Endangered Wildlife Species

The well-documented demise of an endangered frog reveals how swiftly the deadly chytrid fungus can decimate amphibians.

One bumblebee species that was once common throughout its range from Georgia State to Ontario, Canada has all but disappeared.

The largest analysis ever undertaken of what makes the existence of amphibians most precarious finds a single characteristic predominates.

Whether the Canadian government follows scientists' advice to legally protect an endangered animal depends upon whether the species has any commercial value.

Once an animal species drops below 50 individuals, there is little likelihood the species will survive in the wild without help from humans.

Research into the distribution of land animals in British Columbia, Canada finds that most species whose numbers are declining reside in the southern part of the province.

The puzzling demise of nine-spotted lady beetles took a new twist in 2006 when one of the insects was collected in an Arlington, Virginia home.

Endangered Mammals

Much of the habitat in northern Alberta that once supported wood bison is gone.

Infectious diseases have contributed to at least 31 extinctions worldwide and currently jeopardize 43 threatened mammal species.

Scientists have raised the alarm that less than two years remain before it's too late for saving a rare North American porpoise from going extinct.

Wolverines have disappeared from many parts of North America over the last century, and recent research shows that some of the remaining populations continue to plummet.

From field observations it appeared that Vancouver Island marmots frequently were not surviving hibernation, causing their drastic drop in numbers.

Hunting took a huge toll recently on the cougar population straddling the international border between BC's Kootenay region and northern portions of Idaho and Washington states.

An assessment of 34 species of seals, sea lions and walrus finds that certain natural environmental factors link with a species' vulnerability to extinction.

Mountain Caribou

Field research now confirms what anecdotal evidence previously suggested: snowmobiling causes mountain caribou to abandon high-quality winter habitat.

Several subpopulations of mountain caribou in British Columbia, including three with fewer than seven individuals in 2002, face imminent extinction.

Mapping the landscape features preferred or avoided by mountain caribou reveals almost no high quality terrain remains for these endangered ungulates south of the Trans-Canada Highway in British Columbia.

Researchers plugging expert consensus about caribou ecology into a Bayesian network model have come up with a transparent decision-making tool to help maintain woodland caribou habitat.

These ten rabbits and rodents have been documented as some of the rarest and most critically endangered in Canada and United States.

Five mammals have gone extinct in Canada and another fourteen are extirpated from individual provinces.

Killer Whales

Researchers propose that two marine areas of British Columbia be legally designated as critical habitat for resident killer whales under Canada's Species at Risk Act (SARA).

Fire retardant chemicals are accumulating in British Columbia's killer whales at concentrations high enough to likely harm their health.

When boats appear in the vicinity, northern resident killer whales spend 18% less time feeding on salmon.

Endangered Birds

Colonies of ivory gulls nesting on gravel plateaus of northwestern Baffin Island used to be so thick that local Inuit mistook the birds from a distance for patches of snow.

Marbled murrelets may be having difficulty finding enough food for producing eggs because commercial fisheries have depleted the birds' critical food supplies.

Scientists conclude that maintaining between 0.6 to 1.2 million ha of coastal old-growth forest could ensure that marbled murrelets survive in British Columbia.

Cars and trucks hit 950 owls that were later found lying along highways in the lower Fraser Valley of British Columbia, killing all but ten.

British Columbia's only breeding colony of the endangered American white pelican has doubled in size since 1988.

Protecting more old-growth forest habitat will do little to increase British Columbia's spotted owl population within the next decade.

Western screech owls, once commonly observed in forests throughout British Columbia's lower mainland, had disappeared from 22 sites by 2002.

Several species and subspecies of birds have plummeted in recent history from great abundance to the edge of extinction.

Endangered Fish

Scientists conservatively estimate that well over one-quarter of native Pacific salmon populations spawning in rivers and lakes from California to southern British Columbia have gone extinct.

Lists of regional losses and population extinctions of native salmon in the western United States.

Non-native fish are already implicated in the extinctions of five fish species in Canada and they threaten the continued existence of many others.

Analysis of bull trout from British Columbia's coastal rivers finds that this species of special conservation concern comprises two genetically distinct groups.

Forecasts indicate that bull trout will become extirpated from many portions of Alberta's Kakwa watershed within the next 20 years.