Sea otters are a marine mammal beloved by many, but it wasn’t long ago that they teetered on the brink of extinction. The international fur trade decimated sea otter populations starting in the 1700s, and within just 200 years, their wild population fell to less than 1% of their original numbers. Sea otters are a keystone species, and their presence in coastal kelp forests is critical to keep sea urchins under control — losing the otters could have resulted in a massive collapse of entire coastal ecosystems.
Luckily for the otters — and for otter fans worldwide — the International Fur Seal Treaty signed in 1911 began protecting sea otters from hunting in international waters, and two years later, they officially became a protected species in California. After the eventual signing of the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, and decades-worth of translocations from Alaska to coastlines further south, the sea otter population has made an astounding recovery. Today, there are over 25,000 sea otters bobbing around kelp forests from California to Alaska, and their role as keystone species in kelp forest ecosystems has been widely recognized in the conservation community.
Explore more stories from the full Conservation Comeback series now.
Frog saunas could help fight chytrid, Iberian lynx are no longer endangered, and scientists in Hawaii are breeding heat-resistant corals.
Around ten million tons of plastic enter the world's oceans each year. Learn about a few of the ways that YOU can help reduce ocean plastic.
Boyan Slat is the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit organization developing and scaling technologies to rid the world's oceans of plastic.
Alecia has held many career positions, from software trainer to office administrator; however, outside of work she is heavily involved in volunteer associations focusing on education. Most recently, Alecia’s Clean Harbours Jamaica team has, in partnership with The Ocean Cleanup, removed over 1 million kg of garbage from the barriers and by extension from the […]
It’s estimated that up to 14 million tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year—and 80% of it pours into the sea from polluted rivers. In Kingston, Jamaica, Alecia Beaufort and her team at Clean Harbors Jamaica have partnered with The Ocean Cleanup to stop the waste before it ever reaches the sea.
Boyan Slat’s team at The Ocean Cleanup has developed and deployed an open-ocean system that can haul in 7000 kilos of garbage in just a day and a half. Their current target is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The hope is that a fleet of these systems will remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040.
Hannah was born and raised under the Big Sky in Montana and has enjoyed outdoor pursuits her whole life. With a bachelor’s in marketing and a master’s in resource conservation, she has a unique perspective on outreach efforts for the benefit of conservation.
For over 15 years, Bryan has been a leading scientist documenting the link between lead-based ammunition and ingestion in wildlife. He co-founded and is Director of Sporting Lead-Free to promote an unbiased, non-political message within our community about the benefits of using lead-free sporting options to preserve both our hunting heritage and amazing Wyoming wildlife.
Conservationist and hunter Bryan Bedrosian started Sporting Lead Free to offer a solution to the problem of lead poisoning in eagles: advocating for the use of non-lead bullets as a permanent substitute for traditional lead ammunition.
Nearly half of all golden eagles and bald eagles in the U.S. have elevated lead levels in their bodies. This lead poisoning comes from the bullets used by hunters — not because the bullets harm the eagles directly, but the birds do scavenge on “gut piles” laden with lead fragments left behind after successful hunts.
Black-footed ferrets are still alive today thanks to the combined efforts of scientists, zoos, tribes, and other partners across North America. The work hasn’t been easy — it’s involved a decades-long captive breeding effort, wild releases at 30 different grassland sites, and even the development of a vaccine to protect against plague! It’s been a […]
Black-footed ferrets nearly went extinct several times in the 20th century. Today, the current largest threat to their survival is a non-native disease called sylvatic plague.
When plowing, poisoning, and non-native plague wiped out nearly 95% of prairie dogs, the ecosystem collapsed around them. Today, conservationists control the disease by providing vaccine-laden treats called “Fip Bits” to help the prairie dogs — and those that depend on them — finally rebound!
With over 25 years of experience in the wildlife field, Kristy Bly’s expertise is on the conservation and restoration of black-footed ferrets, black-tailed prairie dogs, and swift fox in the North American Great Plains.
