The oldest elephants wandering Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park bear the indelible markings of the civil war that gripped the country for 15 years: Many are tuskless. They’re the lone survivors of a conflict that killed about 90 percent of these beleaguered animals, slaughtered for ivory to finance weapons and for meat to feed the fighters.

As drones become smaller and cheaper, experts urge people to use caution when flying near wild animals like this brown bear and her cub.

As the Antarctic Peninsula heats up, the rules of life there are being ripped apart. Alarmed scientists aren’t sure what all the change means for the future. By Craig Welch, photographs by Paul Nicklen, Cristina Mittermeier, Keith Ladzinski.

In the face of global warming, polar bears continue to lose ground. The gradual withdrawal of the ice could lead to periods of scarcity with worrying repercussions. Among the victims of global warming, polar bears are probably the most iconic. These creatures have probably survived previous warm periods in the Arctic with stranded whale carcasses. However, this source of power may no longer suffice with the gradual removal of ice, reducing the number of platforms on the surface of which they can hunt seals.

Scientists estimate there are now 235 wild bengal tigers in Nepal, a huge leap from 2009, when there were only about 120 of the endangered animals. In just the last four years, the population jumped nearly 20 percent, up from 198 of the animals, according to analysis performed by Nepal’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, along with conservation groups including Panthera and the Zoological Society of London.

When an Aedes aegypti mosquito bites you, she – because only the females, which need blood as nutrients for their offspring, bite – will probe your skin with her proboscis as many as 20 times. Two pairs of sharp cutting edges, the fascicle, break the skin and then search for a blood vessel, withdrawing and re-entering until a suitable target is found. When the blood starts to flow, a salivary tube delivers a protein that stops it clotting. The mosquito holds still and then begins to suck; in 90 seconds’ time, she feels full, and stops. And then, if you are in parts of South and Central America and bang out of luck, you will have Zika.

The odds of seeing a deer are pretty high if you live close to a forest. Just in my own neighborhood the other day, I saw one roaming around in a neighbor’s backyard. A lot of people find deer to be a nuisance, claiming that the animals ruin their backyards by stomping on their plants and eating their grass and flowers. Having said that, I think this story might melt even the coldest of hearts and can potentially make all angry backyard owners rethink their perceptions of deer.

Dozens of nature reserves have helped wild pandas to breed, aiding the bears' move from endangered to vulnerable.

Durban - A specialised unit, set up to fight poaching have made great strides in their bid to stamp out rhino poaching. Over the last six months, a total of 365 rhino poachers have been convicted and an additional 15 men aged between 33 and 50, have been arrested. National police spokesperson, Brigadier Vish Naidoo said the 15 were nabbed following sting operations in Mpumalanga. He said police recovered four unlicensed firearms and ammunition.

In the 1800s, there were so many bighorn sheep in Wyoming that when one trapper passed through Jackson Hole, he described “over a thousand sheep in the cliffs above our campsite.” No such sights exist today. The bighorns slowly fell to hunters’ rifles, and to diseases spread from domestic sheep. Most herds were wiped out, and by 1900, a species that once numbered in the millions stood instead in the low thousands.

A scientific mission into the secret ocean lair of California’s great white sharks has provided tantalizing clues into a vexing mystery — why the fearsome predators spend winter and spring in what has long appeared to be an empty void in the deep sea. A boatload of researchers from five scientific institutions visited the middle-of-nowhere spot between Baja California and Hawaii this past spring on a quest to learn more about what draws the big sharks to what has become known as the White Shark Cafe, almost as if they were pulled by some astrological stimulus.

Wasps are being wiped out as quickly as bees - and their disappearance will be just as disastrous, according to new research. But the plight of wasps is going under the radar compared to that of their close cousins - because of their unpopularity. Nature's unloved insects are best known for ruining picnics - and leaving a painful sting when we try to swat them away.

Considered by many to be the least fish-like of fishes, swamp eels are a real oddity and rarely documented. Now Museum scientists have described an entirely new species. The fish was discovered not in water but in damp soil. Museum researcher Dr Rachunliu G Kamei uncovered it while searching the rainforest for an entirely different group of animal, the legless amphibians called caecilians.

We’re thrilled to report that the herds of wild horses that roam North Carolina’s Outer Banks have emerged from Hurricane Florence unscathed. Cape Hatteras National Seashore and Corolla Wild Horse Fund both confirmed on social media over the weekend that their equine populations are safe and sound following Hurricane Florence’s lashing last week. Corolla Wild Horse Fund herd manager Meg Puckett told The News & Observer that the wild herd found higher ground and grouped together against the wind and rain. People on the island also kept an eye on them.

