Bizarre: tadpoles seen wiggling inside daddy’s vocal sac (video)

Males gobbling babies. Wiggly tadpoles bulging beneath the skin. Yeah, okay, that’s bizarre, but it’s also the lifestyle of Darwin’s frog (Rhinoderma darwinii), an endangered species that was found by Charles Darwin himself. While the females carry the eggs, the male Dawin frogs carry the young tadpoles in its vocal sac (of all places!) for a fortnight. The footage was filmed and produced by EDGE Fellow Claudio...

Read More

Photo: abused cheetahs returned to the wild

An adult cheetah, which had been smuggled and abused for the illegal pet trade, returns to the wild in Tanzania. Photo by: Annette Simonson. Few people realize that cheetah’s, one of Africa’s great cats, are a target of the global wildlife trade. Yet these speedy predators are sought as exotic ‘pets’, especially in the Middle East. As apart of this illegal pet trade, three adult cheetahs were recently seized at...

Read More
Activism: ban Atrazine in the US for the frogs (and yourself)
Apr27

Activism: ban Atrazine in the US for the frogs (and yourself)

Note: mongabay.com does not endorse the action below, but believes its readers may be interested in taking action or discussing the issue in comments. For the third annual Save the Frogs Day (Friday, April 29th), amphibian-lovers are taking the fight to Washington DC to rally at the Environmental Protection Agency for a ban on the herbicide Atrazine. Banned in the EU since 2004, Atrazine has been shown to chemically-castrate frogs at...

Read More
Photo: zoo elephants enjoy spring
Apr26

Photo: zoo elephants enjoy spring

Three Asian elephants from the Zoological Society of London’s Whipsnade Zoo take a spring stroll under blossoming Japanese miniature cherry trees. Photo by: Hannah Thompson. Mongabay.com recently conducted an interview on how wild Asian elephants, and their African counterparts, are vital to ‘gardening’ the continent’s tropical forests. To read more: Elephants: the gardeners of Asia’s and Africa’s...

Read More

Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron visit indigenous community threatened by mega-dam (video)

Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron visit an Arara village on the Big Bend of the Xingu River, which is imperiled by Brazil’s mega-dam Belo Monte. For more information on the Belo Monte: Bill Clinton takes on Brazil’s megadams, James Cameron backs tribal groups (03/28/2011) Former US President, Bill Clinton, spoke out against Brazil’s megadams at the 2nd World Sustainability Forum, which was also attended by...

Read More

Elementary school children urge KFC to stop cutting down forests (video)

With 6,000 hand-drawn postcards, four elementary school kids travel from Charlotte, North Carolina to Louisville, Kentucky (350 miles) to urge KFC to use recycled paper and stop endangering forests on North Carolina’s coast. Lead by 10-year-old forest activist, Cole Rasenberger, the group delivered the postcards to executives at KFC. “I had a second grade project to be an environmental activist,” Rasenberger explains. “I found...

Read More

Photos: Meerkats celebrating Easter

Keepers at ZSL London Zoo use Easter eggs as an enrichment activity for meerkats. The keepers filled a giant “egg” with mealworms — beetle larvae — and provided colored hard-boiled eggs to the group of eight meerkats. “Not only does the act of cracking open the eggs give the meerkats good enrichment but the hard-boiled eggs are a tasty and healthy treat,” said Caroline Westlake, a keeper at ZSL. Photos...

Read More

Photo: A giant tree

Me in front of a giant kapok or ceiba tree on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. This is nowhere near the largest kapok tree I’ve ever seen — they get considerably bigger — but it is nonetheless gigantic. The same ceiba, which is called “The Big Tree”, seen from a distance. The same ceiba tree seen from a boat on Lake Gatun (e.g. Panama Canal). Looking up the trunk of the kapok tree Again, me for...

Read More

Bill McKibben at Powershift: “there is no one else: it’s you”

Bill McKibben speaking at Powershift. Selection from the speech: “Twenty-two years ago, I wrote the first book about climate change and I’ve gotten to watch it all, and I know that simply persuasion will not do. We need to fight. Now, we need to fight non-violently and with civil disobedience. […] One thing you need to make sure that you manage to get across in your witness is that you are not the radicals in this fight....