Hope for Hawaiian honeycreepers, beavers in London, a snake's triumphant return, and rewilding on college campuses.
Fishing gear entanglement happens when fishing gear like nets and longlines gets caught around the limbs or body of an animal, causing serious injury or death.
Callie Veelenturf is a marine conservation biologist specializing in sea turtles, the founder of The Leatherback Project, and a National Geographic Explorer.
Aida Magaña Manzzo is a nautical engineer and community leader for the Saboga Wildlife Refuge. She has been recognized as a Hope Spot Champion for her marine conservation efforts in the Pearl Islands.
Panama recognizes the rights of sea turtles under national law, including their right to a healthy environment. To figure out which places are critical to the turtles’ well-being, biologist Callie Veelenturf and children from affected communities are tagging dozens of turtles and tracking them by satellite.
The Pearl Islands were a paradise off the Pacific coast of Panama, until industrial fishing fleets threatened fish stocks and endangered wildlife there. Local residents have teamed up with biologist Callie Veelenturf to propose—and pass—a new national law that grants legal rights to nature itself.
Marine biologist Callie Veenlenturf came to the Pearl Islands to study sea turtles, but soon helped spark passage of remarkable laws that grant legal rights to nature and the turtles themselves.
Humpback whales are truly a global species. These mammals have one of the longest migrations around, traveling up to 10,000 miles in a single year — and their beautiful, complex songs are heard by sailors and tourists in every corner of the globe.
More than 35% of land in Belize is protected, and that’s been good for jaguars that live in these refuges — but for populations to thrive, the cats need to move from one safe area in the north to another in the south across a landscape of farms and towns.
Upcoming: Episode 28: Cougar Crossing
Los Angeles is well known for its celebrities, so when the fearless cougar P-22 gained fame for making its home in the midst of the city, he inspired an effort to build the world’s largest wildlife crossing and helped spark a national campaign to support crossings and corridors everywhere. After years of research, local biologists and advocates like Beth Pratt pinpointed the vital location for a wildlife crossing to be built to restitch an entire ecosystem. Now a decade later, P-22’s story continues to inspire the very construction of this landmark crossing and expands what’s possible for urban wildlife coexistence.
At the age of 18, Boyan Slat founded The Ocean Cleanup and set out to clean plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Ten years later, the team is installing catchment systems at the mouths of rivers to stop plastic pollution of the seas at their source.
Golden eagles are powerful enough to hunt prey as large as deer, but they’re falling victim to deadly lead poisoning introduced to the wild by another potent hunter: us. Across the nation, fragments from lead bullets in the entrails hunters leave behind are poisoning eagles and the other wildlife that scavenge them. But there’s a simple solution — copper bullets — that prevent the birds and even the hunters themselves from being exposed to the deadly metal.
Conservationists worldwide use camera traps to study the movements of wild animals. In Belize, they’ve deployed one of the longest-running grids of cameras on the planet to track the hidden lives of jaguars and to focus protections in the dwindling rainforest.
Jaguars are top predators that need large spaces in which to live and hunt. In Belize, 35% of the land has been protected—but these areas are divided into two large clusters, connected by a crucial and dangerous bottleneck that the cats must navigate to survive.
Black-footed ferrets have come back from near extinction thanks to breeding, cloning and reintroduction programs that have brought them back to the western prairie. Now, these wild populations are threatened by a plague that targets the prairie dogs they depend on for food — and even the ferrets themselves. The best chance? To vaccinate both predator and prey to keep both populations alive.
Personhood for whales, a big conservation study, and egg-citing news for sea turtles
Apex predators are the kings and queens of the jungle: animals that sit at the top of the food chain with no natural predators. Apex predators like jaguars, wolves, eagles, and sharks keep herbivore populations in check.
Emma Sanchez is a wildlife researcher and the country coordinator for Panthera Belize, an organization that pioneered jaguar research and established the first official protected area for jaguars.
Ray Cal is a wildlife ecologist and the manager of Runaway Creek Nature Reserve in central Belize. He is in charge of field operations and maintaining security, so that Runaway Creek continues to stay a model wildlife haven.
