endangered species Archives - Page 4 of 7

The FWP weekly digest of wondrous wildlife happenings
and other interesting items from the natural world

Creatures to meet | Things to learn
Things to do

Lisa S. French

Keeping High-Tech Tabs on Endangered Sea Turtles

2-minute read

These are tough times for sea turtles. For over 100 million years, the armored reptiles (Chelonians) have peacefully paddled the Earth’s oceans, but due to overharvesting, loss of nesting habitat, and chronic egg collecting and trafficking, six out of seven species are currently listed as threatened or endangered.

In addition to being valued for their obvious sea creature charisma, turtles play a vital role in the health of undersea ecosystems, helping to bolster coastal economies around the world. Because demand for turtle products is at an all-time high, the marine megafauna is at extreme risk of becoming extinct in the wild, and conservationists are racing to develop advanced tracking systems to help keep closer tabs on eggs, turtles—and traffickers.

Satellite monitoring of sea turtles in aid of conservation began 25 years ago. With advancements in the miniaturization of tracking tags and improvements in bandwidth, transmission, and data analysis, GPS technology has come of age, and scientists can monitor all seven species in oceans globally. A small tracking device, easily attached to a turtle’s shell, can capture information about the animal and its environment, including how it navigates the oceans, where it feeds and nests, how many clutches of eggs it lays, down to the granular level of describing flipper beats and daily dives. Changes in signal speed or movement can also indicate that a turtle has been fished or captured and taken ashore.

Pinpointing the location of adult turtles and nesting sites is a fundamental aspect of conservation. Protecting sea turtle eggs from the devastating impacts of poachers is also essential to the species’ long term survival. To help ensure the tiny reptiles get the chance to crack out of their shells and trundle to the sea, the ingenious scientists at Paso Pacifico have taken egg monitoring to the next level with the creation of InvestEGGator. Designed to document the movement of illegally harvested sea turtle eggs, the 3-D printed wildlife tracker employs web-based smart-phone applications to covertly trace poachers. The plastic devices replicate olive ridley turtle eggs in size, shape, texture, and weight and can be hidden in turtle nests and remotely monitored in real-time to deter poachers and reduce illegal trade. Turtley egg-citing!

Whether olive ridley, Kemp’s ridley, leatherback, or hawksbill, sea turtles need safe operating space to survive on land and in our oceans. By mapping and monitoring adults, eggs, and nesting sites, working with local communities to promote conservation, and strengthening enforcement of anti-poaching laws, conservationists aim to keep sea turtles right where they belong—paddling around the big deep blue. If you’d like to learn more about mission-critical efforts to save sea turtles from extinction, check out what’s happening at the World Wildlife Fund.

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Lisa S. French October 19, 2020

New Guinea Singing Dogs—Not Gone

1-minute read

For the small remaining population of New Guinea singing dogs (Canis hallstromi), the recent news that their clan is no longer classified as extinct in the wild was surely music to their petal-shaped ears. At one time, the melancholy howls of the extraordinarily shy canines could be heard at dusk and dawn throughout the mountain ranges of New Guinea. Unfortunately, for the past 50 years, their haunting vocalizations have only been heard in captivity. Declared extinct in the 1970s as a result of habitat loss, it was believed that only 200-300 descendants of eight captured wild dogs were left on the planet.

Now the rare animals may get a new lease on life in the wilderness thanks in part to the distinctive sound of their howling. According to researchers, New Guinea singing dogs (NGSDs) are the only wild dogs adept at bird-like trilling—a rapid change in pitch from high to low and back again emitted at five to eight different frequencies that is unmistakably different from the vocalizations of wolves, coyotes, and dingoes. Typically, a lead dog starts the chorus, and other canine songsters quickly chime in with well-synchronized howls that stop simultaneously. It was this unique capability for harmonic vocalizing along with genome analysis that helped an expedition from the University of Papua to identify an isolated group of wild dogs in the highlands of New Guinea as ancestors of the NGSD family of highly skilled howlers.

With more than 32,000 species currently at risk of extinction, the discovery that the NGSDs living in captivity are not the end of their line is encouraging news—dogs not gone after all. That’s truly something to howl about!

Conservationists hope that by diversifying the animal’s genetic pool, they will be able to increase the population of NGSDs freely roaming the mountains of Papua singing their ancient and beautiful song of the wild.

