In one of the biggest busts in recent years, Chinese officials have seized 2,748 elephant tusks weighing more than 7 tonnes, the General Administration of Customs announced earlier this week.…
Until recently, there were just four known Yangtze giant softshell turtles in the world. On April 13, the only known female among them died in China’s Suzhou Shangfangshan Forest Zoo…
If there was a world competition for cities with the worst air quality, South Asian cities would win hands down. In 2018, 18 of the top 20 cities with the…
Overfishing is rapidly pushing many of the world’s sharks and tunas toward extinction. The world’s fastest known shark, the shortfin mako, for example, was recently uplisted to endangered on the…
Seahorses continue to be traded in large volumes, despite many source countries imposing bans on exports of the animals, a new study has found. While some of these peculiarly shaped…
My organization, the Elephant Action League (EAL), spent 14 months investigating and infiltrating the illicit totoaba swim bladder supply chain, from Baja California in Mexico to Southern China. We released…
As an environmental journalist I’m bombarded every day with headlines like “The Insect Apocalypse is Here” or “Half of Global Wildlife Lost.” The end of nature, at least as previous…
China’s ambitious, multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative could introduce alien invasive species into several countries, threatening their native biodiversity, warns a new study. Announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in…
Chinese authorities have nabbed all three identified members of a major ivory trafficking syndicate first exposed by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in 2017. In its 2017 report, EIA had…
Everyone loves camera trap photos. Remotely installed cameras triggered by motion or heat of a passing person or animal, have helped research projects document the occurrence of species or describe…
Chinese customs officials have confiscated 444 kilograms (980 pounds) of swim bladders harvested from totoaba, a critically endangered fish, estimated to be worth about $26 million. The totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) is…
Drug-sniffing dogs are an accepted part of our modern world. In the near future, could pollution-sniffing mosses be equally common? Although plants seem inactive compared to animals, a team led…
Ivory, pangolin scales, bear bile: Rachel Nuwer, author of the new book “Poached,” saw it all as she trekked from rainforests to posh restaurants on the trail of wildlife traffickers.
China has backtracked on a recent decision to legalize the “controlled” use of rhino and tiger parts for cultural and medicinal use. In an announcement on Oct. 29, the Chinese…
China has legalized the “controlled” use of rhino horn and tiger bone for medical use and cultural purposes in the country, the government announced on Oct. 29. Rhino horn and…
When China banned all commercial trade in elephant ivory and shuttered its domestic ivory markets at the end of 2017, conservationists applauded the measure. But they also warned that if…
Most primates in China could be wiped out by the end of this century, a new study warns. China is the second-most primate-rich country in Asia, with 25 known species of…
How much of the Earth should we protect to save species from going extinct? Some conservationists have suggested an ambitious number: half of the planet. Prominent biologist Edward O. Wilson,…
Despite ongoing deforestation, fires, drought-induced die-offs, and insect outbreaks, the world's tree cover actually increased by 2.24 million square kilometers — an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined…
When Chinese President Xi Jinping extolls China’s Belt & Road Initiative, he uses words like “green”, “low carbon” and “sustainable”. Is this reality or just ‘greenwashing’—vague and flimsy promises that…
An international team of scientists has used camera traps in China and Russia to come up with a more accurate estimate of Amur leopards in the wild. The research, published in…
KUCHING, Malaysia — As governments in Southeast Asia target economic growth through infrastructure development, China, the world’s second-largest economy, has emerged as a ready funder for some of the most…
A new investigation sheds light on an illegal trade that endangers the world’s smallest and most endangered cetacean species, the vaquita porpoise (Phocoena sinus). The report released July 7 by…
Much of the fishing that takes place in international waters would be unprofitable without the billions of dollars in subsidies pumped in by governments to sustain the ecologically destructive industry,…
In 1998, severe flooding caused by heavy rains and exacerbated by deforestation killed more than 4,000 people in southern China. To reduce the chances of such an event happening again,…
A multinational search in May resulted in the arrest of eight men, including three government officials, for allegedly smuggling pangolin scales and elephant tusks, according to Freeland, a Bangkok-based anti-trafficking…
JAKARTA —Demand for energy in China and Indonesia continues to drive the resurgence of the latter’s coal industry, setting back efforts in both countries to shift to a greater share…
Eight years ago, researchers described a new species of monkey based on a single dead specimen — an individual that had been hunted from a remote, mountainous forest in Myanmar’s…
Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs have been implemented around the world as a means of delivering environmental conservation outcomes while also allowing for socioeconomic development in communities that live…
The world’s largest amphibian has become vanishingly rare in the wild, a new study has found. The Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus) can reach lengths of more than 1.8 meters (6…
At the end of 2017, China announced it had closed down the domestic trade in ivory. Conservation establishment players did victory laps declaring the move a major step in curtailing…
Growing Chinese demand for products made from elephant skin is a rapidly growing threat to the species’ survival in neighboring Myanmar, a new report warns. Over the past decade, Myanmar…
