

One of the first things H.S. Sathya Chandra Sagar noticed in Gola Rainforest National Park was its profusion of sound. Standing amid the tallest trees he’d ever seen, Sagar could h...

In search of the ‘rare and beautiful’ in an Ivorian rainforest

TAÏ NATIONAL PARK, Côte d’Ivoire — The path that leads through the rainforest towards a nesting site for one of its most curious inhabitants is not made by humans but by animals. “...

Gus Mills, hyena expert and ‘the cheerful pessimist of the Kalahari’, has died

His nephew recalled that the children were taught to chant, “Hyenas are beautiful!” as often as possible. On visits to Kruger National Park, he got them out of bed at midnight to l...

Biologists Clone Wild Yaks to Save Golden Subspecies Numbering Fewer Than 300 in First of its Kind Effort

China has performed the first single and multiple cloning of wild yaks in a bid to reinforce this keystone herbivore, and save one of the rarest and most beautiful animals in China...

Jane Goodall's grandson keeps her conservation work alive: 'Hope is rooted in action'

Goodall's grandson, Merlin Van Lawick, has been working in the field in Tanzania for years, now supporting science and communication efforts at his late grandmother's nonprofit.

‘Rare animals, photography and Instagram’ could help an Ivorian rainforest

DJOUROUTOU, Côte d’Ivoire — After a night of heavy rain, the chimpanzees of Taï Forest, in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire, like to sleep in. Early on a late May morning, chimpanzee gui...

How a tiny blue gecko became a conservation comeback story

Williams electric blue day gecko is a small Tanzanian reptile whose recovery shows what focused conservation can do, reports Mongabay contributor, Manuel Fonseca. Once heavily coll...

In Kyrgyzstan, a climate-ready corridor gives snow leopards and herders room to roam

Snow leopards haunt the rocky ridgelines of Central Asia, vanishing into terrain so rugged that researchers rarely catch more than a brief glimpse on camera traps. Locals call them...

How leopards and wolves share the same Himalayan valley, study

Three of Asia’s most formidable predators share territory in a remote Nepal valley by eating different prey, according to a new study. Researchers found that diet, not time or spac...