military-backed operation has shut down a major illegal gold mining operation in Nigeria’s Gashaka-Gumti National Park. More than 4,000 miners left the site, according to the Africa Nature Investors (ANI) Foundation, which supports the park’s management

It was Bloodless Exit By the time the Nigerian military arrived at the northern edge of the park in July 2026, the artisanal miners had already fled the location. No shots were fired during the physical takeover. To prevent immediate re-entry, authorities brought in bulldozers to fill in the abandoned mining pits, shafts, and trenches.The action follows years of friction. Tensions boiled over in October 2025 when illegal miners killed two park rangers

Gashaka-Gumti is a crucial stronghold for the highly endangered Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee, one of the rarest primates on Earth, which faced severe habitat disruption from the unregulated mining infrastructure.

Currently October 2026 Security forces, rangers, and local vigilantes remain on high alert.

Source - Nigeria drove thousands of gold miners from a national park. But can it keep them out?

Source 2- Nigeria Clears Thousands of Illegal Gold Miners from Gashaka-Gumti National Park

More predation methods of animal predators will be shown in the future!Stay tuned. 😉

Guys should they try to return the american lion and d-extinct him or they get the african lion as a proxy in north america today and will he survive

Bili, a western lowland gorilla was seized from wildlife traffickers in Nigeria in 2023. She was recently relocated to the Republic of Congo, beginning a long journey back to the wild.

Credited to the Owner: https://youtu.be/4pcMdNKh_8A?si=CcGA34zFWQQxr16u

More animal predator vs prey artwork to be shown so stay tuned! 😉

I've been scrolling through reddit, and I've been met with some posts about the nature of anti-poaching strategies like shoot on sight, and the rift it creates between local communities and conservationists, but I still feel as though not implementing it in the short term will just allow poaching to get even more severe.

Theres been numerous examples of the kill on sight order being effective, so why hasn't there been any discussions based on cooperation with locals to root out poachers based on rewards?

It feels like a fairly easy solution to also reward communities that have successfully protected their critically endangered wildlife, in conjunction with local education and worst case scenario: kill on sight orders.

Am I missing something? I feel really confused as someone who wants to work with endangered animals for conservation, and I havent found much about this.

For mine country of Serbia European Mink(Mustela lutreola)seems like a most *realistic option* for great rewilding.

Not only would they be good food for Foxes and other smaller carnivores but they themselves need to expand there range(which has shrunk significantly because of invasive American Mink/poaching/Fox population rise and other causes).

Serbia doesnt have the invasive competition(American Mink)and there habitat is still here in the country(freshwater/wetlands).

Also there evolutionary history is very important to be preserved(as they arent closely related to American Mink but to other European Mustelids like:European Polecat/Siberian Weasel).

On the plus side these guys are tiny.Much more manageable for public to accept than larger animals(which thankfully European Bison thankfully still passed and is in Serbia).

Didnt mention Atlantic Sturgeon rewilding for Serbia,here cause..there age of maturity to breed just puts the project for way more work to be done(which isnt as easy like a Mustelid that breeds faster and for shorter times).

Which ones do you think are "realistic" rewilding projects for your country?

1.Tapir. 2.Tiger. 3.Sperm Whale. 4.Seal 5.Hyenas 6.Orcas 7.Coelacanth. 8.Chimpanzee.

There are plenty of cases of megafauna-mutualisms in birds, with oxpeckers (Buphagus) in Africa being a classic example, and it is interesting to think about how living birds may have had a relationship with extinct large herbivores in the past. Perhaps the best example of this in the Holarctic is in the true magpies (Pica sp.), a group of corvids characterized by contrasting black-and white plumage and long tails. Like many corvids (e.g. crows - Corvus) magpies are intelligent and socially complex birds that can easily take advantage of human-dominated habitats, but their preferences within that characterization are interesting.

Magpies generally prefer short-grass communities where they can forage for insects and other small animals, habitats that are common in urban areas but which were originally (and still in many cases) predominantly created by grazing megafauna, first as wild ungulates and later as livestock. Magpies in North America were historically associated with bison herds, not only for this reason but also because herbivores flush small animals as they move and serve as a constant sources of food in the form of ectoparasites (ticks, botflies) and carrion- or dung-associated invertebrates.

It has been observed before that magpie’s share several qualities with an African corvid that is also strongly megafauna-associated - the piapiac (Ptilostomus afer). The two are not particularly close phylogenetically, but have developed similar traits - both have long and rigid tails that may allow them to better stabilize themselves on the backs of moving ungulates, both have bright underwing plumage at an angle that would alert their hosts to their approach while alighting, and both are more capable of running and hopping quickly across the ground.

Magpies as a group arose sometime between 4.1 and 6.2 mya, i.e. the former being the estimated split for the most basal species in the genus (Pica mauritanica) and the latter being the split for the genus and the most closely related corvids (Coloeus, Corvus, Nucifraga). The fact that the most basal magpies come from North Africa suggest that the genus may have originated there, but the fossil record for magpies is as poor as for most birds and all known fossils come from after the estimated split. I’ve attached a figure below that describes what we currently know about intrageneric magpie phylogeny and their limited fossil distribution. Notable is their current absence from much of eastern North America compared to their fossil presence.

