WEST SUMBAWA, Indonesia — “Gentlemen present in the room — have you ever eaten turtle eggs?” This was how Musyafirin, the head of West Sumbawa district in Indonesia’s West Nusa…
JAKARTA — The Indonesian government is forging bilateral agreements to protect the rights of its citizens working on fishing boats under other countries’ flags, in a bid to tackle labor…
Tigers and clouded leopards are two of Southeast Asia’s most threatened and enigmatic big cat species. With the numbers of both in sharp decline across the region, leaving their remaining…
Millions of wild animals die or are maimed annually in snares, including elephants, tigers and gorillas. Snares are mostly used to source bushmeat for urban markets or to feed rural families. But bycatch is rife and solutions difficult.
Since March, bulldozers have opened around 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, of dirt road running north from the village of Kopongo in Cameroon across a forestry concession and into the…
The Iguaçu Falls, the largest in the world, sit on the border between Brazil and Argentina and are protected by national parks in both countries. Located in Brazil’s Paraná state,…
Having spent 27 years as a wild cat scientist, I have been fortunate to run my fingers through the coarse fur of a 170 kg tiger while wrapping a GPS…
TSHOLOTSHO, Zimbabwe – Two men crouch beside a pile of rhino dung, using their bare hands to break apart the drying lumps to search for the remnants of the animal’s…
Lying at the nexus of South Asia, Southeast Asia and China, Myanmar hosts an extraordinary mix of ecosystems that represent some of the last refuges of an ever-lengthening list of…
In northern Indonesia dwells a shy and overlooked species: the Talaud bear cuscus. Critically endangered and found on only a few small islands, the marsupial faces a decline due to…
BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Authorities in Indonesia have charged three men, including a local political leader in Sumatra, with selling body parts from a Sumatran tiger, a critically endangered and…
JAKARTA — Indonesian and German scientists are collaborating on assisted reproductive technologies for critically endangered species, with a primary focus on pulling the Sumatran rhino from the brink of extinction.…
At times of anguish and confusion we turn to nature to quiet the mind and find healing. We hold on to the miraculous survival of wildlife and ecosystems, to persist…
HWANGE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s government recently concluded a conference to attempt to rally international support for the sale of its ivory stockpile. It argues that selling some of the 136…
Anything goes in a Laotian “Special Crime Zone,” a haven for illegal wildlife, narcotics and human trafficking. Asia’s wild tigers remain imperiled, say conservationists, as “tiger farming” continues in Asia.
Despite some amazing rebounds, six decades after Rachel Carson’s call to curb pesticide use, the world’s birds are in deep trouble — assaulted by toxic chemicals, lost habitat, hunting, invasive species, and climate change.
“Initially we were all excited because we had intercepted a record-breaking ivory shipment,” says veterinarian Charlene Fernandez of Singapore’s new Centre for Wildlife Forensics. “But when we started carrying the…
Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo have seized 2 metric tons of ivory in the city of Lubumbashi, a hub for ivory trafficking. The May 14 seizure is one…
Trade in endangered species online is an increasingly popular avenue for traders and traffickers. A recent review, published in the journal Oryx, highlights a related trend: lesser-known species that have…
Conservation biologist Estrela Matilde has won the 2022 Whitley Award for her work to save sea turtles on the island of Príncipe in Africa’s Gulf of Guinea. The awards, often…
KATHMANDU — On April 25, 2020, barely a month after the country went into COVID-19 lockdown, authorities at Nepal's Sagarmatha National Park reported “one of the worst cases of poaching…
Conservationists in South Africa have translocated four young black rhinoceros bulls to the Bonamanzi Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal province, in an effort to preserve the population’s genetics and expand safe…
This March, the NGO Friends of Bonobos released 14 bonobos into the wild — only the second time ever a bonobo group has been reintroduced to their natural habitat. Their…
New conservation efforts for critically endangered hawksbill sea turtles are starting to make a difference in the status of global hawksbill populations, although the continued illegal trade of tortoiseshell in…
Amid lockdowns, travel restrictions and wet market closures to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, wildlife traders shifted their business online. A trade once dominated by face-to-face interactions now sees sellers and…
Lazarus Nwobegai, who holds a government permit to harvest timber around Mount Cameroon National Park, knows perfectly well it's illegal to hunt the chimpanzees and other threatened primates that live…
Uganda’s Kibale National Park is a primate haven, home to 13 primate species, including chimpanzees. And while these great apes and monkey species are frequently ensnared in traps laid out…
Perched in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) near the borders of Uganda and South Sudan, Okapi Wildlife Reserve quietly encompasses some 14,000 square kilometers (5,405 square miles) of rainforest…
The seizure earlier this month in Nigeria of nearly a ton of pangolin scales and elephant ivory bound for Asia has once again highlighted the plight of pangolins as among…
For the past 30 years, soaring demand from East Asia has fueled massive poaching of a South African abalone, Haliotis midae, reducing the mollusk’s population to a fraction of its…