Read More

Conservation on the ground: how traditional fishermen saved sharks in Madagascar

Malagasy family helping fisherman take his boat out to sea . Photo by Rhett A. Butler. Or, Guitarfish a Go-Go- Bribes and barrages in Belo-sur-Mer By: Brian Jones, Blue Ventures Conservation in Belo-sur-Mer, Menabe, Madagascar. YOU’VE got to admire the mettle of people who, despite the cards being seemingly insurmountably stacked against them, can still stick to their guns and stand up for what they believe in. I didn’t give...

Read More

Series of films explore challenges in Monteverde cloud forest (videos)

A new series of 11 films looks back on the last 50 years of history in the Monteverde cloud forest in Costa Rica, and looks forward to the future. According to Monteverde Now website: “‘Monteverde Now’ gives you access to place where change cannot be ignored-Costa Rica’s Monteverde Cloud Forest. It is a collection of 11 short films about people who live and work in one of our planet’s most diverse and delicate...

Read More
Photos: the end of the radiated tortoise?
Apr18

Photos: the end of the radiated tortoise?

Like the American bison or the passenger pigeon the radiated tortoise (Astrochelys radiata) has gone from super-abundant to nearly extinct. The species could be gone by 2030 warn researchers. Photo by Robert Walker. Once one of the world’s most abundant tortoises, numbering in the millions, Madagascar’s radiated tortoise is on the very brink of extinction. Killed for their meat by one of the world’s most impoverished...

Read More

Power Shift activist: ‘there’s still [BP] oil on our coast’ (video)

An activist with Power Shift 2011 says BP not living up to its obligations one year after disaster. Activist from New Orleans wants everyone to know: ‘there’s still oil on our coasts’.

Read More

Pictures: Saving threatened frogs

Hand-feeding a sick Hyloscirtus colymba tree frog. The Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project is racing to save amphibians as the deadly chytrid fungus spreads down Central America. The disease is presently between Panama City and Colon. Juvenile Atelopus certus. Pristimantis species. Undescribed Pristimantis species. Juvenile Atelopus certus. Atelopus limosus. More photos to come. All photos by Rhett A....

Read More
Oyster reefs a cheaper and more effective way to clean coastal waters
Apr15

Oyster reefs a cheaper and more effective way to clean coastal waters

This post originally appeared ASLA’s “The Dirt” blog as Oyster-Tecture in Action Sustainable designer Neil Chambers, author of “Urban Green: Architecture for the Future,” made the case for using natural systems to clean and manage water at a conference organized by The Economist. In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, beach tourism had been negatively impacted by heavy water pollution. Instead of re-engineering...

Read More

Researcher brings home new species of Malaysian gecko (video)

Herpetologist Lee Grismer discovers a new species of gecko sporting lovely colors and lines. Dr. Lee Grismer from the La Sierra University in Riverside, California, shows off the world’s newest gecko, captured in a cave in...

Read More

Photo: big-eared endangered monkey born at zoo

A three-week old baby white-naped mangabey (Cercocebus atys lunulatus) has been named ‘Hope’ given that her species is vanishing from the wild. Photo by: James Godwin, ZSL. Born at the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) London Zoo, this white-naped mangabey (Cercocebus atys lunulatus) represents one of the Africa’s most imperiled monkeys and is apart of the European Endangered species Programme (EEP). The...

Read More

Coral reefs in 55 years (video)

It’s 2065, and something has happened to the world’s coral reefs… A video produced by Earth-Touch in association with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), EDGE, and Global International.

Read More

Young sun bear takes to the trees (video)

A five-month old orphaned sun bear, Natalie, at the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Center explores the trees. The sun bear (Ursus malayanus) is listed as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List. It is threatened by deforestation, the illegal pet trade, poaching, and the trade for traditional Chinese...

Read More

Photos: tortoise dwarfed by grape, seriously

No, this is not photoshopped: this month-old Egyptian tortoise (Testudo kleinmanni) is actually dwarfed by a grape. A new resident of the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) Whipsnade Zoo, Bedfordshire, the tortoise is the offspring of a group of tortoises seized by customs last year as a sting on the illegal pet trade. The tiny tortoise pictured weighs 0.2 ounces (6 grams), but within a decade will weigh nearly hundred times...

Read More