The American Association for the Advancement of Science reported troubling news for lemurs in the February 21 issue of their Science Magazine. The report states that lemurs the most imperiled group of large vertebrates. Read the full article: Schwitzer et al 2014_Science-Averting Lemur Extinctions.Read more
Posts tagged: #extinction
Big Word of the Month: Biodiversity
This month’s big word is not that obscure or difficult to pronounce but the concept behind it can be a bit large to grasp. Biodiversity is a word and idea that tries to capture the complex relationships among different forms of life. It came into widespread use beginning in the 1980’s in scientific and political circles as an organizing theme in discussions of conservation. The rise of the word coincided with a change of focus for environmental groups from theRead more
Species Survival
Many of the posts on our blog have dealt in one way or another with red wolves. Keeper Marilyn has written a detailed series on the plight of the species and the efforts to reestablish it to the wild in North Carolina. Over the last 20 years the eastern North Carolina population has increased dramatically and has become a textbook example of reintroducing an extirpated species. Unfortunately, the only wild population of red wolves has been threatened by one ofRead more
Red Wolf History
So far, we have written several posts about our red wolves here. While most of them have discussed our wolves’ health, we have also shown some video of great interactions with enrichment, as well as talking about their annual physicals. However, there is an abundance of information to be shared about this critically endangered species, and a good place to start is with their history. Red wolves (picture left) used to be one of the only large predators in theRead more