Articles by Alex Taylor - Page 30

It is the last living representative of a 3 million year old evolutionary lineage, but is critically endangered.

Habitat fragmentation and loss have played their part, but the main threat the giraffes currently face is poaching.

The leading country in the online trade is China, where 18,590 animal products were found on sale, nearly 78% of which were ivory products.

Once found across the UK, wildcats are now confined to north of the Central Belt in Scotland. They are so rare and elusive that population estimates have been as low as 35, making them 70 times rarer than the giant panda.

A large proportion of trees in Madagascar’s rainforest have fruits that are eaten by lemurs and for some species, lemurs are the primary or only animal that can distribute their seeds

Their extremely low numbers mean that they are suffering from low genetic diversity, their habitat is being fragmented, trapping still occurs and human disturbance from snowmobiling and backcountry skiing disrupts denning wolverines.

The global population was down to just 15 tortoises by the 1960s. Now there are some 1,000 tortoises breeding on their own. The population is secure. It’s a rare example of how biologists and managers can collaborate to recover a species from the brink of extinction.

The findings of our study are both good news and bad news. The good news is that veterinary use of diclofenac in India has decreased significantly; the bad news is that it has not stopped completely.

Aliens have invaded the Mediterranean, and are disrupting the ecosystem’s delicate balance.