The head of an animal conservation NGO who had received numerous death threats has been shot and killed by an unknown gunman in Tanzania. Wayne Lotter, 51, was shot on Wednesday evening in the Masaki district of the city of Dar es Salaam. The wildlife conservationist was being driven from the airport to his hotel when his taxi was stopped by another vehicle. Two men, one armed with a gun opened his car door and shot him.

Good news out of South Africa (home to a very large rhinoceros population) - poaching numbers seem to be decreasing and poaching related arrests are increasing. 2016 saw 1,054 rhinos poached for the horns, a drop from the 1,174 rhinos taken in South Africa in 2015. At the same time, there were approximately 680 arrests that came as a direct result of park ranger intervention, up from about 315 such arrests in 2015.

Last Friday, Hans Nilsson in Sweden finally caught sight of an elusive creature he'd been trying to capture on film for three years straight.

An Argentinian man has been killed in Namibia after he was trampled by an elephant, local media report. The Namibia Press Agency said the hunter, identified as 46-year-old Jose Monzalvez, was killed on Saturday afternoon in a private wildlife area 70 kilometers (43 miles) northwest of the small town of Kalkfeld.

A bear that got stuck in a car in the US state of Colorado took a short joyride before crashing, police say. Durango resident Ron Cornelius awoke to find a Subaru SUV crashed at the bottom of the hill at the end of his driveway. "Usually, I don't get up at 5 o'clock unless there is a bear driving a car down the street," he joked to the Durango Herald newspaper.

Cecil the lion’s oldest cub has been shot dead by trophy hunters. Xanda was killed outside the Hwange National Park in north west Zimbabwe, according to lion guardians at the national park. He was just over six years old and had several young cubs.

The first of the bodies was discovered by a hiker who snapped a photo of the suspicious scene with his cellphone. Buried in a nest on the westernmost spit of the Hawaiian island of Oahu was a dead bird the size of a human child… By Brittany Lyte.

A WWF appeal aims to highlight the threat of habitat destruction and climate change on wild populations

Two lions who were rescued from circuses in Colombia and Peru last year and transported to South African wild have been killed by poachers in Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary.

Thousands of elephants being used for entertainment across Asia are kept in cruel, abusive conditions fuelled by the growing tourism industry, World Animal Protection has found. Three out of four elephants surveyed in south-east Asia’s popular tourist destinations are living in harsh conditions where they are being used for rides, with mostly steel or wooden saddles, and tied in chains less than three metres long.

Carcasses found off Canada in recent weeks in what may be biggest single die-off of one of world’s most endangered whale species, expert says. By Ashifa Kassam.

Endangered big cats - a mother and two cubs - frolic in front of the lens, before stopping the show by removing the memory card with paw.

The House Appropriations Committee voted last week to allow the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to begin euthanizing wild horses, whose large, mostly unchecked population has reportedly created problems for both government and private businesses. Though advocates of the approved amendment claim this euthanasia is the most humane solution, horse and animal advocates object and blame the BLM and government directly.

'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'

Scientists reporting in the Journal of Mammalogy on May 30 have identified a new species of flying squirrel living in the Pacific Coast region of North America.

Latest estimates show that there are 104 tigers in the Kaziranga National Park and Burachapori, about 250 km from here. In 2014, there were 83 tigers in Kaziranga. While 95 adult tigers were found in Kaziranga National Park, two adult tigers and their cubs were found in Burachapori. Both the parks are located within the Kaziranga Tiger Reserve, sprawling over an area of 860 sq km.

To see how far we've come in restoring grizzly bear populations in and around Yellowstone National Park, consider: There are five times more grizzlies now than there were in 1975, when they were first protected under the Endangered Species Act. The area grizzlies roam has increased by half. And conflicts with bears attracted to landowners’ chicken coops now pose a greater threat than hunting.

Erin Johnson, 27, of Anchorage, was killed Monday by a black bear while she was doing contract work for Pogo Mine in Interior Alaska.This was the second fatal bear attack in a two day span.

The pit organ is part of the snake's somatosensory system — which detects touch, temperature and pain — and does not receive signals from the eyes, confirming that snakes 'see' infrared by detecting heat, not photons of light.

The calf in this video was separated from the rest of its herd and tries to keep up with nearby vehicles instead. By Heather Brady.

A camp staffer at a Christian summer camp in Colorado received medical care after he was made awake early Sunday by a bear chewing on his head. The 19-year-old said that he thought he was dreaming as he heard a "crunching sound," only to wake up in "immense pain" as the black bear attempted to drag him away from the Glacier View Ranch campsite, Colorado Parks & Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill told CNN.

A teen staffer at a Colorado camp fought off a bear after waking up Sunday to find the animal biting his head and trying to drag him away.

More than 200 sheep have plunged to their deaths in the Pyrenees while apparently trying to escape a brown bear. The bears have been reintroduced to the mountain region over the past three decades after being wiped out by hunters.

The animals tripped an alarm early Friday morning.

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.

Conservationists don’t have enough money to save all the endangered species. How do we decide which ones live, and which ones die? A controversial new system for choosing may be coming to America soon.

One of the UK’s last killer whales, which was found dead last year, had some of the highest levels of a toxic pollutant ever recorded. By Rebecca Morelle.

Scientists in Denmark say that the country now has its first pack of wolves in over 200 years. Wolves hadn't been seen in the country in two centuries until one was spotted in Jutland five years ago. Since then, there have been concerns that male and female animals would meet and eventually mate, the Copenhagen Post reports. That now appears to have happened. DNA evidence from faeces has confirmed a female has settled in west Jutland, and CCTV images have shown a pair of wolves moving together in the region.

“Fly still, I’m about to land.”

The Sun is rising on a calm and cloudy morning in late February 2017, and Jamie Sneddon and I have an important collection to make. After a short drive along the north-east coast of Scotland – passing open fields, detached bungalows, and blooming bushes of gorse that shine with a radiant yellow under the grey sky – we arrive at the muddy entrance of a farmyard. Many of the locals here in the remote Scottish Highlands are crofters: they nurture and trade certain root vegetables and small numbers of livestock and poultry, a lifestyle first developed in the 19th Century.

…and why Seattle may be the Corvid Capital of the World. By James Ross Gardner.

A new book profiles people who have devoted their lives to protecting the world’s at-risk animals. By Colette Harris.

Wolves and other top predators need large ranges to be able to control smaller predators whose populations have expanded to the detriment of a balanced ecosystem. That’s the main finding of a study appearing May 23 in Nature Communications that analyzed the relationship between top predators on three different continents and the next-in-line predators they eat and compete with. The results were similar across continents, showing that as top predators’ ranges were cut back and fragmented, they were no longer able to control smaller predators.

John Bevis explores the various feats of cunning and subterfuge undertaken by the Kearton brothers — among the very first professional wildlife photographers — in their pioneering attempts to get ever closer to their subjects.

Mule deer, pronghorn and other animals rely on unbroken migration routes for food and survival, a necessity now in jeopardy as Trump pushes for development. By Oliver Milman.