2 . The rhino census (犀牛普查) is out, bearing good news for the greater one-horned rhinos! In September, 2022, the International Rhino Foundation (IRF) documented in a report that there is a baby boom in this population, representing an increase of 167 percent.

According to the report, there are a total of 4,014 greater one-horned rhinos living in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. Although this is positive news, their IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) status still remains vulnerable.

In India alone, the home to 70 percent of the world’s greater one-horned rhinos, there was an increase of 274 rhinos since the last biannual census, according to the organization Rhino Review.

An important reason for this baby boom is the fact that Assam, India, has enlarged Kaziringo National Park, home to the world’s largest one-horned rhino population. The park went from 430 square kilometers to 1,040 square kilometers. This gives more breeding areas for the rhinos, and they are closed to visitors during breeding season.

India and Nepal are also protecting the rhinos by enforcing wildlife crime laws. To reduce rhino death by poaching (偷猎), the IRF donates vehicles and equipment, plus education including guard training and crime investigation.

The IRF data for other rhino species is not as promising, although the greater one-horned rhino numbers are encouraging for future conservation. According to the report, there is a decline in Sumatran rhinos, Africa’s white rhinos, while the Javan rhino population is stable and threatened by loss of habitat.

The State of the Rhino report offers hope for these other species. Given that the greater one-horned things were once close to extinction, with fewer than 100 living in the world, their recovery is incredible. This demonstrates that there are solutions when organizations and people work together. Let us hope that this successful rhino baby boom will affect other endangered wildlife species around the globe.

5 . During our research for this sequence, we had been told we shouldn’t even bother trying to film the Pallas’s cat in winter. Filming such an animal was said to be near impossible. We wouldn’t be able to find such a small animal in the vast steppes of Mongolia. Besides this, they’re known to be easily frightened and extremely cautious. But we wanted to surprise audiences by showing them frozen worlds that lay outside of the Poles.

Arriving in Mongolia, I was struck by its vastness. It’s unbelievable that our first day presented us with a good view of our hard-to-find target. Our guide led us to the top of a hill. More than a kilometre away in an unimpressive pile of rocks, I could see a tiny spot, a Pallas’s cat! We were so excited!

We had been blessed with extremely low daytime temperature. Pallas’s cats have the densest coat of any cat, but even so they must save their energy as much as possible. Their movements at these temperatures were especially seldom. While conditions did not look promising, we still needed to see if we could actually film them.

The cats would only appear if the sun was out. But the steppe could be hit at any time by fast and bitter winds which would make any animal that had decided to appear come to an end. The decision as to whether to hold out for the weather to pass or to have a rest was always a painful one to make.

But as the weeks went on and we spent more time with the cats, it was astonishing to see just how it was that they were able to survive in such a difficult and unpleasant environment. The longer we spent with them, the more we found ourselves falling in love with these attractive little characters and their winter lives.

6 . We humans have an outsize influence on this planet, and our winged, finned, and four-legged neighbors are in their tough time. Many animals have died out in response to the pressures, but some survivors are adapting. Some animals are showing off never-before-seen behaviors, shifting their diets, and even evolving different shapes, sizes, and colors.

The shifts can’t be avoided and are likely permanent: There’s no going back to when wildlife was still completely wild. “There’s no place anywhere on the planet in its original condition. There are micro plastics at the bottom of the ocean, and Antarctica is melting. The world has changed because we’re in it,” says Tag Engstrom, a biologist at California State University.

African elephants in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park are some daring members of the animal kingdom, who have found a will and a way to change right along with it.

Normally elephants use their 6-foot-long tusks to dig wells in search of water, lift objects, rip bark off trees, and even battle lions. In other words, the ivory appendages (附属品) are not just impressive to look at — they are highly useful tools. So it might seem strange that a significant number of African elephants in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, once an illegal hunting wildlife area, are now being born without tusks.

According to a 2021 DNA analysis published in the journal Science, that the elephants are born without tusks is no coincidence. After decades of being shot by ivory brokers, the leading elephants in some herds have passed down a trait that prevents the females’ prize possessions from growing in — and helps them avoid being hunted. No one knows yet how widespread these genes might be in the greater population of African elephants, or how the loss of tusks might affect the mammals’ survival overall. But the findings are a powerful, if depressing, reminder of the extremes a species might endure to escape from extinction.

7 . Local authorities and firefighters in the United States are always on the lookout for new and creative methods to help control wildfires. Especially during the hot and dry summer months, thousands of wildfires cause damage to forests every year. The city of West Sacramento in North California has found a creative secret weapon to help deal with this phenomenon: goats.

