A pack of wild canines found frolicking near the beaches of the Texas Gulf Coast carries a substantial amount of red wolf genes, researchers said, a surprising discovery because the animal was declared extinct in the wild nearly 40 years ago. The finding has led wildlife biologists and others to develop a new understanding that the red wolf DNA is remarkably resilient after decades of human hunting, loss of habitat and other factors had led the animal to near decimation.

Researchers say a pack of wild canines found frolicking near the beaches of the Texas Gulf Coast carries a substantial amount of red wolf genes, a surprising discovery because the animal was declared extinct in the wild nearly 40 years ago. By David Warren.

A wounded tiger has amazed wildlife experts by coming out of the wild to seek human help after he was wounded. The tiger, known as Tikhon, suddenly appeared at a remote Russian border post on the frontier with China over the New Year period, and refused to leave. Even when the border guards - part of the FSB security service, formerly called the KGB - fired warning gunshots, the cat stayed put.

They've been on our planet for millions of years, but 2018 was the year several species officially vanished forever. Three bird species went completely extinct this year, scientists say, two of which are songbirds from northeastern Brazil: The Cryptic Treehunter (Cichlocolaptes mazarbarnetti) and Alagoas Foliage-gleaner (Philydor novaesi), according to a recent report from the conservation group BirdLife International.

Two elusive predators, the lynx and the fisher, battle to the death in the snowstorms of New England. By Joshua Rapp Learn.

You can give your cat the flu. You can also pass pneumonia to a chimpanzee or tuberculosis to a bird. This kind of human-to-animal disease transmission, known as reverse zoonosis, has been seen on every continent except one: Antarctica. Now, human-linked pathogens in bird poop reveal, for the first time, that even animals on this isolated, ice-bound landmass can pick up a bug from tourists or visiting scientists. This newly identified infection route could have devastating consequences for Antarctic bird colonies, including population collapse and even extinction.

Snowshoe hares eat meat, and they don't seem all that picky about what kind of animal it comes from. A natural history paper published recently in the journal Northwestern Naturalist documents hares in Yukon's boreal forest scavenging on grouse, loon, other hares and even lynx.

One of the most popular wolves in Yellowstone National Park was killed by a trophy hunter after wandering just outside the park last weekend. By Aris Folley.

Photographer Mads Nordsvee describes the sighting as a "fairytale moment".

The population of wild reindeer, or caribou, in the Arctic has crashed by more than half in the last two decades. A new report on the impact of climate change in the Arctic revealed that numbers fell from almost 5 million to around 2.1 million animals. The report was released at the American Geophysical Research Union meeting.

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.

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

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.

When do you need a broadsword, and when would you be better off with a dagger? That’s the question that faced artiodactyls, the group of mammals that includes deer, antelope, goats, giraffes, pigs, buffalo and cows, during their evolution. Many male artiodactyls fight over females using weaponized body parts such as horns and antlers. But pigs and several groups of deerlike animals have tusks instead, and a few species have both. Water deer have tusks so pronounced they are nicknamed “vampire deer.”

Two hundred million mounds of dirt dot an area about the size of Great Britain in a tropical forest in northeastern Brazil. The cone-shaped dirt piles are roughly twice as tall as the average American man and stretch 30 feet across at the base. The mounds, the work of countless generations of termites, rise from the earth every 65 feet or so and are visible from space.

From a surprised squirrel to an exasperated bear, a smiley shark and a tutu-wearing rhino.

Without Jones, the world might have lost the Mauritius kestrel, the pink pigeon, the echo parakeet and more – but the biologist’s methods are controversial. The last surviving bird of prey on Mauritius seemed doomed. In 1974, there were only four Mauritius kestrels left in the wild and attempts to breed them in captivity were failing. Extinction was “all but inevitable”, in the words of Norman Myers, one of the world’s leading environmental scientists.

Climate change has enabled the recent expansion of beavers into northwestern Alaska, a trend that could have major ecological consequences for the region in the coming decades.

Although wind turbines may be a valuable source of eco-friendly energy, they do have at least one drawback – bats are frequently killed by their spinning blades. A promising new system is designed to help keep that from happening, however, by producing an ultrasonic acoustic field. As most people likely already know, bats find their way around in the dark by emitting ultrasonic calls.

