Wildlife Conservation and Protection

Significance

Despite the conservation importance of documenting temporal population trends of African elephants, we lack a comprehensive assessment of recent changes in the world’s largest terrestrial mammal. This assessment summarizes site-level trends in density over five decades from hundreds of surveys conducted across Africa on the forest and savannah elephant species. Both species have experienced substantial declines at the majority of survey sites. Forest elephant sites have declined on average by 90%, whereas savanna elephant sites have declined by 70% over the study period. However, savannah elephants have also demonstrated some increases, indicating that the threats and challenges elephants face are not the same everywhere. From the successes, we can learn how to better protect elephants across their range.

• The recent killing of a jaguar by hunters increases the species’ risk of extinction in Argentina’s Gran Chaco landscape, where no more than 10 of the big cats are thought remain.

• Images of this particular jaguar were captured by camera trap twice this year as it traveled through a biological corridor; the next time it was photographed was on social media, where hunters posed with its carcass and its pelt.

• A tradition of hunting, lack of public awareness, persistent deforestation, and absence of female jaguars — there’s only one, recently rewilded into the area — are the biggest obstacles to the jaguar’s survival in the Argentine Gran Chaco.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

What’s new: The first ever camera trap study from Cambodia’s Central Cardamom Mountains has captured footage of 108 wildlife species, including 23 that are threatened with extinction. This survey confirms the area’s importance as a biodiversity hotspot, a recent report says.

Conservationists and a Native American advocacy group are suing to block a Nevada lithium mine they say will drive an endangered wildflower to extinction.

A new study offers yet more evidence. Research by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory shows how pesticide tests focus on the death of an animal and ignore any important “sublethal” effects.

If a creature, such as a honeybee, is alive 48 hours after exposure, then it is deemed that all is well, and the chemical may be approved for use. The bee may be unable to fly or navigate, or its immune system may no longer function, but that is not recorded.

Millions of buffalo once roamed the grasslands, until colonialism nearly wiped them out. Finally, they're returning to — and restoring — the prairies.