These friendly animals have been assisting the city with wildfire prevention and fire risks by eating weeds, dry grass and dead trees. When the goats eat the things that are likely to catch fire, they prevent the problem from happening.

Wildfires occur naturally when dry plants are ignited(点燃)by the sun’s heat and catch on fire. However, most wildfires are caused by human carelessness, including unattended campfires, cigarettes and other flammable objects. The best strategy to battle the fires and minimize the damage is to attempt to remove the fuel that enables the spread of the flames, in this case the dry weeds, trees and plants. If the things that are most likely to catch fire are gone, the fire is less likely to spread.

The love able goats are able to reach difficult areas that people are not able to access. About 400 of these goats can clear two acres per day. They even fertilize(使肥沃)the area, a natural and free side effect of eating all those dry plants. Firefighters and government officials cannot be happier with the results.

“For us, the combination of turning to goats for help with the quick fire response is an effective method of keeping our neighbors safe from disastrous wildfires,“said assistant Fire Chief Khari Helae.” With climate change and the fact that our vegetation is being affected because of climate change, it’s necessary to focus on our fuel reduction program.”

8 . In a study involving sweat samples from 335 people, trained dogs sniffed out 97 percent of the coronavirus cases that had been identified by PCR tests and all 31 COVID-19 cases among 192 people who didn’t have symptoms, researchers reported.

These findings are evidence that dogs could be effective for mass screening efforts at places such as airports or concerts and may provide friendly alternatives for testing people who fear the tests, says Dominique Grandjean in France.

Dogs’ noses also identified more COVID-19 cases than did antigen (抗原) tests, but sometimes mistook another virus for the coronavirus, Grandjean and colleagues found. What’s more, evidence suggests the dogs can pick up cases 48 hours before people test positive by PCR.

In the study, dogs were trained in coronavirus detection by rewarding them with toys—usually tennis balls. “It’s playtime for them,” Grandjean says. It takes about three to six weeks, depending on the dog’s experience with odor detection, to train a dog to pick out COVID-19 cases from sweat samples. For detection, the dogs sniffed used face masks or housing sweat samples collected from human volunteers’ underarms. Results showed that dogs perform as well as or even better than PCR tests for detecting the virus that causes COVID-19, Furton says. He and colleagues have used dogs at schools, a music festival and in a small trial screening airline employees for coronavirus infections.

One of the biggest advantages dogs have over other tests is their speed, Furton says. “Even with what we call a rapid test, you’re still going to have to wait tens of minutes or even hours, where the dog in a matter of seconds can make a response.” However, dogs take time to train and there currently aren’t even enough dogs trained to detect explosives, let alone diseases, Otto says.

Another drawback is that people don’t think of them as high-tech, though they’re one of the highest-tech devices we have.

9 . The latest report finds that tiger population may have increased as much as 40% in seven years. There were 3,200 tigers in 2015 and about 4,500 in 2022. That’s the first growth in decades, which is a turning point for an endangered species.

Every few years since 1968, the tiger’s status is reassessed as it continues to be classified as endangered. Since the first assessment in 1998, governments and non-profit groups have focused on conservation steps. Starting in 2010, many governments committed to the Global Tiger Recovery Program. Their goal has been to work to double the number of wild tigers globally-reaching at least 6,000 animals-by 2022, but they can’t achieve it.

With an average of 4,500 tigers, about 3,140 of them are estimated to be adults. South Asia’s tigers account for 76% of the world’s tiger population. The area’s tigers have seen growth, particularly in India and Nepal. In Northeast Asia, population figures are mostly stable in Russia and likely to be increasing along the China border. The worst situation is in Southeast Asia where tiger numbers have dropped in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

Scientists point out it is significant to continue conservation efforts. There was a significant decline in the tiger number in the last century and tigers remain endangered. The Malayan and Sumatran tigers are still listed as critically endangered. This is due to habitat loss and poaching(偷猎)of tigers, with these threats persisting in several parts of the tiger’s range. Besides poaching, tigers are threatened by habitat loss and are killed for their attack to humans.

“While a large amount of protection and funding are still needed before announcing ‘mission accomplished,’ these numbers signal previously incomprehensible stability in the tiger population, and even increases in some protected areas,” said Goodrich, a scientist. “This is nothing short of a turning moment in the protection of tigers, given the overwhelming threats they face at every turn.”