The Greenland shark is the longest-lived vertebrate on the planet, a new study says. The animal, native to the cold, deep waters of the North Atlantic, can live to at least 272 years—and possibly to the ripe old age of 500. (Related: "Meet the Animal That Lives for 11,000 Years.") “We had an expectation that they would be very long-lived animals, but I was surprised that they turned out to be as old as they did,” says study leader Julius Nielsen, a biologist at the University of Copenhagen.

Wind turbines are a leading source of green energy which could supply 12% of the world’s energy by 2020. But their use is often criticised for its impact on wildlife, particularly birds. Larger birds can collide with turbines and some have even learned to avoid flying near them.

The new species found where few scientists have gone before

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.

The world’s largest cat-proof fence has been completed in central Australia, creating a 94 square kilometre sanctuary for endangered marsupials. The 44km fence – made of 85,000 pickets, 400km of wire and 130km of netting – surrounds the Newhaven wildlife sanctuary, a former cattle station that has been bought by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. Endangered species such as the bilby, the burrowing bettong and the mala (also known as the rufous hare-wallaby) will have a chance to replenish their populations inside the massive sanctuary, safe from Australia’s feral cat epidemic.

US farmers are planting more and more acres with seeds coated with neonicotinoid pesticides. An ecologist explains why this approach is overkill and may be doing more harm than good.

The news coming out of East Africa's Virunga Mountains these days would have made the late (and legendary) conservationist Dian Fossey very happy. According to the most recent census, the mountain gorillas introduced to the world in Gorillas in the Mist, Fossey's book and the film about her work, have grown their ranks from 480 animals in 2010 to 604 as of June 2016. Add another couple hundred apes living in scattered habitats to the south, and their population as a whole totals more than 1,000. Believe it or not, this makes the mountain gorilla subspecies the only great apes known to be increasing in number.

A proposed ivory ban could be extended to protect hippos, walruses and narwhals, the government has said. Ministers have proposed strict legislation to ban the sale of ivory items of all ages, with a few exemptions, as part of efforts to protect elephants from poaching. Around 20,000 elephants a year are slaughtered for their ivory, and wildlife campaigners argue the ban will slow the pace of the killing. But concerns have been raised that the focus on elephants in the ban puts other ivory-bearing animals at increased risk of poaching for their ivory.

A park ranger is grateful to be alive after a terrifying grizzly bear attack outside his home in Bella Coola.Jordan Carbery said he arrived home last Monday night and saw some bears in his headligh…

A bear conservationist says she is shocked by Instagram videos showing two Vancouver-area girls hand-feeding black bears through an open patio door. In one of the videos, the two unidentified girls giggle when a bear cub swats at one of them after she gave it a cracker. Another video shows a girl feeding a cub a cracker through the sliding door. In a third, a man, who appears to be their father, feeds an adult-sized bear a full package of crackers through the same door.

In a southwest Louisiana crawfish pond, two endangered whooping crane chicks peck about for crawfish, insects, plants and other food. They're only 2 months old, but they dwarf the full-grown great egrets nearby. Their tall white parents bugle alarm at an ATV and people across the pond, and all four cranes move farther away.

More than 1,000 species of animals would face serious threats to their survival if U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed border wall with Mexico is built, scientists warned on Tuesday. Iconic creatures such as the Peninsular Bighorn sheep, Mexican gray wolf and the Sonoran pronghorn antelope — all of which are already endangered -- would see their populations dangerously fragmented by a wall, said the letter published in the journal BioScience.

A German cruise line is facing outrage after one of its employees shot and killed a wild polar bear in Norway after the animal attacked another of its employees. Hapag-Lloyd Cruises said its ship was docked at Spitsbergen, the largest island on Norway's Svalbard archipelago, on Saturday when the bear attacked a guard hired to go on shore before passengers to ensure there aren't any polar bears in the area.

The world’s second-largest penguin colony has collapsed in just a few decades, falling from half a million breeding pairs in the 1980s to just tens of thousands in 2017. Breeding colonies of king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) occupy unvegetated ground on islands in the Southern Ocean, including the remote Ile aux Cochons.