Watch: Once extinct, reintroduced snails glow with hope

November 21, 2025 by The Wildlife Society

Before their journey back into the wild, each tiny Partula snail received a small streak of reflective paint, glowing electric blue under a ultraviolet light at night in the Pacific islands of French Polynesia. Partula snails are nocturnal, and the paint turns them into a shifting constellation, slowly moving in the leaf litter, allowing the researchers applying the colors to monitor the released snails and track the species’ recovery. These snails were part of a pivotal boost this year for a slow-moving conservation success story—more than 7,000 zoo-bred Partula snails were released into the wild across four islands in French Polynesia. This year’s release marks the largest reintroduction of snails—some formerly listed as “extinct in the wild” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, since releases began 10 years ago.  

Wild Partula populations declined significantly in the 1980s and early 1990s due to the introduction of invasive predatory snails, prompting conservationists to rescue the last individuals of 15 species. They brought them into captivity and initiated an international breeding program.

Efforts like these have resulted in the 2024 downlisting of the Moorean viviparous tree snail (Partula tohiveana) from “extinct in the wild” to “critically endangered.” This year brought two more milestones: the first wild-born Moorean viviparous tree snail found outside the release area and the first Polynesian tree snail (P. varia) born in the wild in over 30 years.

“This exciting news demonstrates the power of conservation breeding programs and carefully planned releases in bringing species back from the edge of extinction,” said Fiona Sach, a conservation manager at the Zoological Society of London involved in one of the captive breeding programs, in a release.

Read more at the Zoological Society of London.

Are ocelots and opossums in cahoots?

November 20, 2025 by Olivia Milloway

Camera traps show that ocelots and opossums might be more friend than foe. In both Peru and Panama, new data shows these animals may work together, puzzling scientists.

“I wonder how many of these weird interactions are happening that we’re unaware of because they’re difficult to record in the field,” said Dumas Gálvez, a Panamanian researcher at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the University of Panama.

Gálvez and researchers in Peru captured four occasions of ocelots (Leopardus pardalis) and common opossums (Didelphis marsupialis) associating—the first observations of their kind. They showed that opossums are attracted to and often rub their bodies against ocelot scent cues like urine. Researchers think there may be an unexpected benefit to both species when it comes to hunting.

The ecology of fear

Gálvez was studying seed dispersers in the Panamanian rainforest, specifically the Central American agouti (Dasyprocta punctata) and how the rodent responded to ocelot urine. Because ocelots prey on agoutis, Gálvez thought agoutis would avoid foraging for or removing seeds in areas with ocelot smells—which he found evidence for and published in Behavioral Ecology.

He assumed that project was finished until he went to the 2024 Melbourne Behavioural Ecology Conference, where he met a research team from Peru. They were presenting a poster on preliminary findings of ocelot and opossum associations.

Lead author Ettore Camerlenghi recalled presenting their findings when Gálvez stopped by. “He mentioned that he had set up camera traps using ocelot scent and to his surprise, captured numerous videos of opossums rubbing against the scent,” Camerlenghi said.

Gálvez returned to Panama and found the images of the opossum biting and pulling at the fabric with ocelot urine. He continued to comb through the camera trap data and was shocked at what he found. “I just remembered one camera,” he said. “But I was really surprised when I went back and found it on all the cameras.”

The researchers decided to collaborate together on a new study, published recently in Ecosphere. “It’s a nice example of how science often works through serendipitous events, curiosity, and collaboration,” said Isabel Damas-Moreira, another of the study’s coauthors.

Unlikely pairs in unlikely places

There are other examples of interspecies hunting partnerships, such as badgers (Taxidea taxus) and coyotes (Canis latrans) collaborating to hunt burrowing animals in North America. But the researchers still find this mutual tolerance between ocelots and opossums “puzzling.” While badgers can hold their own against coyotes, opossums can easily become ocelot food.

Camerlenghi speculated that similar to badgers and coyotes, they could be better at hunting cooperatively rather than individually. Opossums are immune to some snake venom, so they may collaborate to hunt these reptiles—though they haven’t yet found direct evidence of cooperative snake hunting.

