Photo: ‘Tonho da Onca’ (Jaguar Tony). Courtesy of Brazilian Federal Police.

Twenty years ago Brazil’s most notorious jaguar hunter, Teodoro Antonio Melo Neto, also known as “Tonho da onça” or “Jaguar Tony,” swore off poaching after logging 600 kills.

The foe-turned-jaguar-ally began helping conservation agencies track the elusive cats for their monitoring and research and his dramatic change of heart even became the subject of a children’s book, titled Tonho da Onça, which related a conservation message. More recently, however, “Jaguar Tony,” now 71 years old, revealed his true spots when federal agents busted him and seven others for illegal jaguar hunting.

In late 2009, Brazilian federal authorities launched a nine-month investigation, code-named Operation Jaguar, after receiving reports of radio-collared jaguars that had “gone silent” and also of jaguar carcasses on farms in Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest wetland – about the size of Illinois – and prime habitat for the large cats. …read more of Operation Jaguar: Poaching and Human-Wildlife Conflict here

Photo Credit: Svetoslav Spasov, BSPB

What’s the first thing, rising in your mind when you hear the word “eagle”? No, I can’t read your mind, but I don’t even need to – I bet there’s no person, who would deny the majesty and genius of these absolutely beautiful creatures. Add one “imperial” in front of “eagle” and the result is one of the most amazing wonders of nature.

“Why imperial?”, you may ask. Well, let’s have a look at the size of these birds. The simple scientific data says the wingspan of an adult Imperial eagle can be more than 7 feet (I’m not kidding!) or about 2.15 meters, only a bit smaller than the Golden eagle. Just for a comparison – the distance between the fingertips of one of your hands and these of the other equals your height. Unbelievably, but with their wings outspread these fellows are larger than an average human. Pretty imperial, aren’t they? …read more of Imperial Eagles and Co. here

I never tire of gazing at bison in Yellowstone. I find them magnificent creatures and they are inextricably linked for me to a prehistoric time when 60 million of their ancestors roamed in endless herds across North America (one explorer noted a sea of buffalo that stretched 20 miles wide).

In the winter I salute their tenacious survival skills, and smile when I see a bison “snow angel,” the marks in the snow left from them brushing their head from side-to-side in search of sparse forage underneath. Somehow these 2,000 pound animals scratch out a living in Yellowstone’s extreme winter by eating mostly dead plants–what we would consider the equivalent of munching on cardboard. …read more of A Lament for a Bison here