The Wondiwoi Tree kangaroo is so rare and elusive that it disappeared for nearly a century and was assumed to be extinct. Now it has not only been spotted, but also photographed for the first time ever. The unusual monkey-like kangaroo clambers through the trees of the montane forests of New Guinea. It had been seen there only once before by Western scientists, in 1928.

The world’s first test tube lions are thriving a month after they were born, raising hopes the process could be used to save endangered big cats from extinction. The two cubs, named Viktor and Isabel, arrived following the artificial insemination of their mother by scientists at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Experts say the pioneering IVF – in which a male’s sperm was placed into the female egg – could now be used to breed species of tiger, lynx and snow leopard, whose numbers are all falling.

Most churches are focused on heaven, but in Poland, they seem to be providing a more earthly benefit: sanctuary for dozens of species of birds. That’s what biologists found when they surveyed the properties of 101 churches and an equal number of farmsteads in villages in southern Poland. Previous research had found that farms in Eastern Europe support large numbers of different kinds of birds, providing important sanctuaries for the species in areas where their more natural habitat was lost.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) announced their "profound concern" over the changes in the law, which would allow bone and horn products to be traded

Orangutan populations in Borneo are in steep decline and can not cope with with current levels of killing. Their jungle habitats are threatened by deforestation, driven by plam oil production. Orangutans are "highly likely" to become extinct if current trends continue, according to a study released Friday which found that the apes' population in Borneo had plunged by more than 100,000 in 16 years. The region's orangutans live exclusively on Sumatra and Borneo.

The most sophisticated, most urban, most reproductively fruitful of bears. By John McPhee.

The Bank of China has pledged at least 10bn yuan (£1.1bn) to create a vast panda conservation park in south-west Sichuan province, the Chinese forestry ministry has said. The Sichuan branch of the central bank signed an agreement with the provincial government to finance the vast national park’s construction by 2023. The park aims to bolster the local economy while providing the endangered animals with an unbroken range in which they can meet and mate with other pandas in order to enrich their gene pool.

The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act would shift $1.3 billion a year in oil and gas royalties to state wildlife conservation measures.

A Northern California man shot more than 130 hawks and other legally protected birds of prey on his land, leaving the carcasses to pile up at the foot of trees and telephone poles, wildlife officials said Wednesday. California Department of Fish and Wildlife managers believe the discovery near the rural town of Standish in Lassen County, on the border with Nevada, marks the largest poaching case involving raptors on record for the state, spokesman Capt. Patrick Foy said.

The cascade of ecological benefits that followed wolves’s return to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho suggests opportunities for similar efforts around the planet.

Villagers come to the rescue after icy wings ground hundreds of migrating birds. (Mar. 21, 2018)

It’s been nicknamed “the Clashindarroch Beast.” By Natasha Frost.

Undervalued and ignored, wetlands are disappearing and drying up in Nepal – leaving the communities and wildlife that depend on them exposed in a changing climate. By Ramesh Bhushal.

The new species found where few scientists have gone before

Law enforcement officials in Oregon are on the hunt for a bald-eagle killer. Oregon State Police issued a release Tuesday saying they were investigating after three bald eagles were found shot to death near Tangent, just south of Albany. Troopers believe the eagles were killed around March 16. No suspects have been identified.

It sports a green mohican, fleshy finger-like growths under its chin and can breathe through its genitals. The Mary river turtle is one of the most striking creatures on the planet, and it is also one of the most endangered. The 40cm long turtle, which is only found on the Mary river in Queensland, features in a new list of the most vulnerable reptile species compiled by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).

Wildlife authorities found 11 lions dead from suspected poisoning in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park, in the southwest of of the country, on April 10. The dead lions, eight of them cubs and the other three adult lionesses, were part of a pride that also included three males. The pride had been filmed along with other lions in the park for a television show focusing on conservation and featuring their habit of climbing and hanging out in the spreading branches of candelabra trees.

A 100-year-old law to protect birds can no longer be used to hold companies accountable for most bird deaths.

As they make their global journeys, migratory birds not only set birdwatchers’ binoculars agog, they also help the planet maintain its essential ecological balance.

More than half of Canada’s landmass is comprised of boreal forest—a vast and tree-filled region that extends across the country. To help conserve the forest, the province of Alberta has designated four new protected parks in its northeastern region, reports David Thurton of the CBC. When added to other contiguous conserved lands in Alberta, the new parks make up the largest stretch of protected boreal forests on the planet.

Beyond pandas and tigers, how many endangered species do you really know? By Elaina Zachos.