Wildlife Crime News

On the title page of Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene is a black-and-white portrait of a lamb. The little animal, probably only a few weeks old, stands alone on the…

CROSS RIVER NATIONAL PARK, Nigeria — It wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward. For days, we’d crisscrossed rainforest-blanketed mountains, hacked through thorny thickets and corkscrewing lianas, narrowly escaped rockfalls, and…

Malawi’s illegal wildlife trade crackdown has earned a Chinese national 14 years in jail. Yunhua Lin, considered the lynchpin of a notorious wildlife trafficking cartel operating across in Southern Africa,…

JAKARTA — Conservation authorities in Indonesia have condemned a recent incident in which a beached whale shark was cut up and reportedly consumed by locals on the western coast of…

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…

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — Law enforcers are working to disrupt a wildlife trafficking ring connected to a man arrested last month with the skins and bones of three Sumatran tigers,…

Authorities at the Nigeria Customs Service have announced the seizure of 7.1 tons of pangolin scales that smugglers were attempting to ship out of the country. According to customs officials,…

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…

JAKARTA — The unmonitored illegal trade in porcupines across Indonesia has prompted calls from conservationists for stricter protection for the species’ population in the wild. A new study examining seizure…

SINGAPORE — Special economic zones set up to promote trade between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors are facilitating a black-market trade in wildlife products, according to watchdog group TRAFFIC.…

Gibbons, hornbills, komodo dragons and even Sumatran orangutans — these are just a few of the animals once kept illegally behind bars at a small zoo in North Sumatra, Indonesia.…

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.

Parrots, inhabiting pan-tropical and temperate regions across the world, are highly sought after as pets due to their attractive colors, calls and clever nature. But some of the trade in…

MANILA — When COVID-19 emerged in early 2020 in Southeast Asia, its governments took rapid containment actions: lockdowns, travel restrictions and trade suspensions, alerting the public about the virus. The…

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,…

When Viktor Nikiforov heard about the dead Caspian seals along Russia’s Dagestan coast near the city of Makhachkala, he and a group of researchers went to have a look. On…

Since his breakthrough book, The Lizard King, and his National Geographic feature on “The Kingpin”, Bryan Christy has established himself as one of the best-known wildlife crime writers. In 2012,…

Shoes, watches, wallets and bags — anything made from exotic reptile skins — were plucked from the shelves in Selfridges, a high-end department store in the U.K., in February 2019.…

Though still labor- and time-intensive, 3D printing of beaks, feet and tails holds promise for disabled wildlife ranging from toucans to penguins, and baby elephants; it may even help rare species at risk of extinction.

Mongabay caught up with Igarapé Institute co-founder Robert Muggah this week to discuss Ecocrime, a new data visualization platform that combines visual storytelling with access to raw data on environmental crime…

MANILA — Palawan is an outlier in the Philippine archipelago, its topography and habitat closer to that of Borneo than the rest of the country’s major islands. This so-called last…

“How to pass the custom?” “You need to bribe someone. We do not bribe the custom, but the police officer, with higher level…” “By container?” “Yes. Possible.” “Have you tried?”…

A gunshot explodes through the rainforest, followed by what sounds like branches falling from a tree. A dog barks. "Tito, did I hit it?” a man asks his companion in…

When Singaporean customs officials opened a shipping container en route to Vietnam from Nigeria on April 3, 2019, they found piles of canvas sacks stuffed full of dusty, dried flakes.…

JAKARTA — The songbird trade in Indonesia has battered the wild population of the Sunda laughingthrush, an important seed disperser in the primary forest ecosystem, a new study shows. Bird…

For years, Anthony Caere, an anti-poaching pilot at Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), peered through the windows of his helicopter to see a landscape mostly…

December 3, 2020 was a fateful day for the defense of the environment in Colombia. Javier Francisco Parra Cubillos, an official from regional environmental authority Cormacarena in the department of Meta…

Pangolin scales — armor-like, keratin-based plates that cover a pangolin’s body — are still being used in medicines sold and produced by Chinese companies, a new report has found. This…

HO CHI MINH CITY — Earlier this year, Vietnam’s prime minister called for a ban of the wildlife trade in the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several months…

With its pastel-colored skin and mouth that seems fixed into a smile, the web-footed gecko (Pachydactylus rangei) is a charming-looking creature. The species, which is endemic to the Namib Desert,…