HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — As the sun began to set behind the mountains of far northern Vietnam, two plainclothes policemen barged into the country house where I was…
UPDATE (19 March 2019): The European Parliament voted March 12 to consent to the VPA with Vietnam by a vote of 632-14 with 23 abstentions. The resolution, including the explanatory…
Seahorses continue to be traded in large volumes, despite many source countries imposing bans on exports of the animals, a new study has found. While some of these peculiarly shaped…
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — On Jan. 28, a graphic new anti-wildlife-trafficking campaign called “Be Their Bodhisattva” launched at a major pagoda here in Vietnam’s commercial center. Under the…
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — While Southeast Asia is known as one of the world’s fastest-growing economic regions, home to booming metropolises like Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and…
Normally we only hear about the problems and risks of biological control, the use of one introduced organism to manage another. But one inconspicuous insect has accomplished miracles across tropical…
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…
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…
Parrots around the globe are captured and sold as pets in a thriving illegal market that has carried more than 19 million birds across borders since 1975. The deadly beak…
NGHE AN PROVINCE, Vietnam — An agreement on legally-sourced timber imports from Vietnam to the EU that was finally signed in October is now being held up against the reality on the…
Ivory, pangolin scales, bear bile: Rachel Nuwer, author of the new book “Poached,” saw it all as she trekked from rainforests to posh restaurants on the trail of wildlife traffickers.
HO CHI MINH CITY — The European Union has signed an agreement to support Vietnam’s forest governance improvement goals, aimed at ensuring that the timber it imports from the Southeast…
HO CHI MINH CITY – Earlier this month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a new report on the potential impacts of a 1.5C rise in global temperatures…
HO CHI MINH CITY – In a surprise move, the Vietnamese government released Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, the environmental blogger known as Mother Mushroom, from prison on Wednesday. Quynh, 39,…
HANOI — Cambodia has asked Interpol to investigate Vietnam after accusing its neighbor of knowingly accepting fraudulent permits for rare, illegally logged rosewood timber for transport across their shared border.…
HO CHI MINH CITY - Two new Camellia species, a type of tea plant common to East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent, have been discovered in a protected…
PHONG NHA, Vietnam - Since 2014, one of the world’s largest cave systems has been under threat from developers planning to construct a cable car that would carry thousands of…
MEKONG DELTA, Vietnam — Shrimp farmer Nguyen Manh Hung lost his entire farm to erosion in 2016 after a series of ravaging droughts and floods. He and his family had…
KUCHING, Malaysia — As governments in Southeast Asia target economic growth through infrastructure development, China, the world’s second-largest economy, has emerged as a ready funder for some of the most…
Consumer interest in farmed bear bile seems to be declining in Vietnam, according to a new study. But this isn’t necessarily good news, researchers say, because it raises concerns for…
Poaching of otters, especially juveniles, for the online pet trade is so widespread in Southeast Asia that it has emerged as a major new threat to the survival of Asia's…
Khanh Nguy Thi is an environmental pioneer in Vietnam. She has led her NGO, the Hanoi-based Green Innovation and Development Centre, or GreenID, to the forefront of policy discussions surrounding…
At the end of 2017, China announced it had closed down the domestic trade in ivory. Conservation establishment players did victory laps declaring the move a major step in curtailing…
The pangolin trade remains brisk, as conservationists scramble to identify populations and lobby for tough protections, while U.S. zoos make a controversial try to raise them.
The Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s most prestigious award for grassroots environmental activism, has announced seven winners this year. Six of the winners are women. Dubbed the Green Nobel Prize,…
When Cu Rua, an old Yangtze giant softshell turtle, died in Vietnam in 2016, he left behind only three of his kind: an elderly pair in a Chinese zoo, and…
Rubber plantations cover around 86,000 square kilometers (33,200 square miles) in Southeast Asia and conservationists worry they are posing an increasingly major threat to the region’s rainforests. A new study…
On Tuesday, a Vietnamese court sentenced Hoang Duc Binh to 14 years in prison for activism related to a chemical spill that resulted in a massive fish kill in 2016.…
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam - This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but reporting on the environment in Vietnam is not an easy task. The one-party state was recently ranked…
Thai authorities seized 12.5 kilograms (27.6 pounds) of rhino horn from South Africa in December, leading to the arrest of a key figure in Southeast Asia’s illicit wildlife trade. “[This] specific…
