If you’re looking to buy orchids from plant markets in southern China, chances are you’ll find plenty of orchids that have been collected from the wild, sometimes illegally. And these…
Traditional Asian medicine is driving the growing international trade in big cat products and leading to the mistreatment of thousands of animals, according to a recent report. Bones, blood, and…
The sex of some turtle species is influenced not by genes but by the temperatures they experience in the nest. Eggs incubated at cooler temperatures develop into males, while those…
The case of the river tern is a curious one. The medium-sized gray bird with a forked tail, a black cap and a white belly is quite common along rivers…
Chances are the locally caught fish you bought down by the wharf was spawned thousands of miles away, migrating on ocean currents, a new study has found. An estimated 90…
The homegrown banks that back the flood of soy into China have with little knowledge of the deforestation their funding is potentially supporting, according to the nonprofit CDP, an international…
Laurel Chor is a Hong Kong-based photojournalist and filmmaker. A National Geographic Explorer, Ambassador for the Jane Goodall Institute-Hong Kong, and founder of Hong Kong Explorers Initiative, she will be…
JAKARTA — Citizens of countries participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI, strongly prefer clean energy over the coal projects that have become Beijing’s calling card, a new…
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…