Brazil has over a million miles of roads, and Fernanda Abra has devoted herself to making them less dangerous to local wildlife and biodiversity.
With just a few changes, you can transform your yard or balcony from a wildlife desert into a wildlife sanctuary. And, if you convince your neighbors to do the same, you could even make your neighborhood into a habitat corridor for wildlife!
Just like humans, wild animals often need to cross busy roads as they roam. But unlike us, they can’t rely on stoplights and crosswalks. That’s where wildlife crossings come in.
Fernanda Abra is a biologist with a Ph.D. in Applied Ecology and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian Conservation and Sustainability Center.
Wildlife corridors are an invaluable conservation tool. These ribbons of habitat connect landscapes fragmented by human development or roadways, giving animals the ability to roam in search of food, water, and mates.
The Brazilian treetops are full of creatures like monkeys and sloths living high above a forest floor segmented by dangerous roadways. The Via Fauna team is installing arboreal crossings made of cheap, local materials to reconnect the forest canopy — and allow these creatures to once again move freely throughout their landscape.
Brazil has more biodiversity than any other nation on Earth, but it also has more than a million miles of roads. Biologist Fernanda Alba and her team are establishing underpasses across the country that allow big terrestrial animals — to date, the team has documented over 40,000 safe wildlife crossings.
In order to scale up reforestation, Mauricio Ruiz and his organization ITPA have partnered with the drone fleet at MORFO. Each drone can plant up to 50 hectares of forest per day, which is 50 times faster than planting by hand.
In the past 40 years, golden lion tamarins became a symbol of conservation success when 150 zoos worldwide assisted a breeding and reintroduction program that brought their numbers in the wild from 200 to over 3700. Then, yellow fever jumped from humans to the primates and began to decimate their population—taking a third of the population in just two years.
Golden lion tamarins live only in small fragments of the Atlantic Forest. In 2021, an outbreak of yellow fever took nearly one third of the already endangered population, but teams were able to modify a vaccine for humans to help immunize the population against future outbreaks.
Golden lion tamarins were nearly wiped out in the 1970s, but worldwide efforts by 150 zoos helped bring the species back from near-extinction. Today, local conservationists are expanding the forests in Brazil, and the wild population has grown from under 200 to now over 4800 tamarins!
Conservationists are hard at work protecting golden lion tamarins and other wildlife from extinction, and now you can help them from the comfort of your own home.
Andreia started working with the conservation of the golden lion tamarin in 1983 as a volunteer in environmental education actions. In 1984, she became part of the golden lion tamarin reintroduction team. She is currently the coordinator of the field management of golden lion tamarins.
Marcos da Silve Freire has more than 30 years of experience in microbiology, with an emphasis on vaccinology. He is responsible for developing the yellow fever vaccine for golden lion tamarins.
Luís is a geographer who graduated from São Paulo University in 1987. He began his career working for natural areas protected by heritage in São Paulo, especially Serra do Mar.
Deep in the Panamanian forest, researchers are looking for “lost frogs” — species believed to have gone extinct, but that may be holding on in the wild.
In the heart of Panama, scientists have created an artificial rainforest to protect endangered frogs from the worst wildlife disease ever recorded.
Harlequin frogs (also called harlequin toads) are a group of beautiful, brightly-colored toads found in Central and South America. One species in particular, the Panamanian golden frog, is considered the national animal of Panama and a flagship species for amphibian conservation.
Dr. Gina Della Togna is the Executive Director of the Amphibian Survival Alliance and a Research Associate of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Brian Gratwicke is a conservation biologist who leads the amphibian conservation programs at Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
Smack-dab in the middle of Rio de Janeiro, stands the world’s largest urban rainforest…and it needs our help. To combat a century of deforestation and hunting, a team of researchers are repairing the forest’s forgotten web of life, one species at a time.
Plants can’t move on their own, so they usually need a little help to spread their seeds far and wide. Animals that scatter these seeds — often by eating the fruit and pooping out the remains — are known as seed dispersers.
