The amazing story of the coelacanth is one of the wonders of the living world that inspires marine biologists such myself. Coelacanths, part of the offshoot lineage of fishes known as "lobed finned ", are very different from typical "ray finned" fishes that you usually think of. Their bizarre lobed fins are thought to be an intermediate step between fish fins and amphibian legs. Scientists had known that these weird fish existed because of fossils for over a century, but we believed that they went extinct 65 million years ago... until a South African fisherman caught one in 1938. [more inside]
posted by WhySharksMatter on Sep 7, 2009 - 49 comments

"Mountain chickens have very peculiar breeding habits" "Alien-like" scenes of tadpoles feasting on eggs emerging from their mother have been caught on camera. The footage marks the success of a captive breeding programme for the critically endangered mountain chicken frog, one of the world's largest frogs. (BBC) Not for the easily squicked.
posted by longsleeves on Aug 11, 2009 - 31 comments

A film (1 hour) about disappearing languages: The Linguists [more inside]
posted by idiomatika on Jun 11, 2009 - 23 comments

The long-beaked echidna: plump, terrier-size creatures abristle with so many competing notes of crane, mole, pig, turtle, tribble, Babar and boot scrubber that if they didn’t exist, nobody would think to Photoshop them. More info, video, and images here and here.
posted by amro on Jun 9, 2009 - 25 comments

National Trust Releases 2009 List of 11 Most Endangered Historic Places , including Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple. Additional detail and sites from past years here.
posted by Miko on Apr 28, 2009 - 18 comments

Endangered Species Act Protections Restored by President Obama. Previous regulation made it easier to start projects without consulting scientists.
posted by Smaaz on Mar 4, 2009 - 17 comments

Behold the Colorado River delta. Home to 400 species of plants and wildlife, it once had beaches of clams, groves of native cottonwood and megatons of shrimp and commercial fish. The wetlands now cover an estimated 5% of its former swath and glory, barely surviving invasive plant species and the massive on-line reservoir fillings of the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams. Recommendations include restoring this desert estuary that once claimed nearly 3000 square miles. Good luck to the little Vaquita porpoise, the smallest and most endangered cetacean.
posted by Brian B. on Dec 14, 2008 - 14 comments

Mini Monkees Of Brazil
posted by vronsky on Oct 13, 2008 - 17 comments

A previously unknown population of 125,000 lowland gorillas have been discovered in the swamps of the Congo Republic. Enjoy them while they last.
posted by Daddy-O on Aug 5, 2008 - 53 comments

Meet Lonesome George. George is the last known remaining Pinta Island Tortoise. That's pretty lonely. He's also, according to some, the most famous reptile in the world. via. But there's good news: George might be a dad!
posted by allkindsoftime on Jul 23, 2008 - 25 comments

What Is A Species? "To this day, scientists struggle with that question. A better definition can influence which animals make the endangered list."
posted by homunculus on Jun 8, 2008 - 11 comments

The [US] National Trust for Historic Preservation has released its 21st annual list of the nation's Most Endangered Historic Places. Among them: Sumner Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas, (where Linda Brown tried to register for school, resulting in Brown vs. Board of Education); New York City's Lower East Side; California's State Parks; Philadelphia's Boyd Theatre, and several others. The previous 20 years of Most Endangered Historic Places can be found in the Archive. [more inside]
posted by Miko on May 20, 2008 - 16 comments

“I can’t express how extremely disappointed I am that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has chosen to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act," Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski said in a statement issued today. [more inside]
posted by salvia on May 14, 2008 - 61 comments

every two weeks a language becomes extinct. there are ~7,000 human languages on earth, but that number is estimated to halve by the end of the century. swarthmore hosts extensive information about endangered languages, and the mission of the living tongues organization is to preserve and revitalize such languages.
posted by brooklynexperiment on Sep 19, 2007 - 51 comments

Four endangered gorillas were found shot dead in Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a conservation group announced today. For all the evil bastards that do this, there are many, many more good people fighting the good fight to help keep gorillas healthy. One, even has a blog.
posted by james_cpi on Jul 26, 2007 - 41 comments

