Six year old Daniel Atkinson loves marine mammals and wants to help them.  When he looked at the Florida Aquarium website when planning a trip with his mother, Daniel read about the emergency rescue of cold-stunned turtles.  Daniel decided that he needed to help, so he emptied his piggy bank and told his mom to send it to the aquarium.

Daniel’s donation of $53.50 was accompanied by a note urging the aquarium to use the money to buy antibiotics and fluids for the turtles.

When Daniel finally got to visit the aquarium on Friday he got a behind the scenes tour. Daniel was allowed to get up close and personal with some of the rescued turtles.

Read the whole story CFNews13.com.

Wildlife Saving is an organization for children which offers the opportunity to sponsor an animal. The organization has several animals at various wildlife centers around the world that can be sponsored.  Each animal has information provided for those who donate. This includes photos and videos of the animal and blog posts from the animals caretakers.

The site requires registration to donate to an animal. To make this safe for children, they comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.  Parental permission is also required for children to register. They also keep donation prices quite low, from 4 dollars to sponsor for 3 months to 13 dollars for a year.

To learn more, visit their site WildlifeSaving.org.

Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan, Canada is now the home of 34 endangered black-footed ferrets. On Friday evening scientists and conservationists released the animals into the park in an effort to reintroduce them to their natural habitat.

The ferrets were nearly extinct until 1981, when a colony was found in Wyoming. This group was used to increase the population. Scientists and zoos from Canada and the United States worked together to breed and reintroduce the black-footed ferret.

After several years of effort, the ferrets were ready for release into the wild.

For more, visit CBCNews.

The Uganda Wildlife Authority is launching a new program to help raise funds and awareness for the very endangered mountain gorilla.

Starting this Saturday, September 26, you can friend or follow specific gorillas living in Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest on Facebook or Twitter for a minimum donation of $1. You will get updates on your gorilla friend(s), including photos, videos, and GPS coordinates – all data gathered by actual trackers that visit the gorillas daily.

According to Lillian Nsubuga, a spokeswoman for the Uganda Wildlife Authority, “For people who think Uganda is a village in Kenya or have only ever heard of the country because of (former dictator) Idi Amin, we want to create a new, more beautiful image. We’re hoping that the online fans will one day come to Uganda to meet their gorilla friends for real.”

For more information about the Friend a Gorilla program, see:
USA Today
FriendA Gorilla.org

To learn more about endangered mountain gorillas, see Animal Fact Guide’s article: Mountain Gorilla.

The perennial fighting in Afghanistan has led to the decline of many animals and fish native to the country. In the midst of the war torn country lies something new, a wildlife preserve.

The preserve, called Band-e-Amir, was established in April of last year with the help of Canadian wildlife biologist Chris Shank. The preserve is the home to nearly 5,000 people who graze animals, farm, and fish on the land.

It is hoped that the preserve will help protect against habitat destruction for wild goats, sheep, wolves, foxes, birds, and fish, all of which have been depleted though illegal hunting, trade, and poaching. In some instances, fisherman use explosives which kill all aquatic creatures in the vicinity.  Other animals, like the snow leopard, have been completely wiped from the area.

Plant life has not fared much better than animal life.  Overgrazing and overfarming have ruined some tracts of land, as has deforestation and illegal harvests.

The overall goal is to conserve the land and animals for the betterment of the people who live there.

For more visit The Canadian Press or USAID/Afghanistan.

Bai Yun, who was reported last month to be pregnant, has given birth to a cub this week. She has given birth to four other cubs in her life: Hua Mei, Mei Sheng, Su Lin and Zhen Zhen. The most recent cub has yet to be named.

Although it was possible that she would give birth to twins, it appears that she will not give birth to the second cub. Pandas have the ability to reabsorb a fetus if it is not fully developed.

Read more at the LA Times.

Check out the San Diego Zoo Panda Cam.

Read more about giant pandas on Animal Fact Guide.

Researchers have found a distinct new subspecies of monkey related to the saddleback tamarins. The researchers have named the new subspecies ‘Mura’s saddleback tamarins’ named after the Mura Indians, an ethnic group in the region the monkey was discovered. Although newly discovered the monkey is already threatened by development plans, including a new highway.

For more visit ScienceDaily.

Fareeda, a white Bengal tiger, has recently turned six months old and has yet to develop any stripes. Her handlers say that she probably will never develop stripes if she has not already. That makes Fareeda one of the rarest tigers in the world. There are twenty other stripe-less tigers in the world. All are in captivity. Fareeda was bred as part of conservation program in South Africa.
For more visit The Telegraph.

The Philadeplia Zoo recently welcomed an eaglet. While the eaglet’s parents are unable to live in the wild, their baby will not be raised in the confines of the zoo. The Philadelphia Zoo and the Pennsylvania Game Commission worked together to bring the eaglet out of the zoo and back into the wild. The baby was placed in a nest with two other eaglets in an undisclosed location north of Philadelphia. This is the second time the zoo and game commission have placed a captive born eaglet in the wild.

For more information visit Philly.com

The maleo is an endangered bird found only on the island of Sulawesi, in Indonesia. The maleo is about the size of a chicken, but it lays eggs up to five times as large as chicken eggs. The bird has yellow facial skin, a red-orange beak, a black ‘helmet’, and a black back and pink stomach.

Recently, the conservation of this strange bird has been helped by the purchase and protection of a stretch of beach used for breeding. The maleo buries its eggs in the warm sand of the beach to incubate. The eggs are then abandoned. Upon hatching, the chicks are able to fly and live on their own.

The stretch of beach was purchased for approximately $12,500. Funds were donated by the Lis Hudson Memorial Fund and the company Quvat Management. The 36 acre beach is now owned by Pelestari Alam Liar dan Satwa, known as PALS, a local conservation group.

For more information visit Science Daily.