Alexandra Pires is currently an associate professor at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, where she teaches the subjects of Natural Resources Conservation and Fauna Management.
Marcelo Rheingantz is a biologist at the Institute of Biology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and Executive Director of Refauna. He has dedicated his research career to the ecology and conservation of vertebrate populations in Brazil and South America.
In 2010, Fernando launched the concept of refaunation, and from then on coordinated the Refauna project, which reintroduced populations of agoutis, howler monkeys and tortoises in the Tijuca National Park, in Rio de Janeiro.
To restore the park to its former glory, researchers knew which animals needed to be reintroduced: monkeys, rodents, tortoises, and even dung beetles all played crucial roles in keeping the forest healthy.
Agoutis are large, adorable rodents found in Central and South America – and they’re critical players in keeping forest ecosystems healthy.
Brazil is a trove of biodiversity — habitats like the Atlantic Rainforest, urban forests like Tijuca National Park, and more coastlines, rainforests, and rivers that are rich with endemic plants and wildlife.
Over 50 species of honeycreeper once lived in Hawai’i, but now only 17 species remain after battling against invasive species and habitat loss. Today, even those survivors are threatened further by avian malaria. To stop the disease, conservationists use innovative techniques to suppress the population of the invasive mosquitoes that spread it.
Millions of years ago, a single rosefinch species arrived on the Hawai’ian islands and evolved into over 50 species of honeycreepers — a phenomenon known as adaptive radiation.
Hawai’i is home to a broad, beautiful array of birds species found only on its islands—like the stunningly diverse honeycreepers, many on the border of extinction. Now, a local team is removing invasive predators, restoring habitats, and battling mosquito-borne diseases to protect honeycreepers from their latest threat: avian malaria.
In addition to the impact of avian malaria, Hawai’i’s endangered honeycreepers are threatened by habitat loss and invasive predators — two problems that harm native bird populations everywhere, likely in your own back yard. Whether you’re looking to help Hawai’i’s birds, or if you’re hoping to make a difference to protect birds locally, the solutions […]
New tracking technologies are uncovering the flight paths of endangered shorebirds — and the obstacles they face along the way.
The endangered wedge-tailed shearwater — also known as the ‘ua‘u kani — was in critical danger after many nesting sites in Hawaii were overrun by predators like weasels, rags, or feral cats. Fortunately for the birds, locals banded together to protect nesting sites and the local population went from just 30 nesting birds to more than 3000!
A group in Maui has restored a safe haven for endangered seabirds to come home and nest: it’s completely fenced-off from predators and restored with native plants, but the birds still need some convincing! The team is using decoy “neighbors” and audio recordings of bird calls to make the seabirds feel at home — and at long last, the colony is growing!
All around the world, seabirds provide a critical link between land and sea. On Hawai’i, ecologists are working to protect two vital shearwater species that helped life first take hold on these islands.
Jay Penniman has worked as an independent contractor doing forestry, wildlife, and vegetation surveys, management, and assessment. Since 2006, he has worked for the Pacific Cooperative Studies Unit of the University of Hawaii managing the Maui Nui Seabird Recovery Project.
Jenni Learned is a broad-spectrum ecologist on the Maui Nui Seabird team with experience working across diverse environments.
A common conservation technique on islands is the creation of predator-free zones to exclude invasive species, from mice to feral pigs, from recovering habitats.
The bald eagle has been a national symbol of the United States since 1782 — but not that long ago, this iconic species was on the verge of a complete extinction.
Researchers are trumpeting a welcome piece of news for African elephants. In the last 25 years, populations in southern Africa have reversed their declines, and even started to grow, according to a new study in Science Advances.
Coral reefs around the world are threatened by rising ocean temperatures, but hope is growing off the coast of Hawaii. There, researchers at the Coral Resilience Lab selectively breed corals to withstand ever-increasing amounts of heat stress.
This community in Hawaii is rallying together to study and protect local corals. Students, volunteers, and scientists work to collect and categorize fragments broken off from the reef, which then become candidates to breed before the new coral is reintroduced back into the ocean.