Another potential reason for their association could be masking each other’s scent cues. Gálvez’s initial thought was that if the opossums smelled more like an ocelot, they’d have protection from other predators. But the scent masking can also go the other way. Opossums are notoriously smelly—ocelots could be using opossum stench as a cover to more easily approach nervous prey, the study authors speculated.

While there’s a lot the researchers don’t know, they continue to investigate these associations. “The regional scale of this is interesting—it’s not only happening in Peru, but also further north in Panama,” Gálvez said.

He is interested in associations between other felids whose ranges overlap with opossums, like the puma (Puma concolor). He also wants to see how opossums on Coiba Island—a national park in Panama without any ocelots or other predators—respond to ocelot urine.

Gálvez is still researching ocelots, but his local ocelot urine supplier—a zoo in Panama City that houses the animals—isn’t producing like it used to. He says it’s easier to just buy puma urine on Amazon.

New antivenom works against 17 snakes

November 20, 2025 by The Wildlife Society

At least 7,000 people die every year from snake bites across Africa but a new therapy targeting 17 different species may help save lives. Traditional antivenom comes from injecting small amounts of snake venom into horses, which then develop antibodies. Specialists isolate these antibodies from the horses’ blood to develop serums for snake bite victims. But antivenom is very specific, making care challenging in places like Central Africa where there are many highly venomous snake species. Researchers have now made a new broad-spectrum antivenom by copying eight antibody fragments, or nanobodies, from llamas (Lama glama) and alpacas (Lama pacos) and combining them. In lab trials, the antivenom saved mice from 17 out of the 18 snake venoms in the Elapidae family, which includes cobras and mambas. While the results are promising, researchers don’t yet know what a therapeutic dose for humans would be or if the technology, though it would be cheaper than traditional antivenom production, will be scalable. “The most powerful of all the ‘omics’—economics—may once again represent an insurmountable obstacle to fighting the most neglected of tropical diseases,” said Juan Calvete, Director of the Evolutionary and Translational Venomics Laboratory at the Biomedicine Institute of Valencia, in an interview with Live Science.

Read more at Live Science.

Road noise may give solace to squirrels

November 19, 2025 by The Wildlife Society

Roads are a killer problem for wildlife, not to mention the noise pollution from traffic. But new research reveals that gray squirrels may forage more near noisy roads as a strategy to avoid larger predators. In a study published recently in Oikos, researchers mapped out where gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) left behind more of their food in different parts of a standardized study area—an indicator of how afraid they were while foraging. They found that the squirrels may feel safer from predators in areas with more road noise. But the researchers also found that for squirrels, consistency is key—unpredictably noisy roads still left them scared. “Our findings suggest human activities have a double-edged impact on urban wildlife like the gray squirrel,” said Sasha Dall, an ecologist at the University of Exeter, in a press release. “Squirrels are having to adapt to these challenges by altering their foraging behavior and habitat use.”

Read more at the University of Exeter News.

Wild Cam: Restoration boosts cryptic salamander numbers

November 19, 2025 by Joshua Rapp Learn

On the surface, the plight of the Barton Springs salamander seems dire. The small salamanders can usually only be seen in a collection of freshwater springs in the middle of downtown Austin. And some of these springs have been modified with concrete or turned into municipal swimming pools, making the habitat less suitable for the amphibians.

Now, wildlife managers are making small changes to miniscule springs less than half a city block in size. They hope these changes will have an impact on the wider, unseen population that lives deep under Austin. 

“That little [spring] habitat was wildly successful in terms of increasing the abundance of that salamander,” said Nathan Bendik, a biologist with Austin Watershed Protection, a department of the city’s municipal government.

Surface springs don’t tell the full story of these amphibians, which spend much of their lives in underground aquifers far from human eyes. Since researchers can’t easily reach these often narrow and submerged underground passages, the best they can do is improve conditions on the surface.

