Today, after decades of action by islanders and conservationists, including Earle who described it as a critical “Hope Spot” to protect marine life, the almost obliterated seal population has made a remarkable recovery. An estimated 200,000 fur seals now live around the islands, “returning them to their previous role as key members of the ecosystem” says Earle, now 90, who returned to the island to dive in December 2025.

Last week, Earle and the 1,000-strong community of mainly lobster fishers were celebrating a new conservation win: earlier this month, in one of his last acts as the president of Chile, before José Antonio Kast was elected on 11 March, Gabriel Boric signed a historic agreement to extend protection of 337,000 sq km (130,000 sq miles) of the waters around Juan Fernández and the nearby Nazca-Desventuradas marine park.

In a statement, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) condemned the attack: “Across the world, rangers and protected area staff work at the forefront of conserving biodiversity and protecting ecosystems that are vital for all of humanity. Too often, they do so at great personal risk. The events at Upemba national park are a stark reminder of the dangers faced by those who dedicate their lives to protecting nature.”

“The Xingu is a highly unique river,” Lúcia Rapp Py-Daniel, a biologist and researcher at the National Institute for Amazonian Research, told Mongabay by phone. “Several species of fauna and flora have adapted to the rapids flowing over an almost continuous bed of rock that exists only there. We are seeing a loss of biodiversity, particularly with the disappearance of fish species that in many cases have not yet been studied.”

These egg-laying oddities are more birdlike than previously thought

Plants communicate with other organisms using volatile organic compounds, which are odor molecules released from flowers, leaves, and roots. You cannot see them, but they can carry a lot of meaning. These compounds can help attract pollinators, push away plant-eating insects, and support exchanges with microbes.

Taxonomists described 309 new species of freshwater fish in 2025

The report has plenty of photos

Hey look a yummy bunny! Look at how warm it is, twitching over there in that box....

licks air with tongue

I am gonna enjoy this one!

dammit it is a bun trap!

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Sharks might not be a natural biological group, with most species potentially closer kin to rays than to an oddball group of sharks.

The results, which haven’t been peer reviewed, suggest that most animals that people call sharks are more closely related to rays and skates than to hexanchiform shark species — just as Gould pointed was the case for some species called fishes. Biologists call such groups paraphyletic.