Too tempting, too easy: poachers kill Kenya’s biggest elephant
Report estimates more than 20,000 elephants poached in Africa in 2013 In the first week of June, a huge elephant carcass was found in a swamp in Tsavo East National…
Ivory Trade News
Grenades, helicopters, and scooping out brains: poachers decimate elephant population in park
WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES BELOW. Poached elephant skull shows bullet hole from above, likely from a helicopter. The elephant's face was cut off by a chainsaw to remove the tusks. In…
Chelsea, Hillary Clinton urge action to save elephants
Hillary and Chelsea Clinton on stage at the WCS event at the Central Park Zoo June 12, 2014. Photo © Julie Larsen Maher / WCS. Former secretary of state Hillary…
New York State Assembly approves bill banning ivory trade
Baby elephant in South Africa. The New York State Assembly has passed a bill that would ban the purchase and sale of elephant ivory and rhino horn, reports the Wildlife…
Hong Kong begins destroying 131,000 pounds of elephant ivory
Elephant in South Africa. Hong Kong has begun destroying its 29.6-metric-ton stockpile of confiscated ivory. On Thursday authorities in the semi-autonomous Chinese city crushed and incinerated a ton of seized…
Leonardo DiCaprio donates $1M toward ending elephant poaching crisis
Desert elephants in Namibia. Photos by Rhett Butler. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio has stepped up with a $1 million donation to the Elephant Crisis Fund, an initiative that aims to stop…
Ivory trade’s shocking toll: 65% of world’s forest elephants killed in 12 years (warning: graphic image)
Forest elephants have suffered unprecedented butchery for their ivory tusks over the past decade, according to new numbers released by conservationists today in London. Sixty-five percent of the world's forest…
Obama announces new strategy to tackle wildlife trafficking, including toughening ivory ban
Yesterday, the Obama administration announced an ambitious new strategy to help tackle the global illegal wildlife trade, including a near-complete ban on commercial ivory. The new strategy will not only…
Hong Kong to destroy 4,000 dead elephants’ worth of ivory
Elephants in Namibia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler The government of Hong Kong will destroy 28 tons of ivory confiscated from traffickers, reports CNN. The announcement, which comes just weeks…
China destroys 6 tons of elephant ivory
Elephant in South Africa. China authorities destroyed 6.1 tons of illegal ivory during a public event held in Guangzhou on Monday. The ivory was part of a stockpile of product…
China to destroy ivory stockpile
Elephant in Namibia. The Chinese government plans to destroy a stockpile of contraband elephant ivory and other seized wildlife products next week during a public ceremony in Guangzhou, reports the…
Rainforest news review for 2013
The year in rainforest news 2013 was full of major developments in efforts to understand and protect the world's tropical rainforests. The following is a review of some of the…
Anti-elephant poaching story goes viral in China
Elephant in South Africa. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. A newspaper story about the impact of the ivory trade has gone viral in China, raising awareness among millions of Chinese,…
22,000 elephants slaughtered for their ivory in 2012
As the African Elephant Summit open in Botswana today, conservationists released a new estimate of the number of African elephants lost to the guns of poachers last year: 22,000. Some…
Illegal timber, rhino horn, elephant ivory seized in raids across Africa
Illegal elephant ivory. Courtesy of Interpol Raids in southern and eastern Africa yielded a stash of contraband linked to poaching and illegal logging, reports Interpol, which coordinated the operation. The…
Remote sensor captures sound of ivory poacher shooting an elephant
A sensor used by researchers to capture low-frequency communication between elephants inadvertently recorded the audio of an elephant being gunned down by a poacher in Gabon, reports the Wildlife Conservation…
The mystery of the disappearing elephant tusk
Give it a few thousand years, and tusks could completely disappear from the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). The beautifully smooth, elongated ivory incisors neatly bordering a long trunk are iconic…
New campaign: hey China, stop killing the ‘pandas of Africa’
A new public-service campaign in China will ask potential ivory and rhino horn buyers to see the victims of these illicit trades in a new light: as the "pandas of…
Advertising campaign changing minds in China on ivory trade
70 percent of Chinese did not know that ivory came from dead elephants. For three years, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) has been running advertizing campaigns in Chinese…
Tanzania should implement shoot-to-kill policy for poachers, says government minister
A government minister in Tanzania has called for a "shoot-to-kill" policy against poachers in a radical measure to curb the mass slaughter of elephants. Khamis Kagasheki's proposal for perpetrators of…
Clinton Global Initiative pledges $80 million to combat elephant poaching