Corals are vital to ocean health, but they’re susceptible to rising water temperatures and can “bleach” under too much heat stress. Hawaii’s Coral Resilience Lab is breeding corals that are resilient to these hotter ocean temperatures – then they populate reefs with new corals that can finally beat the heat.
Coral reef bleaching stands apart as a crisis with innovative, long-term solutions.
Kira Hughes is the Managing Director of the Coral Resilience Lab at the Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology. This includes conducting research, grant writing and administration, engaging stakeholders, establishing and maintaining partnerships, and communicating science.
Madeleine Sherman is the Project Manager for the Coral Resilience Lab at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology, and manager of the Lab's outreach and education programs.
Corals are known for their vibrant hues, but when they get stressed, they turn a ghostly white in a process known as coral bleaching. To appreciate why this happens, you need to understand the unique relationship that forms the basis of coral reefs.
Since the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, it has become one of the most powerful tools to fight extinction in the United States.
The California condor is a North American wildlife icon — the continent's largest land birds and one of nature's most industrious scavengers — and also one of our most critically endangered avian species.
Our relationship with gray wolves is a complicated one, spanning centuries of tension and dating back to the beginning in the 1600s with North American colonization.
The recovery of the American Alligator is considered one of the biggest success stories of an endangered species – ever.
Along the Pacific coastlines of North America, the Northern Elephant Seal may be a common sight in today's waters — but that wasn't always the case.
Florida manatees are in dire straits, having lost much of their available habitat and food sources in recent decades. Thanks to the work of Zoo Tampa and other researchers, the population is finally able to recover and return to the rivers they once called home.
Florida’s Crystal River used to be a rich seagrass ecosystem: a perfect source of food for the many manatees that once thrived there, before an invasive algae overtook the riverbed. Now, efforts to restore the habitat are underway – and they’re working!
When an invasive algae in Crystal River wiped out the eel grass that manatees need for food, the community rallies to restore the river and save the animals that call it home.
Lisa Moore, a fourth-generation Floridian, is an entrepreneur and philanthropist dedicated to the efforts to preserve, protect, and restore environmental resources.
Jessica Maillez is the Senior Environmental Manager at Sea and Shoreline. She has designed, permitted, and managed multiple large scale restoration projects along Florida’s coastline.
The United Kingdom and Ireland might not seem like the wildest places on Earth, but a growing popular movement here, known as rewilding, seeks to reverse millennia of environmental degradation.
Derek Gow has turned his farm into a breeding center to help rewild all of Britain. He’s raising rare white storks, native harvest mice, water voles that can help restore wetlands throughout the country.
Derek Gow has helped bring beavers back to Britain, and their impact on local landscapes and biodiversity has been immense. Now, he’s scaling up a breeding program to export another wetland engineer—the water vole—all across the country.
For years, Derek Gow worked his 400-acres in western England as a conventional sheep and cattle farm. Now, he’s using his experience with British rewilding projects to return his land to what it once was: a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem.
Ecologists from Mexico’s National Autonomous university relaunch a fundraising campaign to bolster conservation efforts for axolotls, an iconic, endangered fish-like type of salamander.
Pete Cooper is a wilding ecologist at the Derek Gow Consultancy, where he works on a variety of species reintroduction and rewilding projects. He leads a project trialing the captive breeding and reintroduction of glowworms, as well as working closely on reintroduction projects for other species including the harvest mouse, wildcat and turtle dove.
Derek Gow is a farmer, nature conservationist, and the author of Bringing Back the Beaver. He lives on a 300-acre farm on the Devon/Cornwall border, which he is in the process of rewilding. Derek has played a significant role in the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver, the water vole and the white stork in England.
Often the first and most effective strategy to healing a landscape is to pay attention to how ancestral wildlife, like native plants and animals, once shaped and strengthened these natural spaces.
Just as they have for millions of years, sea turtles by the thousands make their labored crawl from the ocean to U.S. beaches to lay their eggs. This year, record nesting was found in Florida and elsewhere despite growing concern about threats from climate change.