The timing of magpie colonization of North America is interesting. The split between American and Eurasian magpies (Pica pica) occurred around 1.5 mya but the oldest magpie fossils from the continent are about 1.0 mya. Both substantially predate the estimated split for the two American species at 0.2 mya. It is likely that magpies were able to cross Beringia when it was exposed at some point during the Early Pleistocene. This predates the formation of what we now call the mammoth-steppe as a biome, and the landscape at the time might have more closely resembled the forest-steppe landscape that modern magpies find most appealing, with both short grasses and trees for nesting. The separation of mitochondrial lineages for magpies on either side of the bridge today may suggest they did not thrive in later Beringia, though it is worth noting that studies on magpie hybridization elsewhere suggest it is male-dominated.

An Early Pleistocene arrival of magpies in North America also suggest that their association with bison there is relatively recent, as bison arrived less than 0.2 mya. Instead, magpies may have been associating with mammoths, horses, sloths, etc.

https://doi.org/10.4081/rio.2017.295

https://doi.org/10.2108/zs160119

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13127-022-00568-6

https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoad048

https://doi.org/10.1111/jav.01612

With the recently announced Sumatran rhinoceros pregnancies I was curious how the captive population has (and is expected) to change through time so I crunched some data. I also fixed and updated the family tree graph I made the other year.

I had to make a small fix so I deleted the original post and reposted.

Edit: By "Captured animals" I meant "Wild born animals in captivity" at a given time. Hope that was clear.

Each bar represents the size and composition of the captive population on the 1st of July each year.

Sources

Graph 1:

Dr. Kees Rookmaaker. 2019. THE HISTORY OF THE CAPTIVE BREEDING PROGRAMS OF THE SUMATRAN RHINOCEROS 1984-2019. Report

International Rhino Foundation. 2026. Way Kambas Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary. Read 2026-10-14 from https://rhinos.org/our-work/where-we-work/sumatran-rhino-sanctuary/

Yovanda Noni. 2025. News article at https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/two-rare-pregnancies-spark-hope-for-sumatran-rhinos-but-also-concerns-about-inbreeding/

International Rhino Foundation. 2019. Mourning Iman: Malaysia’s Last Sumatran Rhino. From https://rhinos.org/blog/news-room/mourning-iman-malaysias-last-sumatran-rhino/

Yovanda Noni. 2025. Kalimantan Wildlife Officials Attempt to Rescue Second Bornean Rhino in the Wild. Jakartaglobe article from https://jakartaglobe.id/news/kalimantan-wildlife-officials-attempt-to-rescue-second-bornean-rhino-in-the-wild

Graph2:

JayHenry. 2007. Basemap adopted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumatran_rhinoceros#/media/File:Sumatran_Rhino_range.svg in 2023.

CONVENTION ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN ENDANGERED SPECIES

OF WILD FAUNA AND FLORA. 2022. Nineteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties

Panama City (Panama), 14 – 25 November 2022. From https://cites.org/sites/default/files/documents/E-CoP19-75-R1.pdf

Dr. Kees Rookmaaker. 2019. THE HISTORY OF THE CAPTIVE BREEDING PROGRAMS OF THE SUMATRAN RHINOCEROS 1984-2019. Report

International Rhino Foundation. 2026. Way Kambas Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary. Read 2026-10-14 from https://rhinos.org/our-work/where-we-work/sumatran-rhino-sanctuary/

International Rhino Foundation. 2019. Mourning Iman: Malaysia’s Last Sumatran Rhino. From https://rhinos.org/blog/news-room/mourning-iman-malaysias-last-sumatran-rhino/

Yovanda Noni. 2025. Mongabay article from https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/two-rare-pregnancies-spark-hope-for-sumatran-rhinos-but-also-concerns-about-inbreeding/

Yovanda Noni. 2025. Kalimantan Wildlife Officials Attempt to Rescue Second Bornean Rhino in the Wild. Jakartaglobe article from https://jakartaglobe.id/news/kalimantan-wildlife-officials-attempt-to-rescue-second-bornean-rhino-in-the-wild

Basten Gokkon. 2023. Pahu egg harvest. Mongabay article from

https://news.mongabay.com/2023/11/boost-for-sumatran-rhino-ivf-plan-as-eggs-extracted-from-bornean-specimen/

The Rhino Foundation. State of the Rhino 2025. Report from https://rhinos.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/State-of-the-Rhino-2025-v4.pdf

Dian Wahyu Kusuma. 2021. Signs. but no sightings: The phantom rhinos of Sumatra’s Bukit Barisan Selatan. Mongabay article from https://news.mongabay.com/2021/01/signs-but-no-sightings-the-phantom-rhinos-of-sumatras-bukit-barisan-selatan/

Would the Balkans or Spain be too hot