Illegal Trade News

A new study has shed light on how rare lizards found only in Sri Lanka are winding up in Europe as part of the illegal trade in exotic wildlife. The…

Sri Lanka will push for international protection of its endemic lizards threatened by smuggling when it hosts a global biodiversity trade summit next month. When the 18th meeting of the Conference…

RANONG, Thailand — Beyond a metal gate in Ranong, a port town in southern Thailand, a warehouse is filled nearly wall to wall and floor to ceiling with bags of…

Update: The NGO Wildlife Direct, which has offices in Kenya, reports that Ephantus Mbare Gitonga was acquitted by a magistrate at Mombasa Law Courts on April 25, 2019. It could…

JAKARTA — Indonesian authorities have arrested seven suspected members of a trafficking ring believed to have used Facebook and other social media to sell at least 40 Komodo dragons and…

Three suspected totoaba poachers were reportedly shot yesterday by Mexican marines following a confrontation over illegal gillnets that had been confiscated. According to local news outlet Fronteras, the governor of…

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…

The environmental impact of the global demand for lithium and more jaguar protection in South America, plus profiles of five pioneering women in conservation science, and a newly discovered tree…

Wildlife traffickers rely heavily on airlines to smuggle endangered species. Now, in a recent report, the U.K.-based charity World Animal Protection (WAP) has named Turkish Airlines as one of the…

An influential group of U.S. senators, including possible candidates for the 2020 presidential race Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, is calling on investment firms to take responsibility for deforestation caused…

They don’t fly, nor do they breathe fire from their mouths, but the “little dragons” of the Abronia genus are the latest craze on the pet reptile market. Far from…

The trade of live birds in South America is down to its lowest levels in years, according to a report released Jan. 16 by conservation NGOs TRAFFIC and WWF. But…

Two Asiatic black bear cubs have been rescued from the illegal wildlife trade in Vietnam. Vietnamese authorities confiscated the two female bear cubs from wildlife smugglers in Hai Phong province…

On today’s episode, we welcome Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler to discuss the biggest rainforest news stories of 2018 and what storylines to watch in 2019. He also discusses…

Vietnam’s illegal ivory markets are still thriving, according to a new report by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. Over two surveys conducted between November 2016 and June 2017, TRAFFIC’s…

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…

Reports of illegal trafficking in elephant ivory or rhino horn abound, but plants are actually more frequent victims of the illicit trade than wildlife. In fact, roughly 30,000 of the…

A multi-national research team has developed a rapid DNA identification method to help customs inspectors detect illegally traded wildlife products, beginning with sharks. The DNA testing protocol, published last month,…

Companies and their investors are exposing themselves to massive legal and financial risks by trading, sometimes unwittingly, in products derived from illegally harvested timber, according to a new report. Published earlier…

Hunters in India are helping supply the illegal pangolin trade, and new research that probes their motivations might point to measures that can reduce the poaching and sale of the…