Numbers
How do you count an animal you cannot see?
Scientists count hidden animals with sound, photographs, DNA and models. Each method yields a range or a minimum, and that is why published figures differ.
Witness4 min read
The app
Reading is where it starts.
Witness brings one species a week to your phone: a drawn plate, its true story with sources, and one honest action. These notes are the reading between them.
Species
One animal, one verifiable thing about it.
Species
The crow that makes tools and has nowhere to use them
Captive ʻalalā, the Hawaiian crow, use and make stick tools without being taught. Nobody has ever recorded the behaviour in the wild.
Witness3 min read
Species
The bee with a map and no fence
The rusty patched bumble bee got 1.5 million acres of critical habitat in July 2026. What the map binds, what it cannot, and why a garden still counts.
Witness5 min read
Species
The crane that had to be taught where to go
Whooping cranes learn their migration route by flying it with older birds. What that means for a species rebuilt from captivity, and what it puts at risk.
Witness3 min read
Numbers
What a count, a category, or a percentage actually measures.
Numbers
How do you count an animal you cannot see?
Scientists count hidden animals with sound, photographs, DNA and models. Each method yields a range or a minimum, and that is why published figures differ.
Witness4 min read
Numbers
Extinct in the wild is a category with a door in it
Extinct in the Wild means a species survives only in human care or far outside its old range. The Red List rules also say what it takes to leave.
Witness4 min read
Numbers
What actually happens when a species goes extinct
On Guam the consequence was measured. When the baiji left the Yangtze, there was no baseline to measure against. The loss was the same size.
Witness4 min read
Half the Earth
Protected areas, corridors, rewilding, and the argument for leaving half the planet to everything else.
Policy
Laws, courts, treaties, and budgets, read closely.
Policy
What the Endangered Species Act protects, and what it no longer does
The 1973 law read section by section, and the one regulatory word, harm, whose rescission in September 2026 changed what it covers.
Witness12 min read
Policy
The lead ban worked and the poisonings rose
California banned lead ammunition twice, and condor lead deaths went up. An analysis of nearly three decades of records explains how both can be true.
Witness4 min read
Policy
CITES governs borders, not habitat
The third list people confuse with the other two. What the treaty controls, what it cannot touch, and why a party can opt out of any listing it dislikes.
Witness4 min read
Dispatches
Reports from the field and from the people doing the work.
Attention
Apps, media, and what noticing is worth.
Attention
What you get when you adopt an animal
A symbolic adoption is a donation with a certificate attached. What four programmes say the money pays for, and how to read the fine print.
Witness4 min read
Attention
Where money for endangered species actually goes
What charity ratings measure, what they leave out, and why the structure of a gift decides more than a star score does.
Witness4 min read
Attention
What the endangered species apps actually do
No app tracks which species are at risk. The stores offer identification tools, a showcase last updated in 2021, and fundraising products.
Witness3 min read
The Archive
Thirty species records, each with sources, rights, and an honest review state. The app's own catalog.
