Endangered

​What was once a hotspot for the leopards of Africa has experienced an alarming population decline, with new research finding that numbers of the large cats are plummeting due mostly to illegal hunting. If the trend isn't reversed, the animals could be gone in the region within three years.

A new study has revealed what the impacts of human-wildlife conflict mean for the outlook of the cheetah, estimating the animal has conceded 91 percent of its traditional range and that just 7,100 remain as a result, prompting calls for urgent action to save it from the brink of extinction. ​​

What options do endangered animals looking for a prospective mate have? Well, thanks to a DNA matchmaking algorithm developed by scientists at Australia's Flinders University, solitary nights and inbreeding are no longer their only options.

A new initiative is looking to make life difficult for poachers, by fitting out an African nature reserve with high-tech gear, such as seismic sensors and infrared drones, all of which is networked to keep tabs on who is going in and out of the park.

As is the story throughout much of the parklands across Africa, endangered species in Tanzania are under threat from poaching. So following other conservationists across the continent, Bathawk Recon have field-tested surveillance drones to better protect the local wildlife.

A team of scientists has successfully crowdfunded a project to sequence the genome of the black rhinoceros – a species that's been poached to near extinction. The effort is an important step in the conservation of the species, of which there are barely more than five thousand remaining.

San Francisco-based biotech startup Pembient is developing what it hopes could be a solution to rhino poaching. It's inexpensive bioengineered rhino horn, which could out-compete the genuine item.

For park rangers patrolling the porous, poacher-friendly borders of Africa's national parks, conserving rhino and elephant populations is certainly a tall order. But equipped with drones, big data and high-tech infrared cameras, one group says it has the capabilities to start stemming the tide.

Researchers have employed two autonomous marine robots called gliders to act as a real time whale-detection system off the coast of Maine.

Instant Wild is a conservation app that sends photos of wild animals to users' iPhones, as those animals trigger camera traps in the wild.

The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) aims to bring together multidisciplinary data from around the world allowing researchers and decision-makers the means to assess, monitor and forecast protected areas globally.

The EcoDogs project trains detection dogs to find endangered animal species, or rather their sign (read excrement), in the field to aid researchers in their goals of ecological research, management, and conservation.