Rewilding the World

SAVE THEM ALL: The Hyacinth Macaw, largest of all parrot species and today’s Endangered All-Star, retains a stronghold in Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands with a population of a few thousand. But this tantalizingly gorgeous bird is considered endangered overall, due to burning of forests and the pet-trade. Three other blue macaws have virtually  Read More 

Batter Up: The Jaguar is today’s Endangered All-Star, thanks to the US Fish & Wildlife Service’s latest failure to respond to a court-ordered decision on establishing a critical habitat and recovery plan for the species. Listed as “Near Threatened” on the IUCN’s Red List, the jaguar is certainly endangered in the American  Read More 

“The Little Things That Run the World”—That’s how E. O. Wilson once referred to invertebrates, the objects of his affection and study. These creatures play a disproportionately powerful role in the affairs of the planet: In 1987, Wilson surmised that there were 42,580 species of vertebrates described by humankind—including a paltry 4000 mammals—versus 990,000  Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: While rafting on the Karnali River in Nepal, I was thrilled to come across this Gharial crocodile basking on a sandbank. Shy, retiring, and critically endangered, it is less mobile on land than the Nile crocodile of Africa and the saltwater crocs of Australia, and it is harmless to humans, its  Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: This is the Year of the Tiger, in the Chinese zodiac and in conservation. This Endangered All Star is waiting on us to make a commitment but cannot wait any longer: Perhaps as few as 1500 survive in the wild. The World Bank and the Global Environment Facility have launched a global  Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: Today’s Endangered All-Star deserves a break from the sushi scene: The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Wildlife Fund, and a host of conservation organizations agree that there should be an immediate trade ban on bluefin tuna. This critically endangered ocean carnivore is so overfished that populations have  Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: Topping our Endangered Species All-Stars list in the plant realm is the Wollemi pine. Long thought extinct, the Wollemi pine—not a true pine but a member of the Araucariaceae family, related to the Monkey Puzzle and Norfolk Island pines—was rediscovered by keen-eyed parks officer David Noble in 1994 in a  Read More 

Today’s Endangered All-Star is the Tasmanian Devil, desperately in need of saving, the largest living marsupial carnivore since the extinction of the “Tassie Tiger,” or thylacine, in 1935. Over the past decade, populations on the island of Tasmania have plummeted by 60% as a virulent and transmissible cancer—passed from animal to animal by biting— Read More 

SAVE THEM ALL: Announcing the Endangered Species All-Stars, a collectible series of trading cards & blog entries highlighting the world’s rarest and most endangered species. Each day in 2010, iWild will focus on another species of plant or animal in celebration of the International Year of Biodiversity. Up today: The Maui parrotbill. Raising Hawai'i, a  Read More 

“Enforcement does not exist.” That’s the damning conclusion of Endangered Species International’s year-long undercover investigation of bushmeat in the Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville. The investigators found that as many as two western lowland gorillas—their bodies dismembered into hand-sized portions sold for around US$6—were being sold each  Read More