Altering Earth’s natural systems not only spreads disease to humans. Ecosystem disruption increasingly puts wild animals at risk of devastating pandemics and threatens endangered species’ survival.
In April 2021, authorities in the Philippines made a notable discovery. On a beachfront property on Sitio Green Island in Palawan province, they found shell after shell of giant clams,…
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.
For pet enthusiasts, buying an exotic, rare or endangered species can be done legally, and many pet owners want to obey the law. The problem is that illegally obtained animals,…
DENPASAR, Indonesia — An elected official in Bali surrendered a baby gibbon to conservation authorities last month after a social media post showing him playing with the animal at home…
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…
This week the United Nations General Assembly is expected to formally adopt its fifth Resolution on Tackling Illicit Trafficking in Wildlife. One might be forgiven for asking “another resolution -…
In any one month, Adams Cassinga and his team of investigators juggle as many as 20 suspected cases of wildlife crime, only a fraction of which will result in a…
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,…
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…
Every October, at least 10 million straw-colored fruit bats (Eidolon helvum) arrive in Kasanka National Park in Zambia from the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Besides its spectacular…
During the pandemic, demand for furs by Chinese, U.S. and EU fashion consumers has set off few alarms, but COVID-19 outbreaks on EU and U.S. mink farms raised questions over the fur trade’s role in spreading zoonotic disease.
The loss of the Mukambi River Pride lioness last June was sobering proof that the shock wave of COVID-19 had reached the heart and wildlife of Zambia’s Kafue National Park.…
Nigeria’s emergence as a trafficking hub for illegal wildlife appears unhindered by the coronavirus pandemic. Between 2016 and 2019, some 200 metric tons of pangolin scales were seized by law…
China and the United States account for nearly half the world's carbon dioxide emissions from energy, while the two countries' resource consumption is among the biggest threats to global biodiversity.…
Scientists have debated the evolution of the world’s five living rhinoceros species ever since Charles Darwin addressed the question in a treatise in the mid-1800s, predating On the Origin of…
Brazilian authorities point to Russian biologist Kyrill Kravchenko as an international wildlife trafficker. They had been monitoring him since 2017, after he was arrested in the Netherlands with rare wildlife…
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…
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.
Tigers once roamed throughout the dense forested interior of mainland Southeast Asia and several islands of Indonesia. Positioned at the pinnacle of the food chain, tigers maintain ecosystem balance, and…
In the rapidly shrinking lowland forests of Palawan Island, the Philippine porcupine (Hystrix pumila) can be found under tree buttresses, foraging for fallen root crops and fruits. Endemic to Palawan and…
Hariyo "Beebach" Wibisono studies Javan leopards, the last remaining apex predator on Indonesia's island of Java, which, with a land area about the size of Alabama, is also home to…
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…
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…
MANILA — The Philippines’ most traded turtle species, and among the world’s rarest, received a bit of a population boost as researchers introduced two juveniles in the wilds of the…
Wild elephants are awe-inspiring — even if they’re trying to kill you, as I discovered in 2004. At the time I was studying how poachers and loggers threaten native mammals…
In Brazil, as in many other biodiverse countries around the world, the commercial trade of some species of wildlife is allowed — as long as the animal was bred in…
Filip Wojciechowski moved to the island of Bohol in the Philippines in 2014 to study one of the country’s most elusive nocturnal primates, the Philippine tarsier. But he hadn’t reckoned…
The Javan pied starling (Gracupica jalla) is a captive in its own home. Thousands of these endemic songbirds once congregated in the safety of tall trees to roost after spending…
