China’s Demand For Resources News

Logs smuggled across the border from Myanmar to China. Photo © : EIA. Runaway economic growth comes with costs: in the case of China's economic engine, one of them has…

Officials in Hong Kong have made a second major ivory bust in less than a month, reports the Associated Press. Customs agents at Hong Kong's port on Thursday discovered 1.33…

Raw logs cut with artisanal permits at Kinkole port near Kinshasa. Photo courtesy of Global Witness. In 2002 the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced a moratorium on commercial logging…

Imports of logs and timber to China plunged 19 percent during the first eight months of 2012 relative to the same period a year earlier reports the Wood Resource Quarterly.…

Deforestation in Laos for a rubber plantation. Raw logs from such deforestation often make their way to Vietnam. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. The forests of Lao are still suffering…

Malayan tiger. Photo by Rhett A. Butler. While founded with good intentions, wildlife trade bans may in some cases be worsening the plight of some endangered species, argues a commentary…

Legal ivory trade failing to protect elephants The legal ivory trade is failing to protect elephants which are being slaughtered en mass across the African continent to meet demand for…

Average rhino horn consumer: wealthy urban male in Asia between the ages of 25-45 Yao Ming walks with Kinango, an infant elephant whose mother was killed by poachers at the…

Pictured: Ivory seized by Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Two ivory dealers pled guilty to trafficking…

Trekking through deep mud and sawgrass we find a stinking wallow. The elite rangers, dressed completely in black despite the tropical heat, mark the site with the GPS unit, measure…

In the wake of a surge in tiger poaching, the state government of Maharashtra, India will no longer consider the shooting of wildlife poachers by forest rangers a crime, reports…

An interview with the Nature Conservancy's China Program. TNC staff and volunteers repairing signage at Meili Snow Mountain National Park in northwest Yunnan. Community benefits and ecotourism are at the…

Basamuk Bay in Madang, Papua New Guinea. Photo produced using Google Earth. A massive, controversial nickel mine has been shut down in Papua New Guinea due to the environmental concerns…

More than 200 elephants have been slaughtered for their tusks in less than a month in Cameroon, reports the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). The group blames Sudanese poachers…

Illegally logged tree in Indonesia. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Australia should join the widening effort to stamp out illegal logging, according to testimony given this week by tropical ecologist…

Juvenile African bush elephant in Kenya. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Abdullahi Mohammed, an wildlife ranger, was killed in the line of duty in Kenya this weekend by elephant poachers.…

Close-up from world's first photo of a living Myanmar snub-nosed monkey. Photo by: FFI/BANCA/PRCF. In 2010 researchers described a new species of primate that reportedly sneezes when it rains. Unfortunately,…

Owing to the high yield of the African oil palm tree, palm oil is today the cheapest commercial source of edible oil. But oil palm expansion in recent decades has…

One of the very last Hainan gibbons (Nomascus hainanus), this one is a female. Photo courtesy of: Greenpeace. Just twenty-three Hainan gibbons (Nomascus hainanus) survive in the world. Confined to…

Chinese pulp mills are importing record amounts of hardwood chips from Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, reports the Wood Resource Quarterly, an industry trade journal. Growing imports are the product of…

China is currently involved in 289 hydroelectric projects worldwide, as reported by International Rivers. Most of the dams are planned for hydropower, and over half are considered 'large' projects. The…

In 1968, distinguished anthropologist Roy Rappaport wrote a seminal publication of human ecology: “Pigs for the Ancestors: Rituals in the Ecology of a New Guinea People” which integrated cultural ritual…

New Zealand's log exports to China are surging, reports the Wood Resource Quarterly. Log exports from New Zealand in 2011 are running 25 percent of last year's rate and are…

Costa Rican fishermen have killed some 2,000 sharks in Colombian waters off Malpelo island, a protected area renowned for its marine life, reports Colombia Reports. Sandra Bessudo, special advisor on…

Large-scale opposition has pushed the Myanmar government to suspend construction of a massive Chinese dam. Being built on the confluence of the Mayhka amd Malihka rivers at the head of…

One-horned rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) with its horn cut off to protect it from poachers Nearly 200 rhinos have been killed in South Africa through the first six months of 2011,…

Laos Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong ordered authorities to crack down on illegal logging and timber trafficking in the midst of accelerating forest loss, reports the Vientiane Times. Under Thongsing's directive,…

This commentary original appeared at the Jakarta Globe as Where Have All the Geckos Gone? and has been posted here with the permission of the authors. The call of the…

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pledged that China would work with other nations to end the trade in tiger parts and revive tiger populations at the Global Tiger Forum last fall,…

China imported $6.1 billion worth of logs in 2010, a 22.4 percent increase over 2009, according to the country's customs bureau. Russia dominated the trade, accounting for 41 percent by…