During major floods, thousands of tiny fish convene at Luvilombo Falls in the upper Congo River Basin to undertake a peculiar vertical migration, described for the first time today in Scientific Reports.
'Our results show that the next 20 years are critical,' lead author Dr Rob Cooke told the Daily Mail. 'By around 2050, we reach a point where the choices we make on emissions and land use will largely determine whether Britain moves towards a much more degraded or a much more nature‑positive future.'
"Nobody is asking for this. None of the farm groups want this. No one in conservation wants this. Nobody." Robert Bonnie, former Forest Service undersecretary, highlights widespread opposition to the reorganization.
Somebody sent to this world to try to give people hope in dark times, because without hope, we fall into apathy and do nothing, and in the dark times that we are living in now, if people don't have hope, we're doomed. How can we bring little children into this dark world we've created and let them be surrounded by people who've given up?
Before state Route 62 was built, there was seamless 95-mile-long habitat connectivity between the San Bernardino and Little San Bernardino mountain ranges, extending from the I-10 south of Joshua Tree National Park to the I-15 near the Cajon Pass. Now, plans for two new wildlife crossings across the highway aim to bring back some of that connectivity, while potentially saving a local population on the brink of extinction in the process.
Red-necked keelback snakes possess a potent toxin derived from the toads they consume, which can cause severe harm to predators like mongooses. The snakes store these toxins in specialized nuchal glands.
An unnamed tourist saw it and told Aidan Moore, who works for Alcatraz City Cruises. Moore told SFGATE that he was initially skeptical, but the guest's iPhone footage left little room for doubt. The video shows, not a sea lion or an otter, but an actual Canis latrans, doggedly dogpaddling, then clambering out of the water, noticeably shaky and struggling to settle tired paws on the craggy rocks.
Climate breakdown is occurring more rapidly with the heating rate almost doubling, according to research that excludes the effect of natural factors behind the latest scorching temperatures. It found global heating accelerated from a steady rate of less than 0.2C per decade between 1970 and 2015 to about 0.35C per decade over the past 10 years.
In a naturalistic rendition of David vs. Goliath, a 28-pound Reeves's muntjac named Tata, a small deer species native to Asia, took on Maruśka, a 1.7-ton female rhinoceros, in a fierce head-to-head at the Wroclaw Zoo in Poland. A video that's gone viral on social media shows the miniature deer fiercely standing its ground and charging at the far more massive rhino, clashing into its horn-tipped snout with tiny antlers.
Less than a year ago, United States company Colossal Biosciences announced it had "resurrected" the dire wolf, a megafauna-hunting wolf species that had been extinct for 10,000 years. Within two days of Colossal's announcement, the Interior Secretary of the US, Doug Burgum, used the idea of resurrection to justify weakening environmental protection laws: "pick your favourite species and call up Colossal". His reasoning appeared to confirm critics' fears about de-extinction technology. If we can bring any species back, why protect them to begin with?
The wolves arrived in May of last year, just days after Paul Roen had driven his cattle back up to their summer pasture in Northern California's Sierra Valley. He started finding the bleeding bodies of calves-some still alive, so badly paralyzed that they'd need to be shot. After weeks of this, Roen finally saw a kill himself. "One wolf grabbed a cow and spun her around, while another grabbed a calf," he told me. "He tore it into three pieces in 30 seconds."
The world spends 30 times more money destroying nature than protecting it. That's according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that exposes a massive gulf between so-called "harmful investments" and financing that promotes nature preservation. The global environment agency's latest "State of Finance for Nature" (SNF) report is calling to phase out the US$7.3 trillion (6.2 trillion) in global investments that damage nature including into high-emissions energy infrastructure and manufacturing, for example.
On French Island in Victoria's Western Port Bay, koalas are dropping from trees. Eucalypts have been eaten bare by the marsupials, with local reports of some found starving and dead. Multiple koalas usually solitary animals can often be seen on a single gum. Koalas were first introduced to French Island from the mainland in the 1880s, a move that protected the species from extinction in the decades they were extensively hunted for their pelts.