Australia is home to the biggest worm in the world, the Giant Gippsland Earthworm - Megascolides australis. The next biggest is the Giant Palouse Earthworm - Driloleirus americanus from Oregon. Both [Gippsland, Palouse] are only classed as vulnerable in the threatened category of the IUCN Red List, simply because they are hard to count. This is despite the extreme measures taken to save some and to try and just find a live specimen of others.
posted by tellurian on Jun 13, 2007 - 25 comments

Global warming is to blame for the disapearing act of Polar Bears in the arctic. After years of so called "Scientific proof" the Bush administration finally admits they were wrong.
posted by PreteFunkEra on Dec 28, 2006 - 52 comments

Elephants are self aware (news story, videos). "As a result of this study, the elephant now joins a cognitive elite," said researcher Frans de Waal at Emory University. [Past posts tagged with "elephant" "elephants"]
posted by salvia on Oct 31, 2006 - 52 comments

Amphibian Extinction Crisis: "For the first time in modern history, because of the way that humans are impacting our natural world, we're facing the extinction of an entire class of organisms....This is not the extinction of just a panda or a rhino, it's a whole class of organisms." Original declaration of the Amphibian Conservation Summit (pdf). More details in the BBC and San Francisco Chronicle. Previously.
posted by salvia on Jul 7, 2006 - 9 comments

Panda, Inc. - National Geographic does pandas, including this surfeit of cuteness clip of Tai Shan and mom playing. Watch for panda mania to break out in the U.S. as we count down to Tai Shan's one year birthday. At 53 pounds, he is coming along nicely - see his progress in his photo album since birth. Meanwhile, in the wild, happy news that the panda population may be double what was previously thought. Yay! (via adorablog's great panda file.)
posted by madamjujujive on Jun 24, 2006 - 12 comments

What animals are endangered? (2006, updated from 2004) One in four mammals. One in three amphibians. Raw data and photos behind what others call the mass extinction crisis. Polar bears expected extinct in 25 years. In a little good news, Great Apes may be granted human rights in Spain (like the mountain gorilla -- all 660 that remain). In other news, without salmon, widespread bankruptcy expected in California's fishing industry. Me? I can only afford an electric sheep.
posted by salvia on May 3, 2006 - 41 comments

Endangered Gizmos via the EFF (warning, they do want your money to continue fighting "to defend our rights to think, speak, and share our ideas, thoughts, and needs using new technologies, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web.")
Lawsuits have driven some excellent consumer products into extinction, like the ReplayTV 4000, DVD X Copy and the lamented wild and crazy Napster 1.0 including what drove them into extinction. They also list endangered gizmos like the HD TV PCI Card, Morpheus and Generic FireWire, open Wifi hot spots and CD burners.
Among the "saved" gizmos is the Skylink garage door opener which had been attacked under the DMCA.
posted by fenriq on Feb 8, 2005 - 5 comments

The frogs are in trouble. This might sound like good news for more right leaning brethren, but alas, the toads, newts and amphibians in general also look to be facing future problems. Up to a third of all species may face extinction. As ever, humanity looks to be the cause.
posted by biffa on Oct 15, 2004 - 4 comments

Farewell, eels.
posted by troutfishing on Aug 2, 2004 - 36 comments

A new report [complete PDF here] by the Center for Biological Diversity reports that 114 species have gone extinct in the first twenty years of the Endangered Species Act, mostly due to lack of enforcement and political ineptitude.

Here's a list of currently endagered animal and plant species, and an organization that tracks and lists known extinctions.
posted by moonbird on Apr 22, 2004 - 5 comments

Imagine how different politics would be if debates were conducted in Tariana, an Amazonian language in which it is a grammatical error to report something without saying how you found it out. Say No More. Some call it Murder that is a threat to survival. On Saving Dying Languages. A sample project: Iquito Language Documentation Project (PDF) Here are some Endangered language Resources. Here is a booklist by Andrew Dalby on lost and threatened languages and here you can put your money where your mouth is: Endangered Language Fund.
posted by y2karl on Mar 1, 2004 - 11 comments

The Endangered Species Act marked its 30th anniversary this December. Some say we need it while others say we need to change it. Whatever its faults, many species have benefited from it.
posted by homunculus on Dec 30, 2003 - 5 comments