New species, old problems

The Barton Springs salamander (Eurycea sosorum) was first described in 1993. Shortly after, it was listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service due to habitat changes in its relatively tiny natural range in downtown Austin. The species is most easily observed on the surface in a few springs that feed into Barton Creek, which flows through the center of town into the Colorado River. Heavily modified over the years, Barton Springs is a stretch of Barton Creek that has been turned into an outdoor natural pool that stretches for a few city blocks, open year-round. The water from these springs is fed by the Barton Springs segment of the Edwards Aquifer, a huge underground source of freshwater.

While the salamanders can sometimes be found in Barton Springs Pool, they’re more often seen in a series of smaller surrounding water bodies such as Eliza Springs, pictured above. Though now closed to swimming, Eliza was also heavily modified for swimming in decades past—the water lies in the middle of an oval-shaped concrete amphitheater no wider than 30 feet across and just a foot deep or less. Spring water had been redirected through a pipe so it emerges from Edwards Aquifer via a pipe below.

In a study published recently in Animal Conservation, Bendik and his colleagues describe how retrofitting Eliza Springs, the main surface habitat of the Barton Springs salamander, and its small outflow has helped to boost the population.

Salamanders’ rock

While the project has been in the works for about 20 years, physical work started in 2016. The first order of business: rock collecting. The Barton Springs salamander needs fist-sized rocks and gravel to hide and lay their eggs under. “We had to go rock shopping,” Bendik said.

The team searched for locally-sourced natural river rocks for sale but had no luck. They tried quarried rock, but the size was still too big.  Then, the managers of Barton Springs wanted to clear out debris in the larger municipal pool after a recent flood. Bendik and his colleagues moved the rocks between the pools and it seemed to help. “We made this change and then all of a sudden we were seeing a lot more salamanders there,” Bendik said.

Next, they removed the inflow pipe so that water flowed up from the aquifer more naturally. They also retrofitted the outflow from Eliza Springs from a drainpipe into a more natural stream that flowed for about 70 feet along the surface, increasing the potential surface habitat of the species.

Wildlife managers have been surveying salamander numbers at Eliza Springs since 1996 by flipping all the rocks while snorkeling.

In 2014, they switched to a new method of tracking salamanders that improved accuracy. They photographed each individual, recorded if females had eggs, then released them back into the spring. Each salamander has a unique pattern on its head which researchers can use to identify individual salamanders from one another, allowing for a population estimate after each survey.

They also began capturing salamanders by sucking them up with a modified turkey baster, resulting in fewer injuries, then put them into floating nets for processing.

Springs surge in population

The salamander counts confirmed what Bendik and others had already noticed. The peak abundance for salamanders in Eliza Springs and the stream outflow before retrofitting was 1,200 in 2008. Peak abundances since restoration have been more than 2,000 in some years. Salamander numbers can ebb and flow naturally based on conditions above and belowground—biologists still aren’t even sure how and why Barton Springs salamanders sometimes get spit out of the Edwards Aquifer more some years than other years. “You get some highs and some lows,” Bendik said.

Despite the fluctuations, the average number of salamanders has increased from 354 to 1,051. The average salamander density, too, increased from 4.8 individuals per square meter before changes to 10.6 after. “Everything is looking very positive at that site,” Bendik said.

Making salamander-positive changes at the municipal pool is difficult due to its heavy use by residents and visitors. But Bendik and his colleagues are now trying to replicate their success at Old Mill Spring, another former swimming hole which sits just southeast of the municipal pool and sometimes has Barton Springs salamanders. They plan to reinstall a more meandering stream from the aquifer outflow. “We’re excited about that and we’re hoping we can get that done before the end of our permit term [in 2033],” Bendik said.

How birds react to fire depends on where they live

November 18, 2025 by Olivia Milloway

In a new study harnessing the power of tens of millions of citizen science observations, researchers found that fire repels some birds while others are drawn by the flames.

The birds’ responses also varied throughout their range. “Fire conditions can lead to high bird abundance in one region, but low bird abundance in another region for the exact same species,” said Andrew Stillman, an applied quantitative ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and a coauthor on the study published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.  