Leatherback turtles never stop swimming! This Florida lab uses tiny tethers so young hatchlings can swim constantly but avoid bumping into the wall of the tank. When they’re old enough, the young turtles are fitted with satellite trackers and released into the wild.
Beaches across Florida are a key habitat for nesting sea turtles. To keep hatchlings safe, teams patrol the beach at dawn to look for turtle tracks, safeguard nests, and even help those left behind make their way to the sea.
Sea turtles nesting in southeast Florida face a range of manmade threats — and for leatherbacks, researchers still know very little about the species and how to protect them. In the battle to save leatherback sea turtles, knowledge is key.
David Anderson is the Sea Turtle Conservation Coordinator at Gumbo Limbo Nature Center. He supervises the collection of sea turtle nesting data along Boca Raton’s five miles of beach.
Dr. Jeanette Wyneken is a Professor of Biological Sciences at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), located on the southeastern coast of Florida. She has more than 40 years of experience studying the biology, conservation, and health of sea turtles.
Whether becoming a citizen scientist, or simply a vocal ally for sea turtle protection, there are easy opportunities for anyone to get involved in saving some of our favorite ocean-bound creatures.
In 2021, an Oregon farmer decided to convert his 400-acre farm back to the wetland habitat. Now, just two year later, the new wetland supports migrating waterbirds and endangered fish.
Indigo snakes prey on other snakes—even venomous ones—but are still docile-enough to be handled by young children. Now, a one-of-a kind breeding program is raising these gentle giants and returning them to forests across the southeastern US.
Gopher tortoises create deep burrows that give critical shelter to over 350 species of insects, mammals, birds, and amphibians throughout the southeastern US. Their blood may be cold, but their heart is all warm inside!
In the face of extreme habitat loss, wildlife biologist Dr. Chris Jenkins puts an ambitious plan in motion to save two uniquely American reptiles — the eastern indigo snake and the gopher tortoise — and the longleaf pine forest they call home.
Dr. James Bogan is the Director for the Central Florida Zoo’s Orianne Center for Indigo Conservation, the only facility that breeds the eastern indigo snake for the sole purpose of reintroducing the offspring into regions where the population is believed to be locally extinct.
Christopher Jenkins has worked with Wildlife Conservation Society, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. His current projects include land protection in longleaf pine ecosystems, ecology and conservation of timber rattlesnakes and the conservation of giant tortoises.
Reptiles are in need of support from conservationists and nature-lovers worldwide. Learn how to create more reptile-friendly environments and help build a stronger ecosystem for all types of critters near you.
After decades of fighting to regain ownership of their ancestral lands, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe marked this year’s Indigenous People’s Day with the purchase of 1,080 acres of land along the McCloud River in northern California.
Rewilding initiatives are growing in popularity in places with degraded or disturbed landscapes whose ecosystems have lost many of their endemic species.
When beavers were hunted to extinction in England some 400 years ago, the wetlands they maintained largely vanished. Now, as part of Britain’s broader rewilding mission, conservationists are returning beavers to the landscape—and boosting biodiversity in the process.
Prince William got a first-hand look at the waters of New York City on Monday on a visit to an oyster reef restoration project, after arriving in the United States for an environmental summit connected to a global competition for solutions to climate change challenges.
The sex of baby sea turtles is determined by the warmth of their nest, so conservationists in Australia are protecting hatchlings on the mainland (where dark sand means warm temps and more females) from threats—and help ensure more future mammas make it to the sea.
Dogs in Australia are sniffing out koala dung to help cities like Brisbane know where to put highway overpasses and reconnect isolated populations of the adorable marsupials.
Dogs are often thought of as humans’ best friends. But in Australia, they’re partnering with people to save other species from grave threats to the island continent’s unique fauna.
Dr. Colin “Col” Limpus is chief scientist and a leading researcher for the Threatened Species Unit in the Queensland government’s Department of Environment and Heritage Protection.
