Singapore’s live bird trade is thriving on Facebook largely unlicensed, according to a new report from watchdog group TRAFFIC, which notes the persistence of the illicit pet trade despite clampdowns…
It was 2008, and Danielle Kessler was sitting in front of her computer, shocked by what she was seeing on the internet: a live rhino for sale. The internet and…
JAKARTA — A recent analysis of the legal wildlife trade in the last 46 years puts Indonesia, a biodiversity hotspot in Southeast Asia, among the top 10 exporters of live…
Only 14% of wildlife seizures made in Vietnam in the past decade have resulted in convictions, according to a new report that highlights the weak enforcement in the country and…
On Feb. 15 this year, the day after Valentine’s, a two-toed sloth was checked into the government-run wildlife screening center in Manaus, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas, for some…
Forestry officer Karim Kamisoko is not at his post. Instead of patrolling Bafing Faunal Reserve in southwestern Mali, he and his fellow rangers are 70 kilometers (43 miles) away, taking…
In April 2020, customs officers in Hong Kong made one of the largest seizures of shark fins in history: 26 metric tons, all of it exported from Ecuador. This number…
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.
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…
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…
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.
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…
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.
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…
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…
One of the world's most infamous ivory traffickers will remain in prison in Tanzania after an appeal judge sent her case back to a lower court. The high court accepted…
Once known as the world’s elephant killing fields, Tanzania appears to have halted the worst ivory poaching within its borders, making more than 2,300 arrests of poachers and traffickers over…
