Nature: There's been some good news for animals and nature in 2022!
- Published
This spectacular blue orchid is so rare most scientists had only ever seen images of it before from samples in a museum - but this year it was been rediscovered by an expedition team.
It was found in a remote forest in West Papua, close to the site where it was originally recorded almost a century ago by an English explorer.
This green turtle nest was found on a remote island in Cambodia and was the first to be spotted there in almost a decade. This amazing discovery offers hope for the future of this endangered reptile in a country affected by poaching, coastal development and destructive fishing.
This critically endangered gecko – a miniature lizard – comes from Union Island in the Caribbean. The latest survey revealed that numbers have almost doubled since 2018.
This is thanks to new protection measures that have been introduced, including a special team of experts watching out for them - to spot any potential threats to the geckos - as well as new laws that give them much better protection.
This is an asprete, a living fossil fish that, according to estimates, might have lived around the same time as the last dinosaurs - meaning that the species could be 65 million years old! It's very rare and was found in Romania’s Vâlsan River.
This year a new survey found much larger numbers in the river than has ever been seen before. The discovery of 58 new fish has also given conservationists hope that the critically endangered species can be brought back from the brink.
Since 2010, around 100 new species have been discovered in Myanmar, in southeast Asia. It includes geckos and, most recently, a mystery monkey now known as the Popa langur.