Some species, like the red-cockaded woodpecker (Leuconotopicus borealis), always increased after a fire, albeit to different amounts throughout their range. But the researchers were surprised to see that for other species, like the American goshawk (Astur atricapillus), fires in one region led to an increase in abundance where in another area it led to a decrease.

Models all the way down

Alongside the eBird team at Cornell, Stillman creates analytical tools that help organizations like the U.S. Forest Service use eBird data to understand how birds and their habitats are changing through time. The agency was interested in broader scale information about the impacts of fire on wildlife, a task which would require massive amounts of data and the technical know-how to work with it.

The U.S. Forest Service partnered with the eBird Status and Trends team, a group of computer scientists, statisticians and bird scientists who have used eBird data to create maps for nearly 3,000 bird species around the world.

Red-cockaded woodpeckers are found in population patches across the Southeast. Credit: USFWS

The team looked at six bird species of conservation concern. Along with the red-cockaded woodpecker and American goshawk, they tracked the Bachman’s sparrow (Peucaea aestivalis), greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), pinyon jay (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus), and olive-sided flycatcher (Contopus cooperi).

They started with around 31 million eBird checklists from the contiguous U.S. during the breeding season from 2011 to 2021, with data quality filters established by the eBird team. “We only include the highest quality checklists that have both detection and non-detection information,” Stillman said. The authors then combined the eBird data with dozens of other variables describing land use, habitat type and fire history to run hundreds of machine learning models.

The models were so complex and numerous the team used servers hosted by the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) to complete the work.

Shedding light on forest management

The results showed birds didn’t respond uniformly to fire across their range. This is evidence against a “one size fits all” approach for managing fire to promote biodiversity.

In Oregon and Idaho, the American goshawk responded negatively to fire, whereas in other parts of its range it responded positively. Credit: Cole Wolf

“Managing forests and fire and biodiversity can be like driving at night,” Stillman said. Streetlights—analogous to local field studies—offer pinpoints of light in the darkness, but they usually can’t illuminate the overall landscape.

The study’s results can help inform fire management strategies by showing broad-scale patterns beyond just pinpoints of light. “If managers have information about biodiversity responses to fire at their fingertips, it will be easier for them to incorporate wildlife science into decision making,” Stillman said.

Participatory science data can also help cash-strapped agencies balance slim budgets. “It takes time—and a whole big team—but projects like this can represent huge costs savings for agencies,” Stillman said.

This first paper was a proof-of-concept. Now Stillman’s team and U.S. Forest Service biologists are looking at fire responses for more than 100 additional species.

“How cool is it that the key that finally unlocked this new information source is data collected by passionate wildlifers and birders from around the world,” he said.

Mapping nature’s power lines

November 18, 2025 by The Wildlife Society

Animals play a critical role in shaping ecosystem function. Despite knowing this, scientists have struggled to precisely quantify how biodiversity changes impact ecosystem function at continental scales. A new approach using bioenergetics, a measurement of energy, offers a breakthrough. In a new study from sub-Saharan Africa, scientists used the food consumption and bioenergetics of birds and mammals to discover that the region’s food webs are now operating on less than two-thirds of the energy they once used. Across biomes, declines in ecosystem function translate into lost energy. For example, the loss of bird and primate diversity has decreased the energy in forested regions. The authors found that the roles of megafauna have collapsed outside protected areas. Unlike traditional biodiversity measures, an energetics approach also highlights the importance of smaller species and other keystone animals in maintaining ecosystem function. Using bioenergetics, managers can now quantify the amount of energy species consume and pass on, revealing which species are most crucial to protect or restore to maintain ecosystem functionality.

Read more in Nature.

Conservation is ‘neither optional nor ideological’

November 17, 2025 by Kaylyn Zipp

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s proposal to rescind its Conservation and Landscape Health Rule has sparked concern among conservationists and wildlife professionals who see it as a step backward for responsible land stewardship.

At stake is whether conservation will continue to be recognized as a legitimate use on par and intertwined with other uses of public land, including grazing, energy development, and recreation.

