By Tom Dando, IUCN SSC Small Mammal Specialist Group Conservation optimism can be hard to find in the present climate, however, with a little bit of digging, hope for the natural world can be found in abundance. Rightly, we direct most media attention to focus on the battle to save species on the brink of Read more
Say the word “squirrel” and everyone pictures nearly the same thing: bushy tail, buckteeth, ornery personality, and a propensity for burgling their way into people’s birdfeeders. However, there’s another type of squirrel; a more exotic, arguably cooler cousin that lurks like ninjas in the night: the flying squirrels. Nocturnal, big-eyed, and tuft-eared, flying squirrels live Read more
Heroes of the Philippines, heroes of the world. That’s how Josephine Y. Ramirez-Sato, a congresswoman from the Philippine’s Occidental Mindoro province, described the conservationists, policymakers and indigenous people who came together this month to put into motion an ambitious plan to restore the proposed national land animal, the Critically Endangered Tamaraw (tam-ah-rawh), across its historic Read more
Few places on the planet are as biologically spectacular as the Annamite mountains on the border of Vietnam and Lao PDR (Laos). These rugged, forest-clad mountains harbor numerous species that are found nowhere else on the planet. Remarkably, several of these species were only recently discovered, including one of the most elusive rabbits on the Read more
There is nothing in Teresa Camacho Badani’s background in biology that suggests her career would lead her today to play cupid, dating coach and couples therapist combined. And yet as the amphibian aficionado gets ready to lead eight expeditions into Bolivia’s wilderness starting next month, she is preparing to play all of these roles—for a Read more
No hay nada en los antecedentes de Teresa Camacho Badani en biología que sugiera que su carrera la llevaría hoy a ser una combinación de Cupido, dating coach y terapeuta de pareja. Sin embargo, a medida que esta especialista en anfibios se prepara para liderar ocho expediciones a inhóspitos lugares de Bolivia a partir del Read more
“Small wild cats are too hard to study. You’ll be lucky to find 15 of them,” warned Dr. Constanza Napolitano’s University of Chile classmates in 2006 when she decided to do her doctoral dissertation on the Guigna (pronounced wee-nya). These adorable, 5-pound fluffballs may look like pets, but they don’t readily pounce into boxes like Read more
As attention in the United States turns toward baseball’s two best teams facing off in the World Series this week, we at GWC are wrapping up a world-class competition of our own: the game of competitive camera trapping. The winning strategy? Seek-the-poo, an on-the-offensive tactic that our Central America and Tropical Andes coordinator, Dr. Chris Read more
Six years ago a conservation biologist and his friend, a herpetologist, hiked into a little-explored rainforest in northern Ecuador to conduct the first-ever survey of reptiles and amphibians in the site. On the very first night in the field, they stumbled upon a tiny toad about 100 meters from their cabin—a toad that left them Read more
In the mountains of north-central Vietnam, Pu Mat National Park perches on more than 900 square kilometers of rugged, forested mountainous terrain in the Annamite Mountains on the border with Laos. It is one of the most remote areas in the country—and is consequently a refuge for a number of Southeast Asia’s imperiled wildlife, including Read more