Illegal trade News

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Gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon in 2011. Photo by Rhett Butler.

The Amazon’s silent crime crisis (commentary)

Carlos Nobre, Robert Muggah, Ilona Szabo 15 Apr 2026

Two-month-old bear cubs rescued from Facebook sale in Laos

Naina Rao 14 Apr 2026

Malawi says there’s been no illegal crayfish smuggling for a year

Charles Mpaka 8 Apr 2026
Pangolins are one of the most in-demand wildlife in Asia, used in traditional chinese medicine preparations. After Chinese pangolins plummeted by about 90% in the 2000s, traffickers shifted to African species.

Asia now hub of growing illegal wildlife trade across 100+ countries, study shows

Spoorthy Raman 30 Mar 2026

Zambia seizes half-ton of ivory in major illegal wildlife crime operation

Charles Mpaka 28 Mar 2026
Hooded vultures are small, scruffy-faced vultures native to sub-Saharan Africa.

‘Staggering’ trade for belief-based use drives hooded vultures to near-extinction in Benin

Spoorthy Raman 25 Mar 2026
The endangered Sumatran laughingthrush is another masterbird species threatened by trade. Image by Simon Bruslund

Songbird trade threatens lesser-known ‘master birds’ with secondary extinctions: Study

Sean Mowbray 23 Mar 2026
Officers display pangolin scales intended for smuggling into Cambodia.

Jakarta port authorities seize 3 tons of pangolin scales in Cambodia-bound container

Anggita Raissa 20 Mar 2026
Every year, up to 100 tonnes of glass eels, worth €2.5-3 billion, are smuggled out of Europe.

Eight arrested as Europe cracks down on lucrative eel smuggling syndicates

Spoorthy Raman 19 Mar 2026

Facebook shuts Indonesia groups after Mongabay and Bellingcat report illegal wildlife trade

Achmad Rizki Muazam, Foeke Postma 19 Mar 2026
Juvenile Sumatran orangutans like this are highly sought by traffickers. Image courtesy of Onrizal Onrizal.

Indonesia’s orangutan trafficking cases reveal need for a change in approach (commentary)

Onrizal Onrizal 12 Mar 2026
With striking orange and black streaks on their wings, painted woolly bats are one of the most colorful bats in the world.

U.S.’ hunger for Halloween trinkets is killing Vietnam’s painted woolly bats

Spoorthy Raman 9 Mar 2026

Online ads reveal scale — and gaps — in amphibian pet trade into US

David Brown 27 Feb 2026
A judge watches a cockfight in Peru.

How cockfighting imperils Peru’s critically endangered sawfish

Mongabay.com 27 Feb 2026
A radio-collared slow loris in Bangladesh.

Out of captivity, into conflict: slow lorises struggle to survive after release

Carolyn Cowan 26 Feb 2026
Eastern shingleback lizards in New South Wales, Australia.

Australia hands record prison sentence to reptile smuggler in trafficking crackdown

Gloria Dickie 25 Feb 2026
A captive sand cat in Nushi, Pakistan. Illegal trade is occurring amid a paucity of information about population sizes of small cat populations, says Sheikh. “It's going under the radar to a big extent, and hardly anything is being done to actively stop it or to mitigate this threat.”

Big cats get the press, but small wildcats are being poached and trafficked in silence

Sean Mowbray 25 Feb 2026
A woman standing in a street carries a basin filled with a colourful variety of plastic bottles while in the background there are busy stalls and shoppers in the street. Image by Elliot Ovadje via Flickr.

Recycling startups test limits of private solutions to deluge of waste in Lagos

Abdulwaheed Sofiullahi 20 Feb 2026
Collage featuring Jeffrey Lendrum

The man who risked everything to steal bird eggs

Sandy Watt 11 Feb 2026
Rainforest in Brunei in 2025. Photo by Rhett Ayers Butler

The year in rainforests 2025: Deforestation fell; the risks did not

Rhett Ayers Butler 26 Dec 2025
Artisanal fishing boats. Image by Mongabay Latam.

Drug gangs in Ecuador and Peru also involved in shark fin trafficking: Report

Shanna Hanbury 19 Dec 2025
A logging worker stands on Mukula logs

New technologies offer hope in fight to save the world’s imperiled rosewoods

Katarina Zimmer 15 Dec 2025

Birds, bugs and butterflies netted in global seizures by Interpol

Spoorthy Raman 12 Dec 2025
Iain Douglas-Hamilton. Image courtesy Save the Elephants.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, elephant protector, has died at 83

Rhett Ayers Butler 9 Dec 2025

Stricter rules adopted to protect sloths from pet trade and selfie tourism

Fernanda Wenzel 9 Dec 2025

South Africa withdraws abalone listing even as illegal trade threatens species

Victoria Schneider 8 Dec 2025

African forest hornbills gain new protections from unsustainable trade

Spoorthy Raman 3 Dec 2025

Countries overwhelmingly support bid to bar Galápagos iguanas from international trade

Spoorthy Raman 3 Dec 2025
A female tiger. Tigers were among the first few species added to CITES Appendix I in 1975 to halt the illegal trade of tigers and their parts.

Global tiger trafficking crisis worsens with nine big cats seized monthly

Associated Press 25 Nov 2025
A juvenile orange-fronted parakeet seized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in California.

It’s ‘whack-a-mole’: Alarming rise in pet trade fuels wildlife trafficking into California

Spoorthy Raman 25 Nov 2025
An Annamite striped rabbit in a breeding facility in Thailand.

Already disappearing, Southeast Asia’s striped rabbits now caught in global pet trade

Spoorthy Raman 25 Nov 2025
Oceanic white tip shark. Image courtesy of Mark Royer, Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

For sharks on the brink of extinction, CITES Appendix II isn’t protective enough (commentary)

David Shiffman 20 Nov 2025

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