Two decades ago, the inhabitants of four communities in the northern Mexican state of Durango put together a proposal: to make sustainable forest management a means of living. Over the…
Finding endangered plants and animals for sale online remains easy. “Rampant” according to Mark Hofberg of the International Federation for Animal Welfare (IFAW). The strong word is significant since it comes from an…
JAKARTA — Deforestation associated with palm oil in the region covering Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea has declined for the second straight year, a new analysis shows, dropping to…
Illegal deforestation represents an outsized share of global deforestation. Tropical forest loss is accelerating climate change, displacing Indigenous and local communities, and destroying landscapes that biodiversity and communities depend on…
LAGOS — Nigeria has for years failed to hold wildlife traffickers and poachers accountable for their crimes, despite federal and state laws that criminalize the killing and trading of protected…
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…
Proposed legislation to ban the import of hunting trophies (e.g. horns, antlers, tusks) apparently enjoys popular support within the UK, yet the effects of these policies are likely to be…
The European Commission's plan to counter deforestation associated with certain imported agricultural products was unveiled on November 17, 2021. One third of global deforestation is linked to international trade, and…
Humanity’s response to pandemics to date is similar to our climate change response: mitigation rather than prevention. A new study says preemption could save trillions of dollars and millions of lives; but preparation is grossly underfunded.
The price of palm oil has doubled since the early weeks of the pandemic. In May 2020, the price of palm oil contracts sold on the Bursa Malaysia, the main…
Illegal mining in protected areas in the Brazilian Amazon saw as much as a fivefold increase since 2010, a gold rush driven largely by surging prices in international markets. Over…
After a disappointing track record over the past two decades, carbon credit markets are back in style. Also known as “offsets,” carbon credits are having a renewed moment, as corporations…
A recent article on the Emirati newspaper The National reports that, according to conservationists, “The increased enforcement by Somaliland in the Gulf [of Aden] and along known smuggling routes, plus the…
DENPASAR/JAKARTA — The Indonesian government plans to have a network of dozens of villages with aquaculture farms by the end of the year, in a bid to spur the post-pandemic…
In May 2014, the Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) seized a consignment of wood at the port of Mombasa. Shipping records listed the cargo only as "wood" headed for Hong Kong:…
Twenty years is a long time to talk about fish. But hopes that World Trade Organization (WTO) members would finally reach a meaningful agreement to ban subsidies that enable overfishing…
The forests of the Gran Chaco in Paraguay continue to be the target of illegal deforestation, prompting one of the world’s last uncontacted Indigenous nations to reportedly reach out to…
Medical, public health, and conservation experts are calling for greater pathogen surveillance and regulation of the legal wildlife trade in order to quickly identify pathogens and prevent the next pandemic.
In August 2021, authorities at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport discovered a shipment of eight hornbills, caged but alive, en route to international markets. The Department of Wildlife and National…
An increase in the number of licenses for Brazilian beef exporters is a worrying sign that illegal deforestation could rise in some of the most vulnerable parts of the Amazon,…
Home to a third of the planet’s tropical forests, Brazil accounts for only 0.17% of the world’s main forest-friendly exports, new research has found. Significantly smaller nations — both in…
At a global level, the rate of deforestation is increasing year after year, driven by demand for products like timber, rubber, palm oil, cattle and coffee. Growing and cultivating these…
In May 2020, Shivaprakash Nagaraju, senior scientist at The Nature Conservancy in India, was working in New Delhi when he contracted COVID-19. “I had breathing problems and other symptoms, and…
The new, more contagious COVID-19 Delta variant is raging worldwide, while new pandemics are emerging at an ever-faster rate. But we’re still not taking the urgent action needed to prevent the next zoonotic disease outbreak, experts say.
The Mexican government will no longer protect the habitat of the critically endangered vaquita in the Upper Gulf of California, but has opened the area up to fishing, according to…
A new report shows that the world’s top fishing nations are using subsidies worth billions of dollars to exploit the high seas and the waters of other nations, including some…
Soybean farming accounts for most of the agrochemicals used in Brazil, and the farming activity concentrated in the state of Mato Grosso is now seeing those chemicals washing downstream to the Pantanal wetlands.
Despite a 2019 self-imposed ban, Facebook continues linking wildlife traffickers with buyers around the globe, while the U.S. government has so far done little to regulate trade facilitated by Facebook and other social media firms.
In 2019, Hong Kong customs authorities inspected a cargo ship bound for Vietnam. Hidden beneath slabs of frozen meat were 8.3 metric tons of illegal scales from about 13,800 pangolins,…
Toxic Bubble Bounce Mushrooms or Green Iguana Disco Mushrooms may sound like psychedelic drugs, but they are, in fact, names of live corals available for sale online. These brilliantly colored…