You can learn more about the history and hopeful future of the singing dogs of New Guinea from the New Guinea Highland Wild Dog Foundation.

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Lisa S. French October 10, 2020

Problem-Solving Primates

2-minute read

Humans are innately skilled at choosing the right object for the task at hand. We’re able to comprehend that using a banana to hammer a nail or a colander to serve coffee won’t end in a good result. Primates are also capable of using objects as tools, but how do they decide which object will help to achieve their goal? What do they understand about how the world works?

Harvard scientists researching the evolution of knowledge in New World primates studied cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) in captivity to determine how they perceive what makes an object useful as a tool to acquire food. Presented with the challenge of obtaining a food pellet using one of two hooks, the tamarins consistently chose the one that would provide the easiest access with as little modification as possible. The primates perceived that a change in a hook’s color and texture was irrelevant to the task, but a change in size or shape could mean the difference between snack versus no snack. The tamarins seemed to understand which object worked best as a tool and which design features affected functionality. Clever cotton-tops!

Scientists believe that tool use is more likely to emerge in primate species like tamarins that rely on embedded food sources to survive. While the Harvard study provided new insight into tamarin tool use for snack acquisition in captivity, understanding how the animals obtain food in their natural habitat is critical to their conservation in a world undergoing rapid environmental change.

In July 2020, researchers observing primates in São Paulo, Brazil published the first record of spontaneous tool use in the wild by a member of one of the most endangered primate species on the planet—the black lion tamarin (Leontopithecus chrysopygus). The squirrel-sized, luxuriously maned tamarins live in Morro do Diabo State Park in the coastal Atlantic Forest and depend on a diet of tree gum, fruit, and protein-rich insects. According to the new research, like its captive cotton-top cousins, the black lion tamarin seemed to instinctively know which object worked best to extract food, using a small sharp stick to harvest bugs from hard-to-reach places under tree bark. That’s pretty impressive, given that the mini-monkeys don’t have opposable thumbs!

Despite their penchant for problem-solving, tamarins can’t prevent the ongoing loss of their rainforest habitat. Threatened by the double-whammy of deforestation and climate change, the black lion tamarin was believed to be extinct until 1972. There are now only about 1000 of the rare animals left. The Atlantic Forest, where black lion tamarins make their home alongside 21 other primate species, 260 amphibians, 138 mammals, and 6000 plant species, is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on our planet, but only 7% remains. Although the Atlantic Forest has been designated as one of the critical regions on Earth by the World Wildlife Fund and is listed as a World Heritage Site, it is still under threat.

You can learn about efforts to save the Atlantic Forest and all of its inhabitants from WWF. And if you’re especially interested in primates, you can get more info about the masterful monkey ways of cotton-top and black lion tamarins, as well as other highly intelligent species from the New England Primate Conservancy.

Oh, and don’t forget to participate in the annual celebration of successful food acquisition in the wild—Fat Bear Week. You can cast your vote for the best representative of brown bear plumpitude through October 6.

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Lisa S. French October 2, 2020

To Bee or RoboBee

3-minute read

Sighing in roses, saffron blooms, buddleia;
where bees pray on their knees, sing praise
in pear trees, plum trees; bees
are the batteries of orchards, gardens, guard them. — Carol Ann Duffy

Keep your eyes peeled, autonomous robotic bees may be coming to crop-fields near you. Measuring about half the length of a paper clip and weighing in at less than one-tenth of a gram, the insect-inspired microbots were developed by scientists at Wyss Institute to replace rapidly dwindling populations of bees, the world’s natural food crop pollinators.

While a global fleet of Robobees may sound pretty cool from a tech-wow perspective, when it comes to substituting pollinating machines for the real deal, researchers at the Centre for Agri-Environmental Research and Institute of Bee Health say not so fast. Before we roll out tiny red carpets to welcome substitute bees to the planet, according to an analysis published in Science of the Total Environment, we should consider a simpler, more holistic solution—protecting our natural pollinators and the landscapes they depend on for survival.

In the debate around bees versus Robobees, it turns out that replacing live bees with pollinating machines is not that straightforward. Bees have been honing their sophisticated sensory abilities and specialized pollination skills for over 130 million years in response to the unique shapes, scents, and colors of hundreds of thousands of flowering plants. While microbots may be capable of pollinating easy-access plants like sunflowers, the innate expertise of bees is hard to replicate across diverse crop species.

