https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Kazakhstan said Wednesday it will authorize the hunting of saiga antelopes, once an endangered species that the government says is now threatening farming in the vast Central Asian country. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-kazakhstan-endangered-antelopes.html Ecology Wed, 28 May 2025 10:40:01 EDT news667647228 After a few hesitant steps following a long flight from Prague, three Przewalski horses galloped off for the first time into the Kazakh steppe—the native habitat of this endangered species. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-wild-horse-species-kazakh-steppes.html Ecology Mon, 10 Jun 2024 04:46:14 EDT news637213569 The icy peaks of Jargalant Mountain are supposed to belong to snow leopards, whose numbers have dwindled to fewer than 1,000 in Mongolia, but hard-pressed herders are increasingly pushing into the vulnerable animals' traditional habitat. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-mongolia-wildlife-overgrazing.html Ecology Wed, 08 May 2024 03:32:48 EDT news634357960 The world is facing three planetary crises: biodiversity loss, climate change and environmental pollution. Recognized threats to biodiversity include habitat loss and overexploitation but new analyses suggest that migratory species are faring particularly badly. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-viewpoint-migratory-animals-mass-extinction.html Plants & Animals Fri, 16 Feb 2024 12:13:05 EST news627307981 As part of the "VeWA" research consortium, researchers from the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center, along with international colleagues, have investigated the precipitation and flora of Central Asia during the Eocene period. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-team-vegetation-rainfall-central-asia.html Earth Sciences Mon, 29 Jan 2024 10:37:48 EST news625747065 The Russian invasion of Ukraine launched in February 2022 has sent economic, social and political shock waves around the world. In a newly published policy brief, we and other researchers and conservation scientists describe how these effects extend to biodiversity conservation efforts far beyond Ukraine. https://phys.org/news/2023-02-russia-aggression-threatens-efforts-nature.html Ecology Sat, 25 Feb 2023 10:00:01 EST news596213880 Biologging is the practice of attaching devices to animals so that scientific data can be collected. For decades, basic biologgers have been used to relay physiological data including an animal's heart rate or body temperature. But now, new technologies are affording scientists a more advanced insight into the behavior of animals as they move through their natural environment undisturbed. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-tracking-technology-animal-behavior.html Ecology Wed, 04 Jan 2023 09:10:01 EST news592044274 Kazakhstan is considering culls of its endangered saiga antelope, the ecology ministry told AFP Thursday, after citing scientific advice about the threat posed to agriculture since the population rebounded. https://phys.org/news/2022-06-kazakhstan-mulls-endangered-antelope-cull.html Ecology Thu, 30 Jun 2022 12:31:14 EDT news575811071 The population of endangered Saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan is now over 1.3 million, the ecology ministry said Tuesday, in the latest boost to a species threatened by poaching and disease. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-rare-saiga-antelope-population-million.html Ecology Tue, 31 May 2022 14:07:03 EDT news573224820 To reach the only place in the world where cave paintings of prehistoric marine life have been found, archaeologists have to dive to the bottom of the Mediterranean off southern France. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-undersea-stone-age-cave-art.html Archaeology Mon, 30 May 2022 03:45:46 EDT news573101139 Ecologists estimate that 15 to 37 percent of plant and animal species will go extinct as a direct result of the rapidly changing climate. But new University of Arizona-led research published in the journal Ecology Letters shows that current models don't account for the complexities of ecosystems as they are impacted by climate change. As a result, these extinction rates are likely underestimated. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-climate-only-underestimate-species-extinction.html Ecology Thu, 09 Dec 2021 07:34:36 EST news558257672 "It is hard now to even imagine how we could protect saiga without the use of satellite telemetry," says Albert Salemgareyev from the Association for the Conservation of Biodiversity of Kazakhstan (ACBK), in-country partner of Fauna & Flora International (FFI). https://phys.org/news/2021-12-satellite-collars-paving-smarter-saiga.html Plants & Animals Tue, 07 Dec 2021 08:11:23 EST news558087079 An international team, led by researchers from the Universities of Vienna and Tübingen, and the Max Planck Society, has identified five new human fossils from the key site of Denisova Cave in southern Siberia. The remains, which include three Denisovans and one Neanderthal, were found in a secure and well dated ~200,000-year-old context. Surrounded by archaeological remains such as stone tools and food refuse, the finds shed light on the adaptation strategies of these early hominins as they spread across Eurasia. