Estimates based on two wildlife databases suggest 5000 species are traded around the world, with larger, more distinctive animals most at risk

Scientists conclude the major factor is habitat loss driven by human activity.

The number of birds in the United States and Canada has declined by 3 billion, or 29 percent, over the past half-century, scientists find.

North America's birds are disappearing from the skies at a rate that's shocking even to ornithologists. Since the 1970s, the continent has lost 3 billion birds, nearly 30% of the total, and even common birds such as sparrows and blackbirds are in decline, U.S. and Canadian researchers report this week online in Science. "It's staggering," says first author Ken Rosenberg, a conservation scientist at the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology.

Ash, elm and rowan among trees threatened by pests and pollution, says biodiversity report

The mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs led to the world’s oceans being disrupted for millions of years, according to new research. Scientists who examined fossil records spanning 13 million years found that global species of plankton at the base of the ocean ecosystem were disrupted for 2 million years after a massive asteroid strike on Earth.

One of the last remaining megaherbivores, forest elephants shape their environment by serving as seed dispersers and forest bulldozers as they eat over a hundred species of fruit, trample bushes, knock over trees and create trails and clearings. Their ecological impact also affects tree populations and carbon levels in the forest, researchers report, with significant implications for climate and conservation policies.

Calls for Mexico to crackdown on use of illegal fishing nets after further decline of species

The Vaquita species was only discovered in 1958, but within a few decades numbers have hit critical levels.

Could this be any more symbolic?

They died of thirst on a remote Alaskan island. By Bryson Masse.

The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, believed extinct, had the quick wit of a killer new research reveals. By Gemma Tarlach.

At the end of the last Ice Age, most large animals in North America were wiped out, and others transformed themselves. Yet one has survived virtually unchanged to the present day. Where cars now drive along congested roads in the heart of modern Los Angeles, sabre-toothed cats once roamed. They stalked prey that ranged from hoofed mammals to creatures resembling elephants. The ferocious cats competed with dire wolves, American lions and short-faced bears.

World population keeps increasing. Humanity spreads all over the world just like a cancer, causes other species to go extinct, and changes the face of the earth. The net population in the world continues to increase at an alarming rate.

The world is hurtling towards the first mass extinction of animal life since the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, according to the most comprehensive survey of wildlife ever carried out. By 2020, the populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and other vertebrate species are on course to have fallen by more than two-thirds over a period of just 50 years, the Living Planet report found.

Stephen Hawking is one of many scientists who see the possible near-term demise of our species. Spend that 401k! By Phil Torres.

Penguin populations around the world are in decline and now New Zealand's Yellow-eyed penguins slip toward extinction. At their rate of decline, Yellow-eyed penguins will vanish from the Otago Peninsula of New Zealand in about 40 years.

Global Warming is the root cause because of which the 1st mammal species goes extinct. The Bramble Cay Melomys is the 1st mammal to go extinct.

'Extinction rates for birds, mammals and amphibians are similar to the five global mass-extinction events of the past 500 million years that probably resulted from meteorite impacts, massive volcanism and other cataclysmic forces'

When six massive endangered animals turn up dead in the span of a few weeks, conservationists do everything they can to find out why. Although they seemed otherwise healthy, the North American right whales were all recently found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. Now, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the Marine Animal Response Society, the Canadian Coast Guard, and others are working together to find out why the whales died.