Not only are bees adaptable and super-skilled at their jobs, they also work for free, contributing between $235 to $577 billion to annual global food production. In contrast, robotic bees are pricey. At an estimated cost of $10 per microbot, replacing the billions of bees needed to pollinate crops with machine bees would run in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And unlike live bees, robotic bees need maintenance. Rather than creating a new machine-bee rental and repair industry, scientists argue that restoring pollinator habitats would be a far more cost-effective way to support food production. At a time when we are aiming to reduce our global carbon footprint, the environmental impact of manufacturing, distributing, and disposing of fleets of robotic bees could be enormous.

And bees don’t go about their important business in isolation. They’re critical components of biodiversity, helping to maintain the balance of environmental systems that support life on Earth. Replacing diverse pollinators with a single microbot is a risky business. It’s not clear what impact swarms of machine bees may have on the delicate interdependent workings of nature. The adage when you fix one thing, be careful not to break something else comes to mind.

The idea that we can address environmental problems by replacing elements of the natural world with technology-based substitutes is not a new one. As the guardians of the planet, we have the ability to transform our relationship with nature and apply innovative, emerging technologies to map, monitor, protect, and restore rather than replace. Because beyond their much-appreciated bottom-line contributions to food security, bees are iconic and beloved members of the community of life and play an important role in human culture and well-being.

How components of nature are valued depends on who is doing the valuing. We treasure these industrious insects not just for their productivity but also for their poetry. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of watching a pollen-flecked bumblebee drowse in a dahlia, we think you’ll agree that there are some things in life for which there are no substitutes. It’s just better with bees—tiny, perfect soul anchors for a world in flux.

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Lisa S. French August 24, 2020

A Fish with Tooth-Covered, Retractable Eyeballs? Meet the Whale Shark!

2-minute read

If you’ve been celebrating Shark Week by binging and cringing your way through Jaws 1-4, you’re probably thinking that the massive teeth of those fictional fish are pretty darn scary. Well, maybe not the teeth so much as their limb-chomping potential. Now imagine a real-life shark with close to 3,000 teeth in its five-foot-wide mouth and a couple of thousand more covering its eyeballs. Talk about the fear factor! Except the real-life shark with all of those teeth is the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), and despite being about the size of a big yellow school bus, the primarily plankton-eating fish is quite a gentle creature.

While sharks are a notoriously toothy bunch, scientists at the Okinawa Churashima Research Center studying optical adaptations in vertebrates recently discovered that the whale shark has tiny teeth where they didn’t expect to find them—around its iris. So why does the whale shark need eye armor? Unlike most vertebrates, the fish has no eyelids to protect its small, protruding peepers from underwater hazards. The oak leaf-shaped tooth-like projections, known as denticles, shield the shark’s eyes from abrasions as it travels the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans in search of the large quantities of food that it needs to survive.

As if that evolutionary adaptation weren’t freaky enough, the whale shark has another unusual eye protection mechanism to compensate for its lack of lids. If the situation calls for it, the whale shark can retract its eyeballs into its eye sockets. One eye retraction event observed by researchers was in response to camera strobes. It seems that despite being popular subjects for underwater photographers, whale sharks are no fans of the flash. Although a few other lidless species, including electric rays, guitarfish, and leopard frogs can also tuck in their eyeballs, the whale shark’s retractable, armored eye combo is fairly rare.

Sadly, like many shark species, the whale shark is threatened with extinction. The global numbers of the large, slow-moving fish have more than halved over the last 75 years as a result of overfishing, bycatch (see video), and propeller strikes. The whale shark is now listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as endangered. As recently reported in Science, sharks are now functionally extinct in the waters of eight countries.

Even though these dentally well-endowed creatures may look like they can handle whatever comes their way, sharks still need all of the support that they can get when it comes to protecting their habitat. You can learn more about these fascinating fish and what you can do to help keep them safely in the swim from Ocean Conservancy. And you can track migrating whale sharks in real-time via satellite courtesy of Conservation International.