The administration’s rescission proposal incorrectly states that conservation is “no-use at the expense of multiple-use access.” TWS’ comments affirm that “This narrative has no grounding in law or science.” Conservation professionals who, among other things, restore degraded lands, control invasive species, and maintain the ecological functions that allow activities like grazing, recreation, and energy production on our public lands to continue. To categorize this work as “non-use” misrepresents our profession and the contributions of our members and is contrary to the BLM’s responsibility as the nation’s largest land manager.

TWS’s comments note a troubling rhetorical shift in the proposed rescission, portraying conservation professionals not as stewards of public trust resources, but as obstacles to access and use. In our comments, TWS argues that the proposal misrepresents conservation as a departure from the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) multiple-use mandate rather than a statutory duty under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act. It also warns that the rollback may diminish BLM’s ability to meet its legal obligation to prevent unnecessary degradation of public lands and their resources, including wildlife. TWS recommends that BLM:

1.  Withdraw the proposed recission

2.  Affirm conservation as a statutory obligation

3.  Reinforce science-based decision making

4.  Engage the community of conservation professionals

By removing the recession, reinforcing science-based decision making and engaging conservation professionals, BLM can strengthen its multiple-use mission and steward public trust resources sustainably for present and future generations.

Join fellow TWS members in supporting this year’s Giving Tuesday campaign. The funds from this year’s campaign will go to support securing a future where wildlife and the people who protect it can thrive through policy engagement.

Scientists now recognize close to 6,800 mammal species

November 17, 2025 by The Wildlife Society

Scientists now recognize nearly 6,800 distinct mammal species worldwide. New species were added to nearly every major group of mammals from rodents to whales. Some 595 species of rodents, 410 species of bats, 161 species of primates and 166 species of shrews and moles were added to the American Society of Mammologists’ Mammal Diversity Database. Nathan Upham, a researcher at Arizona State University and lead author on the study, said in an interview with the university that knowledge of the world’s mammals is constantly changing. “Every week, new papers come out that change what we know about mammal diversity. Sometimes it is a brand-new species to science, and sometimes it is realizing that what we thought was one species is actually two or five,” Upham said. The researchers warned that around a quarter of known mammal species are considered “Data Deficient” or “Not Evaluated” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, making it challenging to track or improve their conservation status. The researchers called for more resources and global collaboration towards the protection of newly identified species.

Read more at ASU News.  

Listen: Conservation trouble in paradise

November 14, 2025 by Joshua Rapp Learn

With pristine beaches, rolling hills and turquoise waters, the U.S. Virgin Islands is a picture of paradise. But their name and the beautiful landscape disguise the fact that some of the islands that make up the U.S. territory, like St. Croix, have experienced massive ecological change over the past few centuries. Invasive species like feral cats (Felis catus), small Indian mongoose (Urva auropunctata) and a number of introduced plants have driven many of St. Croix’s endemic species to extinction while others are barely hanging on. But some wildlife managers are working hard to turn back the destructive tide born from a legacy of colonialism.

The latest episode of “Our Wild Lives” opens a special new subseries called “Wild Work” that features on-the-ground reporting from The Wildlife Society’s news team. In this episode, associate editor Joshua Rapp Learn takes host Katie Perkins to St. Croix where he tracked an endangered lizard and explored habitat restoration programs.

Learn speaks with Nicole Angeli, director of the USVI Division of Fish and Wildlife; Jennifer Valiulis, executive director of the St. Croix Environmental Association; Olasee Davis, an assistant professor in the School of Agriculture at the University of the Virgin Islands; and Yaira Ortiz, an undergraduate student finishing her degree at the University of Miami who volunteers to survey endangered wildlife.

This episode features some of the field reporting Learn conducted to produce the feature article “Isolated and Imperiled: The Challenges of Conservation in an Offshore U.S. Territory,” in the November/December issue of The Wildlife Professional.

“Our Wild Lives” is The Wildlife Society’s weekly podcast, sharing compelling stories from wildlife professionals doing critical work around the world. Your hosts, Katie Perkins and Ed Arnett of The Wildlife Society, bring you thought-provoking conversations with leading experts and emerging voices.

New episodes are released weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Please email comms@wildlife.org with feedback or future episode suggestions.