Rewilding the World

Bavarian Pine Vole Our final day of Rodent Week takes us to densely-populated Europe, where the Bavarian Pine Vole was thought to be extinct. In fact, this gorgeous rendering of the vole was produced by Peter Schouten for A Gap in Nature: Discovering the World’s Extinct Animals, with text by Tim Flannery (Atlantic  Read More 

Smoky Mouse Rodent Week continues on the Dry Continent: With fewer than 2,500 individuals left in the wild, this endemic Australian mouse illustrates the peril facing many of unique species Down Under. Introduced predators (particularly feral cats, foxes, and wild dogs), changes to native plant communities, logging, and loss of habitat to development have all  Read More 

Yes, It’s Rodent Week! Why Rodent Week, you might ask? Despite being well-mannered and attractive—I once knew a fine fellow named Ralph, who just happened to be a rat—rodents are too-often despised for their prolific nature and a reputation for spreading disease. But in their native ecosystems, rodents play a critical  Read More 

Malagasy Giant Jumping Rat It’s Rodent Week: The largest rodent in Madagascar, the Malagasy giant jumping rat might be mistaken for a rabbit, hopping around the dry tropical forest floor on its hind legs and living in burrows underground. But like so many of this island nation’s unique, endemic creatures, the giant  Read More 

Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse Continuing with Rodent Week here on iWild, we turn to the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse, listed as Endangered on the IUCN’s Red List. This mouse is a salt specialist, capable of swimming through marshes as well as drinking salt water and consuming plants with considerable salt content, including glasswort  Read More 

Brian Horne, a postdoctoral fellow at the San Diego Zoo’s Institute for Conservation Research, has written a fascinating blog post on the issue of despair in conservation. Horne works on red-crowned roof turtle conservation projects in India which monitor populations and seek to improve survival-rates for captive-raised turtle and gharial crocodile hatchlings. (See  Read More 

It’s Rodent Week on iWild! This week we’re featuring the world’s endangered rodents. Today: The Southern Giant Slender-Tailed Cloud Rat, endemic to the Philippines, is a large, shy, squirrel-like creature with big feet and a furry tail. Largely nocturnal, this rat frequents the tops of forest trees and is found only  Read More 

Panamanian Golden Frog: Wrapping up our first month of Endangered Species All-Stars on iWild is the Panamanian Golden Frog, which is, in fact, a toad. Last filmed in the wild for BBC’s 2008 Life in Cold Blood series, this extraordinary poison toad—endemic to Panama—secretes a water-soluble neurotoxin known as zetekitoxin. It may  Read More 

Grey-Headed Flying Fox SAVE THEM ALL: Today’s Endangered species is an All-Star Pollinator, vulnerable like so many threatened bats around the world. On a trip to Sydney in 2000, we saw these flying foxes streaming out of the Royal Botanic Gardens near the Opera House and spreading across the sky at dusk, an extraordinary  Read More 

Addo Flightless Dung Beetle Once found throughout South Africa, this spectacular flightless scarab beetle, today’s Endangered All-Star, is considered vulnerable since its habitat has shrunk to a single park—Addo Elephant Park in the Eastern Cape Province. Its population dwindling along with its two favorite poop-providers, the elephant and the Cape buffalo, the  Read More