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Lisa S. French August 15, 2020

Bickering Bats

2-minute read

Although hanging out in tightly packed clusters comes naturally to fruit bats, apparently, proximity breeds crankiness in the furry night fliers. Tel Aviv University scientists studying the purpose and meaning of Egyptian fruit bat chat have concluded that they’re big on bickering, routinely calling out their roost mates on personal boundary violations. While the highly social and vocal animals may be a universally quarrelsome bunch, the researchers found that the fruit bat’s everyday disputes have to do with four specific intraspecies deal breakers. Analysis of close to 15,000 vocalizations recorded over 75 days showed that the winged mammals frequently engage in squabbles about food, roosting spots, sleeping arrangements, and unwanted advances.

Bats air their grievances face to face, directing tiny tongue-lashings at perceived offenders—no passive-aggressive, behind-the-bat grumbling for these creatures. Using state-of-the-art acoustic processing techniques, researchers were able to identify who was complaining, what they were complaining about, and who they were complaining to. Based on the tone and intensity of the confrontation, they were also able to predict the outcome with a fair degree of accuracy. As you might expect, the animal’s arguments ended in one of two ways: reconciliation or separation. It seems that even between fruit bats, when it comes to effective conflict resolution, it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.

So to cut back on bat bickering: paws off the personal mangoes, respect the roosting space, one bat per bunk, and romance by invitation only. Because fruit bats have feelings too, and they’re not shy about expressing them.

In addition to being eager, albeit cranky communicators, bats are also very important pollinators. Over 300 species of fruit depend on them for pollination. If you’re a tropical fruit-o-phile, you have bats to thank for your mangoes, bananas, guavas, and agave. You can get more bat facts and learn what scientists are doing to make sure that the only mammals capable of true flight live to pollinate another day at The Nature Conservancy.

By the way, if you’re in need of some nature-based soul soothing, the talented artists at Shika Shika music collective have produced another mood-boosting birdsong mix to help you get your groove back. The non-profit, crowd-funded digital album was created to raise awareness of the plight of some of our planet’s most threatened winged inhabitants. A Guide to the Birdsong of Mexico, Central America & the Caribbean features the black catbird, the Jamaican blackbird, the bearded screech owl, and other tropical beauties on background vocals. Have a listen!

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Lisa S. French August 7, 2020

Crushing the Extinction Curve

2.5-minute read

Are there just about enough elephants? What is the right number of rhinos? Is there such a thing as an appropriate population of polar bears?

As we continue to monitor coronavirus numbers amidst the current round of hotspot whack-a-mole, conservation scientists are paying close attention to another important set of planetary health figures—rising extinction rates among the estimated 2 million documented species that make up the natural world. From the littlest lemur to the biggest tusker elephant, regardless of size, the unique genetic make-up of every species contributes to the diversity of life. And it’s that biological diversity that keeps our ecosystems stable and functioning, which is a really good and necessary thing for the well-being of all of Earth’s inhabitants.

Protecting and preserving the interdependent members of interconnected ecosystems is a massive, multi-faceted challenge. Is there a single target number that we should aim for that can be applied across millions of species to ensure that we can all keep on keeping on? Like the web of life, it’s complicated. Every species loss reduces diversity and weakens the web to varying degrees.

Scientists calculating how many species we can afford to lose have come up with a clear numerical goal to raise public awareness so that biodiversity conservation can be front and center as we make plans to protect nature better post-pandemic. According to their June 2020 report, the current rate of extinction is estimated to be up to 2,000 species a year—much higher than it should be so that Earth can continue to function as we like it. To help reduce extinctions everywhere on the globe, and to ensure that there is a place for everything and everything is in its place for proper planetary functioning scientists are recommending that we don’t exceed 20 extinctions a year across all species and ecosystems. From 2,000 to just 20.

Can we do it? To quote the stoic’s stoic, Marcus Aurelius, “…if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.” Through international cooperation, conservationists believe it is within our reach to reduce the number of species extinctions globally. As a case in point, despite a very turbulent year that has all but eliminated the tourism that provides critical support to conservation groups in biodiversity hotspots, Big Life Foundation continues to crush the megafauna extinction curve in Kenya. One of the most effective conservation organizations in Africa, Big Life protects and secures wildlife in 1.6 million acres of some of the most important natural habitat left in the world. And through the development of programs that benefit local communities, including critical health and education initiatives, Big Life also supports the people who will support conservation into the future. Winning hearts and minds through clever community-based conservation for healthy people on a healthy planet—most definitely humanly possible.