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-molecular-analysis-reveals-oldest-denisovan.html Archaeology Tue, 30 Nov 2021 09:29:38 EST news557486968 The population of the critically endangered Saiga antelope has more than doubled since 2019, Kazakhstan said Friday, giving conservationists fresh hope for the steppe-dwelling animal's long-term survival. https://phys.org/news/2021-05-kazakhstan-rare-antelope-rebound-mass.html Ecology Fri, 28 May 2021 12:36:55 EDT news541424211 Kazakhstan said Friday that around 350 critically endangered Saiga antelopes had been killed, probably by lightning, after villagers found their bodies in steppe land in the west of the country. https://phys.org/news/2021-05-kazakhstan-rare-antelopes-lightning.html Ecology Fri, 14 May 2021 12:05:37 EDT news540212732 An international team of 92 scientists and conservationists has joined forces to create the first-ever global atlas of ungulate (hooved mammal) migrations, working in partnership with the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), a UN treaty. https://phys.org/news/2021-05-international-team-partners-global-ungulate.html Ecology Thu, 06 May 2021 14:00:06 EDT news539507530 Later this year, virtually all the countries on Earth are due to meet in China under the Convention on Biological Diversity to agree global conservation targets for 2030. Virtually may be the operative word, if COVID-19 precludes member states from meeting face to face in Kunming. Whatever the format, conservationists fervently hope that global leaders will agree to set aside 30% of the world's land and sea for nature by the end of the decade. But is that enough? https://phys.org/news/2021-03-neglected-species-significance-snails.html Plants & Animals Wed, 03 Mar 2021 09:14:59 EST news533985294 Walls and fences designed to secure national borders could make it difficult for almost 700 mammal species to adapt to climate change, according to new research. https://phys.org/news/2021-02-man-made-borders-threaten-wildlife-climate.html Ecology Mon, 08 Feb 2021 15:00:09 EST news531994513 Researchers of the SAIGAS (Service for the Analysis, Research and Management of Wild Animals) Group of the Faculty of Veterinarian Sciences of the CEU Cardenal Herrera (CEU UCH) University of Valencia recently published the results of project Parapez-2 in order to assess the transmission of parasitism among farmed and wild fish in fish farms of the Canary Islands and the Valencia region. The project is backed by the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry for Ecologic Transition and the Demographic Challenge by way of the PLEAMAR program, co-funded by the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF). The research team of the CEU UCH was chosen once again by the Biodiversity Foundation to continue with this research in the third edition of the project, Parapez-3, which has just begun. https://phys.org/news/2020-12-hundreds-fish-parasitic-transmission.html Plants & Animals Fri, 11 Dec 2020 09:30:01 EST news526900628 Targeted advertising and news coverage are powerful, and controversial, tools for influencing human perceptions and behavior. This influence can be perceived as exploitative—notoriously Cambridge Analytica's alleged influence in the Brexit referendum and the 2016 US Presidential election. Such cases have received widespread attention and raised ethical questions around whether, or how, these tools should be used. But do they, unwittingly, reveal new conservation solutions? https://phys.org/news/2020-09-harnessing-online-tactics-species.html Ecology Mon, 28 Sep 2020 09:25:07 EDT news520503904 A black swan event is a highly unlikely but massively consequential incident, such as the 2008 global recession and the loss of one-third of the world's saiga antelope in a matter of days in 2015. Challenging the quintessentially unpredictable nature of black swan events, bioengineers at Stanford University are suggesting a method for forecasting these supposedly unforeseeable fluctuations. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-method-unprecedented-events.html Ecology Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:10:05 EDT news514738532 Conservationists have been working for decades to save species such as pangolins and rhinos from illegal hunting and trading. And, with fears that the coronavirus pandemic originated from the wildlife trade, there's never been more pressure to find solutions. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-people-illegal-wildlife-products.html Ecology Thu, 09 Jul 2020 10:22:50 EDT news513508966 The last 30 years have not been kind to the saiga. The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 triggered a poaching free-for-all and the loss of more than 95% of the global population, a catastrophe followed by successive mass die-off events. https://phys.org/news/2020-06-mass-saiga-calving-critically-endangered.html Plants & Animals Thu, 25 Jun 2020 08:40:01 EDT news512292669 The unprecedented wildfire raging across Australia is not only destroying human lives, but has killed hundreds of millions of animals – perhaps billions before it is all over. https://phys.org/news/2020-01-feral-pig-carcasses-scientists-tons.html Ecology Fri, 10 Jan 2020 09:48:30 EST news497872106 Four years ago, more than 200,000 endangered saiga antelope dropped dead on the remote steppe grassland of Central Asia in the species' worst recorded mass mortality event. https://phys.org/news/2019-06-framework-endangered-species-pathogen.html Ecology Wed, 12 Jun 2019 07:04:09 EDT news479541843 New research has shed light on the origin and extinction of a giant, shaggy Ice Age rhinoceros known as the Siberian unicorn because of its extraordinary single horn. https://phys.org/news/2018-11-climate-siberian-unicorn.html Ecology Tue, 27 Nov 2018 06:29:11 EST news462522539 A team of conservationists from the Royal Veterinary College, WCS, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna published a letter in this week's edition of the journal Science on the threat of the virus peste des petits ruminants (PPR) to conservation. https://phys.org/news/2018-10-ppr-virus-poses-threat.html Ecology Mon, 15 Oct 2018 12:50:49 EDT news458826638 Ahead of a symposium organised by the Oxford Martin School on the Illegal Wildlife Trade, and international IWT conference hosted in London this week, Diogo Veríssimo, from Oxford University's Department of Zoology, reveals how campaigns have attempted to influence harmful consumer habits. https://phys.org/news/2018-10-shifting-desires-forbidden-goods.html Plants & Animals Tue, 09 Oct 2018 08:14:34 EDT news458291668 The sudden death of over 200,000 saiga antelopes in Kazakhstan in May 2015, more than 80 percent of the affected population and more than 60 percent of the global population of this species, baffled the world. https://phys.org/news/2018-01-scientists-uncover-secret-mass-antelope.html Ecology Thu, 18 Jan 2018 06:46:49 EST news435480382 Can you love an animal to death? https://phys.org/news/2017-11-captures-human-endangered-species.html Ecology Sat, 25 Nov 2017 05:53:08 EST news430811578