Hillary and Chelsea Clinton on Thursday deployed their mother-daughter star power to help the effort to save African elephants, brokering an $80m effort to stop the ivory poaching which threatens…
Butchering nature’s titans: without the elephant ‘we lose an essential pillar in the ability to wonder’
The world's largest land animal looms small in the distance. Photo by: Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson. Africa's elephant poaching crisis doesn't just threaten a species, but imperils one of…
600 vultures killed by elephant poachers in Namibia
As the illegal poaching of African elephants and rhinos reaches epidemic levels, other species are also suffering catastrophic losses as a direct result of poachers' behavior. A recent incident in…
U.S. to crush its six ton ivory stockpile
On October 8th, the Obama administration will publicly destroy its ivory stockpile, totaling some six tons, according to a White House forum yesterday on the illegal wildlife trade. The destruction…
Elephant killer gets five years in prison in the Republic of Congo
The Congolese Supreme Court has ordered Ghislain Ngondjo (known as Pepito) to five years in prison for slaughtering dozens of elephants for their ivory tusks. The five year sentence is…
Zoos call on governments to take urgent action against illegal wildlife trade (photos)
Warning: some photos may be disturbing or graphic. In a single night in March, a band of heavily-armed, horse-riding poachers slaughtered 89 elephants in southern Chad, thirty of which were…
Obama to take on elephant and rhino poaching in Africa
Barack Obama launched a new initiative against wildlife trafficking on Monday, using his executive authority to take action against an illegal trade that is fueling rebel wars and now threatens…
New forensic method tells the difference between poached and legal ivory
Forensic-dating could end a major loophole in the current global ban on ivory, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Scientists have…
African militias trading elephant ivory for weapons
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is using lucrative elephant poaching for ivory to fund its activities, according to a report published on Tuesday. Eyewitness accounts from park rangers, Lord's Resistance…
Gabon steps in to help protect elephants from ivory poaching at Central African Republic site
Gabon has agreed to help battle poaching in protected areas in the Central African Republic following an elephant massacre at a renowned World Heritage site, reports the Wildlife Conservation Society…
Elephants massacred for ivory in Central African Republic
As anticipated earlier in the week by conservationists, poachers enter Dzanga Bai and slaughter dozens elephants for ivory. Dozens of elephants have been slaughtered in the Dzanga Bai World Heritage…
17 poachers allegedly enter elephant stronghold in Congo, conservationists fear massacre
WWF urges Central Africa Republic government to act. Local researchers and wildlife guards say 17 armed elephant poachers have gained access to Dzanga Bai, a famous large clearing and waterfole…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Narco airstrips beset Indigenous communities in Peruvian Amazon
- 15 illegal narco-trafficking airstrips found near Peru Indigenous communities
- Satellite data show bursts of deforestation continue in Indonesian national park
- Fires rip through Indigenous territories in Brazilian Amazon
Oceans
- Samoa’s new marine spatial plan protects 30% of the country’s ocean
- Tuna fishing devices drift through a third of oceans, harming corals, coasts: Study
- Indigenous Bajo suffer child deaths & toxic sludge amid green energy push
- Southeast Asia’s fisheries thrive despite decades of overfishing warnings: Study
Amazon Conservation
- ‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Brazil dredges Amazon rivers to ease drought isolation, raising environmental concerns
- ‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
Land rights and extractives
- Indigenous Bajo suffer child deaths & toxic sludge amid green energy push
- ‘Colombia’s Amazon peoples provide solutions’: Interview with José Homero Mutumbajoy
- Should mining companies consider no-go zones where isolated Indigenous peoples live? (Commentary)
- Brazil sets a date to remove illegal miners from Munduruku land, more details await
Endangered Environmentalists
- Environmental & rights activists flee and hide as M23 captures DRC’s cities
- Environmental journalist in Cambodia shot and killed by suspected logger
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
- Mother Nature Cambodia activists sentenced to prison — again
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
Conservation Effectiveness
- How effective is the EU’s marquee policy to reduce the illegal timber trade?
- How sharing and learning from failures can transform conservation (commentary)
- Is planting trees as good for the Earth as everyone says?
- Failure in conservation projects: Everyone experiences it, few record it
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- An ‘ocean grab’ for a property megaproject leaves Jakarta fishers grounded
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
