“Numbering just 384 individuals, the North Atlantic right whale is among the most vulnerable whale species in the world. Thankfully, its prospects may be improving; the population has grown about 7 percent since 2020, and scientists are reporting an unusually fruitful calving season this winter,” reports The Doomslayer.
The Boston Globe explains:
Since 2020, the population of whales has grown by about 7 percent. In 2024, the most recent year for which there is data available, the whale consortium estimated that there were 384 whales, an increase of about 2 percent from the year before. And in 2025, Pettis said, there were zero mortalities of right whales detected.
This year’s calving season, which began in November and runs through April, has brought more promising news. So far, 18 new calves have been spotted, including one on New Year’s Day. An aerial survey team identified a calf swimming off the coast of Florida with its mother, Boomerang, named for her boomerang-shaped white scar.
‘We’re having a great year,’ said Ryan Schosberg, a member of the right whale ecology program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown. He has been conducting aerial surveys to spot whales. Last year, there were only 11 calves spotted, he said.
“The critically endangered Lesser Antillean iguana is recovering after conservationists relocated some of the species’ last survivors to an island free of competing lizards,” reports The Doomslayer.
An endangered flat-headed cat was recently discovered.
The extinction rate is falling as fewer species are becoming extinct.
In 2023, a dog discovered a species of mole long thought to be extinct, De Winton’s golden mole.
A rare flightless grasshopper was recently found in Virginia, where such grasshoppers had not been seen for 79 years.
India has doubled its tiger population, even as its population and economy have grown rapidly.
The snow leopard population has doubled in Kazakhstan.
Snub-nosed monkeys are making a comeback in China.
