Mongabay News

• After nearly a century, Taiwan’s legless lizard gets its own identity

  A new study has cleared up a century’s worth of identity confusion surrounding a secretive, legless lizard found in Taiwan’s forests. Researchers from National Taiwan Normal University confirmed the Formosan legless lizard (Dopasia formosensis) is a distinct species endemic to the island, separate from the more widespread Hart’s glass lizard (D. harti), under which it […]

• Endangered civet faces local extinction in Cambodian sanctuary

  The large-spotted civet is an endangered small carnivore found in pockets of forest across Southeast Asia. Now, a new study suggests the nocturnal mammals are heading toward local extinction in Cambodia’s Srepok Wildlife Sanctuary (SWS), once considered a global stronghold for the species. The study, published in Pacific Conservation Biology, analyzed a decade of camera-trap […]

• Peter Raven, botanist and advocate for biodiversity, has died, aged 89

  Life on Earth is often described as a web, but for much of modern science it was catalogued as a ledger: names, specimens, distributions, relationships drawn in careful lines. Over the course of the 20th century, that ledger gave way to a more connected view. Plants and animals were no longer just entries in a […]

• Don Janssen, wildlife veterinarian who argued that caring for animals begins with people

  In a zoo, a crisis often begins before anyone names it as such. An animal stops responding to treatment. A pregnancy fails to progress. A procedure goes as planned but the animal does not recover as expected. The work is technical and uncertain, and the margin for error is narrow. Outcomes depend on biology, timing, […]

• As Walk for Peace begins in Sri Lanka, activists call for animal rights

  COLOMBO — A group of barefoot Buddhist monks promoting peace, compassion, mindfulness and nonviolence has arrived in Sri Lanka, accompanied by an unlikely figure: a once stray dog named Aloka. The Walk for Peace, organized by 24 Buddhist monks of the Theravada tradition affiliated with a Vipassana meditation center in Texas in the United States […]