A huge swath of the waters off Antarctica must be protected from fishing and other industries, environmental groups said on Monday.

More than 40% of the region needs to be given protection before one of the world's last true frontier areas is damaged irreparably by human activity, the Antarctic Ocean Alliance (AOA) said.

On the 20th anniversary of the saola's discovery, conservationists say the population of the reclusive species has dropped dramatically

Wild saola caught on a camera-trapped in Bolikhamxay Province, central Laos
An 'Asian unicorn' or saola caught on a camera-trapped in Bolikhamxay Province, central Laos in 1999. Photograph: William Robichaud/WWF International

Poaching in Vietnam and Laos may be driving the "Asian unicorn" to extinction, warns the WWF on the twentieth anniversary of its discovery.

Tiger (Panthera tigris) populations, on average, have declined 70 per cent across the world, including Bangladesh, in the last 30 years, according to the Living Planet Report 2012.
The Living Planet Index for tigers in the Report said that forced to compete for space in some of the most densely populated regions on the earth, the tiger’s range has also declined to just 7 per cent of its former extent.

The Naxalites are expanding their tentacles into the tiger territory. Thirty per cent of India’s tiger reserves are already under their control.

Indian forest officials, from the states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, present at the Global Tiger Recovery Programme (GTRP), complained of increasing Naxal infiltration in India’s heartland. The tiger reserves comprising Valmiki in Bihar, Palamau in Jharkhand, Indravati in Chhattisgarh, Buxa in West Bengal and Simplipal in Orissa are some of the reserves bearing the brunt of the Naxal menace.

Says State has no elephant population

PANJIM: As the Union Government is bracing up for three-day synchronized National Elephant Census in six States including Goa, the Forest Department has said that ‘State has no elephant population and the jumbos who come down here usually migrate from the neighbouring States.’ According to a directive issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), the six-State Census would begin from May 22 and will be later conducted throughout the country, the MoEF notification reads.

Melbourne Australia has been ranked as the seventh top polluter mainly due to carbon emissions, a report said.

Conservation group World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in its report said the spiralling global population and over-consumption are threatening the future health of the planet, ABC news reported. WWF released this year's Living Planet report, which has estimated humans are using 50 per cent more resources than the planet can provide.

Transact method being adopted

With the recent wildlife census in the North Division of the Nilgiris Forest department having revealed that the population of most of the wild animals was healthy, a two-day census got under way in the South division on Monday.

Speaking to The Hindu, the District Forest Officer, Nilgiris South, Anurag Mishra said that it was being conducted by forest officials with the help of volunteers from the World Wide Fund (WWF) of India and the Nilgiris Wildlife and Environment Association (NWLEA).

In a nation where a civil war and years of political deadlock have stunted prosperity and development, the burgeoning rhino population is one of Nepal's rare success stories.

The Himalayan country's endangered one-horned rhinoceros has increased its numbers significantly over recent years thanks to tightened security against poachers and community conservation programmes.

Wildlife experts spent a month last year conducting an exhaustive survey and counted 534 rhinos in Nepal's southern forests -- 99 more than when the last such census was carried out in 2008.

Dawa Steven Sherpa, 28-year-old mountain guide and adventure pioneer from Nepal, has been awarded the first ever WWF International President’s Award during a special ceremony at global conservation organization WWF’s Annual Conference in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Six years after the Yangtze river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer), or baiji, was declared "functionally extinct" by scientists, another marine mammal appears on the edge of extinction in China's hugely degraded Yangtze River. In less than two months, 32 Yangtze finless porpoises (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis), a subspecies of the finless porpoise, have been dead found in Dongting and Poyang Lakes in the Yangtze, reports the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).