Rewilding the World

The Decline of Ponds and Primordial Soup In 1872, Charles Darwin, in a letter to his friend Joseph Hooker, theorized that life on earth began in a “warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present.” If so—and his theory still has supporters—life may have a  Read More 

Does This Shark Look Vulnerable? It may not look it, but the Sand Tiger Shark, also known as the Grey Nurse Shark or Ragged Tooth Shark, is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. It’s a fate that sadly awaits many of its fellow sharks as well: One in four species is  Read More 

The Golden Fleece Today’s Endangered All-Star: The Takin, a goat-antelope of the Himalayas. There are four subspecies, including the Golden Takin, rumored to bear the precious fleece sought by Jason and the Argonauts. But in the real world, all four subspecies are considered Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, with a probable decline  Read More 

The Rabbit Ecosystem SAVE THEM ALL: As a bookend to yesterday’s Endangered All-Star, the Iberian Lynx, we focus today on its missing prey, the European Rabbit, whose drastic decline throughout Spain and Portugal has endangered not only the lynx but other predators as well. The rabbit—not a rodent as popularly believed, but  Read More 

THE WORLD’S MOST ENDANGERED CAT The Iberian Lynx, today’s Endangered All-Star, is the world’s most critically endangered cat, with an estimated 84-143 adults left in the wild, reduced from 4,000 in 1960. Should the species be lost, it will be the first feline extinction (aside from subspecies of tigers and lions) since the  Read More 

Dhole The Asian Wild Dog, also known as the Dhole or Red Dog, is today’s Endangered All-Star, its population reduced to perhaps 2,500. Like the African wild dog, the dhole is a spectacularly gifted hunter, capable of leaping high in the air to get a whiff of nearby prey. A famous late-addition to Kipling’ Read More 

Chiru Today’s Endangered All-Star, the Chiru or Tibetan Antelope, once roamed the Tibetan Plateau by the thousands: Only 50 years ago, a million Chiru grazed across the steppe. But then came the shatoosh shawl, or ring shawl, made of a fabric so fine that an entire length of cloth could be drawn through a  Read More 

Azores Bullfinch Save Them All: The Azores Bullfinch is today’s Endangered All-Star, considered the most critically endangered passerine—or perching bird—in the world. With a population estimated at 775 in 2008, the Azores Bullfinch is endemic to São Miguel Island in the Azores, an island archipelago in the North Atlantic and occupies little  Read More 

Australian Ant “The bloody bastard’s here!” That shout—uttered in October, 1977 by Australian entomologist Robert Taylor upon rediscovering the long-lost “Dinosaur ant,” Nothomyrmecia macrops, near the small town of Poochera on the Nullarbor Plain—marked the dramatic climax to a long-running myrmecological comedy of errors. An Australian who yearned to recover his country’ Read More 

Fin Whale From the smallest to the largest! Inspired by beautiful photos of Fin Whales posted on The Mudflats, a favorite Alaskan website, we’re following Rodent Week with an examination of the Fin Whale, which experienced a global decline of over 70% over the past three generations, reduced to 2-3% of its former numbers.  Read More