You can find out what’s currently happening on the ground in Kenya from Big Life’s conservation scientist Jeremy Goss and head of security Craig Millar here. If you would like to explore the strikingly evocative wildlife photography of Big Life co-founder Nick Brandt you can do that here. And if you’ve got any headspace left to monitor non-COVID-19 numbers, you can keep tabs on 95% of species known to science at the Catalogue of Life.

Before we go, we’d like to bid farewell to the smooth handfish. The last of its fish-fingered kind has officially departed the planet—the first modern-day marine fish to be declared extinct. We just got to know you, but we miss you already.

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Lisa S. French July 29, 2020

The Flower Whisperers

2-minute read

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it — Ralph Waldo Emerson

According to a remarkable and hopeful new ETH Zurich study, bumblebees experiencing pollen deprivation resulting from climate change have learned to garden as if their hives depend on it—and they do.

Global heating is creating a seasonal mismatch between flower resources and the emergence of bumblebees in spring. No flowers, no pollen, no bees. A scarcity of the pollen that bee larvae and worker bees need to survive can negatively impact reproductive success and prevent queen bees from establishing new colonies. Heatwaves and uncommonly warm temperatures have already reduced populations by 46% in North America and 17% in Europe.

The upside (we love upsides!) is that bumblebees may be developing coping strategies to adapt to our new environmental reality, and they’re actually helping flowering plants adapt along with them. The Swiss study found that brainy bumbles have adopted a hive-saving, pollen gathering workaround to coax blooms from plants weeks ahead of schedule. By cutting distinctively shaped holes in the leaves of tomato and black mustard plants, bumblebees substantially accelerated their flowering time by an average of 30 days, approximately 25 days earlier than mechanically perforated plants. When available pollen was limited, the rate of plant perforation was significantly higher and only minor when pollen was plentiful.

Researchers believe that by helping to correct the mismatch between bloom time and hive emergence, the perforating activity of these furry little problem solvers may increase the resilience of plant-pollinator interactions to the destructive impacts of global heating. Given that about eight percent of plants rely on bumblebees for pollination, including eggplants, tomatoes, blueberries, and potatoes, we’re grateful for their efforts to bee the change.

IN SOLIDARITY

Like the flower and the bumblebee, we humans are interconnected. At Favorite World Press, we believe that our shared humanity and our faith in the strength of diverse communities are more powerful than the forces that aim to divide us.

FWP and our tree-planting partner American Forests stand in solidarity with the Black community and support organizations doing essential work to achieve social justice and ensure sustainable transformation. Because the best time to help create a more equitable world, where everyone has an opportunity to flourish, is now.

You can learn more about the mission to create a fair and just future here:

Advancement Project and the Equal Justice Initiative, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Campaign Zero .

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Lisa S. French June 6, 2020

Owl Alone

2-minute read

Just one. That’s how many Norfolk Island boobook owls (aka morepork owls) were left on the small, South Pacific territory of Australia in 1986. Decades of extensive deforestation of the large, old-growth trees the birds depended on for safe nesting had reduced the population of the small, spotted owls to a sole female survivor. With a shortage of trees to nest in and no other owls to nest with, the last Norfolk Island boobook was in reproductive dire straits—owl alone. In 1987, concerned scientists determined to ensure the world’s rarest owl wouldn’t be the end of her species’ genetic line came up with a conservation strategy for matchmaking in the wild.

When it’s a matter of preserving DNA representing thousands of years of evolutionary adaptation in a specific environment, it’s not as if any old owl would do for the lone bird’s mate. To ensure the offspring of the last Norfolk Island boobook would carry on her unique traits, Australian conservationists imported two male New Zealand boobooks, her nearest genetic relatives, for a species-saving liaison. The Norfolk Island boobook took to one of the feathered New Zealand fellows almost immediately, and the two owls produced five hybrid offspring. The population continued on an upward trajectory and by 1995 there were nine new hybrid owls resulting from the original Norfolk Island/New Zealand match up. It looked as if the assisted avian pairing had paid off. But in 2012, the birds hit another rough patch and stopped breeding for close to a decade.

