A recent paper in PLoS ONE by Vidya Athreya et al., used an innovative method to examine Leopard populations in the Indian state of Karnataka. They searched local media sources for any mentioned leopard-human incidents and applied modelling methods to draw conclusions. Their data showed that "leopards occupied around 84,000 km2 or 47% of the State’s geographic area, outside designated national parks and wildlife sanctuaries".
I like TED talks, but this one by Trey Ratcliff is great.... worth a watch! :)
The IUCN is known for it's Red List of endangeroed species, but more recently it has developed a Green List...
We have long known that some frogs are poisonous, excreting toxins from their skin to deter preditors from snacking on them. However, two are now considered venomous!
Jared et al. (2015) describe two Brazilian frogs, Greening's frog (Corythomantis greeningi) and Bruno's casque-headed frog (Aparasphenodon brunoi), that don't only produce toxins, but also have spikes...
Today (29th July) is International Tiger day! The point of this day is not to raise money (although that is nice), but to raise awareness! So, celebrate your tiger shots, share them and share the awareness!
Early this month I posted about a decree by the French ecology and agriculture ministry addressing the concerns of farmers and resulted in relaxed hunting laws for wolfs and increasing the number that could be killed this coming season. The news is not getting any better, with the french government landing on the side of livestocks. [LPO reports]
Thankfully, I have never seen any real conflict, but I have seen many animals on the state highways around and running through national parks.