Photos: Caged orangutan found in Indonesian politician’s home
MEDAN, Indonesia — A politician arrested on charges of bribery last month in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province was also found to be keeping several rare animals as as illegal pets,…
Preventing the next pandemic is vastly cheaper than reacting to it: Study
Humanity’s response to pandemics to date is similar to our climate change response: mitigation rather than prevention. A new study says preemption could save trillions of dollars and millions of lives; but preparation is grossly underfunded.
New study highlights hidden scale of U.S. illegal tiger trade
When the Netflix documentary series Tiger King aired in 2020, it sparked widespread discussions about the number of captive tigers in the U.S. Subsequently, many people were startled to find…
Links between terrorism and the ivory trade overblown, study says
“The white gold of jihad.” “Case proven: ivory trafficking funds terrorism.” “How killing elephants finances terror in Africa.” Just a few years ago, headlines like this were commonplace, as conservation…
The Years of the Tiger: The demand for tigers and the price they pay (commentary)
On the 1st of February 2022, the Year of the Tiger starts. The Chinese zodiac is an increasingly popular pseudoscientific classification scheme with followers in Asian countries, like China, Japan,…
Online trade and pet clubs fuel desire for little-known Javan ferret badgers
The Javan ferret badger, a small nocturnal carnivore endemic to the islands of Java and Bali, is becoming an increasingly popular pet throughout Indonesia, where it continues to be found…
Greater Mekong primates struggle to cling on amid persistent threats: Report
When scientists described the Popa langur (Trachypithecus popa) as a species new to science in 2020, it was already staring extinction in the face. Fewer than 260 of the fluffy…
Wild cat trade: Why the cheetah is not safe just yet (commentary)
A recent article on the Emirati newspaper The National reports that, according to conservationists, “The increased enforcement by Somaliland in the Gulf [of Aden] and along known smuggling routes, plus the…
Tiger farms doing little to end wild poaching, Vietnam consumer study shows
Acting on a tipoff, Vietnamese police pried open a basement door in Nghe An province and flicked on the light switch. Videos from the August 2021 raid show officers filing…
Want a wild bird on the hush-hush in Singapore? There’s a Facebook group for that
Singapore’s live bird trade is thriving on Facebook largely unlicensed, according to a new report from watchdog group TRAFFIC, which notes the persistence of the illicit pet trade despite clampdowns…
In wildlife traffickers, the internet finds a cancel target everyone agrees on
It was 2008, and Danielle Kessler was sitting in front of her computer, shocked by what she was seeing on the internet: a live rhino for sale. The internet and…
Indonesia ranks high on legal wildlife trade, but experts warn it masks illegal trade
JAKARTA — A recent analysis of the legal wildlife trade in the last 46 years puts Indonesia, a biodiversity hotspot in Southeast Asia, among the top 10 exporters of live…
Wildlife trade hub Vietnam is also hub of impunity for traffickers, report says
Only 14% of wildlife seizures made in Vietnam in the past decade have resulted in convictions, according to a new report that highlights the weak enforcement in the country and…
In Brazil’s wildlife care centers, struggles and successes go unseen
On Feb. 15 this year, the day after Valentine’s, a two-toed sloth was checked into the government-run wildlife screening center in Manaus, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, for some…
Outgunned by militants, rangers fear for chimpanzees in southwest Mali
Forestry officer Karim Kamisoko is not at his post. Instead of patrolling Bafing Faunal Reserve in southwestern Mali, he and his fellow rangers are 70 kilometers (43 miles) away, taking…
Sinking hope of justice as exporter of 26-ton shark fin cargo gets token fine
In April 2020, customs officers in Hong Kong made one of the largest seizures of shark fins in history: 26 metric tons, all of it exported from Ecuador. This number…
In harm’s way: Our actions put people and wildlife at risk of disease
Altering Earth’s natural systems not only spreads disease to humans. Ecosystem disruption increasingly puts wild animals at risk of devastating pandemics and threatens endangered species’ survival.
As seizures of poached giant clams rise, links to ivory trade surface
In April 2021, authorities in the Philippines made a notable discovery. On a beachfront property on Sitio Green Island in Palawan province, they found shell after shell of giant clams,…
Biosurveillance of markets and legal wildlife trade needed to curb pandemic risk: Experts
Medical, public health, and conservation experts are calling for greater pathogen surveillance and regulation of the legal wildlife trade in order to quickly identify pathogens and prevent the next pandemic.
In Bali, prominent official faces backlash over illegal pet gibbon
DENPASAR, Indonesia — An elected official in Bali surrendered a baby gibbon to conservation authorities last month after a social media post showing him playing with the animal at home…
Tracking white-bellied pangolins in Nigeria, the new global trafficking hub
CROSS RIVER NATIONAL PARK, Nigeria — It wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward. For days, we’d crisscrossed rainforest-blanketed mountains, hacked through thorny thickets and corkscrewing lianas, narrowly escaped rockfalls, and…
A gendered approach to the illegal wildlife trade could engender an anti-trafficking revolution (commentary)
This week the United Nations General Assembly is expected to formally adopt its fifth Resolution on Tackling Illicit Trafficking in Wildlife. One might be forgiven for asking “another resolution -…
For Adams Cassinga, fighting wildlife trafficking in DRC is a life mission
In any one month, Adams Cassinga and his team of investigators juggle as many as 20 suspected cases of wildlife crime, only a fraction of which will result in a…
Malaysian hornbill bust reveals live trafficking trend in Southeast Asia
In August 2021, authorities at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport discovered a shipment of eight hornbills, caged but alive, en route to international markets. The Department of Wildlife and National…
Fashions to die for: The fur trade’s role in spreading zoonotic disease
During the pandemic, demand for furs by Chinese, U.S. and EU fashion consumers has set off few alarms, but COVID-19 outbreaks on EU and U.S. mink farms raised questions over the fur trade’s role in spreading zoonotic disease.
Nigeria seeks transnational help to disrupt a still-brisk pangolin trade
Nigeria’s emergence as a trafficking hub for illegal wildlife appears unhindered by the coronavirus pandemic. Between 2016 and 2019, some 200 metric tons of pangolin scales were seized by law…
Weak controls fuel surge in wildlife trafficking by air across Latin America
Brazilian authorities point to Russian biologist Kyrill Kravchenko as an international wildlife trafficker. They had been monitoring him since 2017, after he was arrested in the Netherlands with rare wildlife…
Nigeria seizes scales from 15,000 dead pangolins
Authorities at the Nigeria Customs Service have announced the seizure of 7.1 tons of pangolin scales that smugglers were attempting to ship out of the country. According to customs officials,…
New study finds that minority of animals host majority of zoonotic viruses
In May 2020, Shivaprakash Nagaraju, senior scientist at The Nature Conservancy in India, was working in New Delhi when he contracted COVID-19. “I had breathing problems and other symptoms, and…
Address risky human activities now or face new pandemics, scientists warn
The new, more contagious COVID-19 Delta variant is raging worldwide, while new pandemics are emerging at an ever-faster rate. But we’re still not taking the urgent action needed to prevent the next zoonotic disease outbreak, experts say.