To help overcome the dual pressures of invasive predators and habitat loss, avian ecologists from Australia’s Monash University added more nesting boxes and owl monitors to Norfolk Island National Park in hope of encouraging the birds to carry on. And in April of 2020, researchers made an exciting discovery—two utterly adorable hybrid owl chicks were located, putting an end to a long reproductive dry spell for a bird species perched on the edge of extinction.

Some may ask why preserving the genome of one little owl is so important in the grand scheme of things. There are many reasons to conserve species, including the right to existence, ethical considerations, and cultural significance, as well as maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Conservation interventions that protect the island bird’s forest habitat can also benefit other threatened flora and fauna.

As conservation strategies go, most researchers agree that the intentional hybridization of endangered animals is far from a perfect solution. But when there is only one isolated bird of its kind remaining, as in the case of the Norfolk Island boobook, hybridization may be the only option left to maintain its distinctive genetic traits. There’s a saying that perfect is the enemy of great, and these owl hybrids are living proof because they sure look great to us. The last little boobook just needed a bit of extra help to be owl-right!

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Lisa S. French May 28, 2020

Saving the Elusive Okapi

2.5-minute read

In honor of Endangered Species Day, we’d like to invite you to say hello to the rare and elusive okapi.

While “okapi” may sound like the name of an alternative fuel SUV, or perhaps a new brand of oat milk, or maybe an alternative fuel SUV that runs on oat milk, as you can see it’s none of those things. And even though it may have a body similar to a horse and striped legs like a zebra, it’s also neither of those. Although sometimes figuring out what something isn’t can help you figure out what it is, we know that you don’t have all day, so here is some instant info on the okapi, its whereabouts, and the international efforts to save the hard-to-find forest dweller from extinction.

The okapi (Okapia johnstoni) or African “forest giraffe” is one of only two remaining members of the Giraffidae family and also one of the most threatened animal species on the planet. With its striking physical characteristics, including outsized ears, long neck and extra-long (up to 18 inches!) dark blue tongue, the okapi is a sight to behold. However, not many people have seen it because the shy herbivore simply does not want to be seen. Even though the okapi has been around for approximately 18 million years and is one of the oldest mammal species on Earth, it was only officially discovered by scientists in the rainforests of what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1900.

The okapi’s uniquely striped coat enables it to blend in seamlessly with shafts of sunlight in forest undergrowth, helping it to steer clear of predators and researchers alike. Combined with its camouflaging ability, the okapi’s highly elusive nature and remote location pose a special challenge to scientists working to track populations and develop conservation strategies in hope of bringing the rare animal back from the brink.

As is true of many endangered animal species, one of the biggest threats to the okapi’s existence is the loss of the forest habitat that it depends upon for survival. Despite being classified as protected in 1992, as a result of ongoing deforestation, conflict, poaching, and mining, the iconic creature’s numbers continued to plummet. When the okapi was officially listed as endangered by the IUCN in 2013, it was estimated that over the previous 24-year period, the global population of 10,000 to 35,000 animals had declined by 50%.

So how do conservationists set about finding and protecting an endangered animal that doesn’t want to be found? Historically, to confirm the presence of okapi in a specific location, scientists relied on good old-fashioned dung detection along with anecdotal reports of animal remains from conservation patrols across protected areas. To modernize monitoring of the evasive animal in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, a 13,700 square kilometer stretch of the Ituri Forest in the DRC and home to the largest known population of the imperiled species, researchers from the Zoological Society of London, working alongside local communities and the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature, are now aiming to integrate technology into the mix, including camera traps and genetic testing.

One of the most important factors in ensuring endangered species like the okapi remain present and accounted for is raising public awareness of their existence. So now that you’ve met the okapi, feel free to introduce the blue-tongued wonder to your friends.

You can learn more about the collaborative efforts to protect this beautiful, bashful animal, it’s remarkable creature features, as well as the indigenous origins of its distinctive name from the Okapi Conservation Project.

If you’d like to find out how to help save other endangered animals, National Geographic has a handy slideshow of 50 at-risk species and a what-to-do list to get you started.

And to kick off your weekend in—or out—we leave you with some wildlife video joy—endangered olive ridley turtle hatchlings on the way to making tiny waves in their water world. Go, go, go!

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Lisa S. French May 15, 2020