Wildlife Trafficking News

When John Midgley dug a golden brown tarantula out of its burrow in the remote woodlands of southeastern Angola, he felt he had found “one of the most astonishing animals…

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO — Purchasing illegal jaguar parts — from teeth to skins to claws — doesn’t always involve seeking out the dark, nefarious corners of the black market. Often,…

KATHMANDU — When Tulshi Laxmi Suwal was a student in the zoology department at Tribhuvan University in Nepal, she looked through an encyclopedia in search of interesting animals for her…

DHAKA – In the hopes of becoming overnight millionaires, five wildlife traffickers tried to sell a tokay gecko (Gekko gecko), locally known as takkhak, in Bangladesh’s border district of Panchagarh.…

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO — Some of the country’s most ambitious and successful wildlife traffickers are now in jail, officials announced. Mexico’s navy confirmed in a press conference that members of…

Earlier this month, faced with a third impeachment attempt, former Peru President Pedro Castillo announced that he would be suspending congress, writing a new constitution and ruling by decree. But…

The United States Senate recently passed legislation that will ban the shark fin trade, a largely unregulated industry impacting millions of sharks, within the U.S. On Dec. 15, policymakers approved…

DHAKA — On Oct. 8 this year, police in Bangladesh recovered an endangered western hoolock gibbon from a passenger bus in the Chunati area of the Chattogram-Cox’s Bazar highway. They…

As the Philippines travel and tourism industry bounces back from the coronavirus pandemic, wildlife trade analysts are anticipating a resurgence in the poaching of the country's endemic pangolin. The enigmatic…

A rare gecko no larger than a paperclip is making a comeback in the Caribbean, thanks to conservation efforts by environmental groups and the government. The Union Island gecko (Gonatodes…

In November, Mongabay revealed a massive illegal shark fishing and finning operation across the fleet of Dalian Ocean Fishing (DOF), a distant-water fishing firm that has claimed to be China’s…

For years, authorities in Bangladesh have struggled to rein in the rampant illegal wildlife trade, as the country serves both as a source and transit point for domestic and international…

Amid a global biodiversity crisis, nations have agreed to protect threatened species like sharks, songbirds, glass frogs and tropical timber by regulating their trade. Over the past two weeks, member…

Blinking slowly, the waterbird can’t move. A male greater painted-snipe, he’s tightly tethered to the top of a wire cage among half a dozen of his species. The mass of…

CAPE TOWN — Seabird ranger Eduard Drost was busy with a routine inspection in an African penguin colony off the South African coast in 2021 when he noticed a troubling…

PHNOM PENH — Eight people, including two Cambodian Forestry Administration officials, have been charged by U.S. federal prosecutors for their alleged involvement in an international monkey smuggling ring. One of…

Two African penguin chicks have emerged from their nest beneath a boulder at a site in South Africa where conservationists have used lifelike decoy penguins and broadcast penguin calls to…

Local people and communities should be given greater control over the international trade in wildlife in order to make the multi-billion-dollar industry more sustainable, according to a group of scientists…

Tuna is ubiquitous in Japan, from high-end sashimi to go-around sushi chains and every neighborhood grocery store. But despite tuna’s central place in Japanese food culture, few know what really…

During the decade-plus in which he ran a program in China designed to reduce demand for wildlife products like shark fin, tiger bone, rhino horn and elephant ivory, Steve Trent…

When Adhi Tayuh Braka joined one of China’s largest fishing fleets in 2018, he planned to catch tuna, knuckle down and save money to get married. To pass the time,…

Protected by law but threatened by trade, rare and endangered parrots native to Indonesia are frequently sold via Facebook in the Philippines, a new survey has found. The analysis of…

Organized crime cartels and Chinese laborers continue draining the Amazon of jaguars and other endangered species, threatening ecosystems with collapse.

Narwhals are chaotic. At least, that’s what researchers thought until they developed a new math-based method to detect patterns in their seemingly irregular movements. Narwhals (Monodon monoceros) are known as…

LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Three chimpanzees have been kidnapped and are being held for ransom after intruders broke into a primate sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo.…

JAKARTA — Researchers in Indonesia have harnessed the power of big data to monitor the flourishing online trade in songbirds, proposing it as a critical conservation tool in the absence…

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…

A hawksbill turtle’s protective shell is in some ways its greatest weakness. Exquisitely patterned and thick enough to sculpt, hawksbill shells are the most popular type of tortoiseshell, a material…

Palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil on Earth, found in things like soaps, shampoo, ice cream and instant noodles. To satiate demand, rampant clearing of primary forests…

KATHMANDU — The “vulture restaurant” in southern Nepal received a new lone diner on July 12, leaving the people serving the food puzzled. An American black vulture (Coragyps atratus), a…