topic: Wildlife Crime

topic: Wildlife Crime

Social media activity version | Lean version

Undercover in a shark fin trafficking ring: Interview with wildlife crime fighter Andrea Crosta
- Worldwide, many of the key players in wildlife trafficking are also involved in other criminal enterprises, from drug smuggling to human trafficking and money laundering.
- In an interview with Mongabay, Andrea Crosta, founder of Earth League International, talks about the group’s new report on shark fin trafficking from Latin America to East Asia and the concept of “crime convergence.”
- International wildlife trafficking, including the illegal trade in shark fins, is dominated by Chinese nationals, Crosta says.
- Since smuggling routes often overlap and criminal groups frequently work together across borders, Crosta calls for field collaboration among countries and law enforcement agencies to fight wildlife crime, the world’s fourth-largest criminal enterprise.

It’s tough to be a wild orchid: Interview with conservation biologist Reshu Bashyal
- Conservation biologist Reshu Bashyal highlights gaps in Nepal’s implementation of CITES regulations, leading to ineffective protection measures.
- Nepal’s transition to a federal system has brought challenges and opportunities for orchid conservation, with local communities often unaware of conservation needs.
- Protected areas struggle to prioritize plant conservation alongside charismatic megafauna, while road construction further fragments orchid habitats.
- Bashyal emphasizes the importance of raising awareness about the significance of wild plants and updating inventories to guide conservation efforts.

Cambodian official acquitted in trial that exposed monkey-laundering scheme
- A U.S. court has acquitted a senior Cambodian official accused of involvement in smuggling wild-caught and endangered monkeys into the U.S. for biomedical research.
- Kry Masphal was arrested in November 2022 and has been detained in the U.S. since then, but is now free to return to his job as director of the Cambodian Forestry Administration’s Department of Wildlife and Biodiversity.
- Evidence presented at his trial in Miami included a video of him appearing to acknowledge that long-tailed macaques collected by Cambodian exporter Vanny Bio Research were in fact being smuggled.
- The Cambodian government has welcomed news of the acquittal, while animal rights group PETA says that despite the ruling, “the evidence showed that countless monkeys were abducted from their forest homes and laundered with dirty paperwork.”

In Peru, conservationists and authorities struggle to get turtle eggs off the menu
- A staple dish in Peruvian cuisine, turtles eggs are being illegally poached in the upper Peruvian Amazon, with little oversight or intervention from authorities.
- Belén, a floating market in the town of Iquitos, has long been a hub for illegally trading turtles and their eggs, fueling a phenomenon that is threatening several species of Amazonian turtles.
- Poachers harvest not just the eggs, but also take away the nesting turtles, further threatening the sustainability of the trade.
- A local conservation group in Tapiche is working to protect the eggs and turtles before poachers get to them and hopes that more awareness will improve turtles’ chances of survival.

Impunity for Cambodia’s exotic pet owners as trade outpaces legislation
- High-profile interventions by Cambodia’s former leader and weak legislation have allowed the illegal wildlife trade to persist largely in the open.
- The case of a gas station menagerie in western Cambodia is emblematic of the ease with which even endangered species can be bought and sold.
- The collection, owned by a police officer, includes cockatoos from Indonesia, marmosets and parakeets from South America, and a native gibbon.
- Authorities said they were aware of the collection, but were “following the format” set in the wake of their 2023 seizure of peacocks from a breeder, which culminated in them having to return the birds after then-prime minister Hun Sen criticized their actions.

Maluku farmer turns guardian of eastern Indonesia’s threatened parrots
- Jamal Adam, a former farmer, began volunteering with forest rangers on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island before joining the region’s largest bird sanctuary when the rehabilitation facility opened in 2019.
- The Halmahera center admits mostly parrots on site and rehabilitates numerous species before later releasing them back into the wild.
- Indonesia’s North Maluku province historically saw relatively low tree cover loss compared to the rest of the country, but groups have raised concerns that a local nickel mining boom will threaten bird habitat in the medium term.

In East Java, social media push against Indonesia shark & ray trade lacks bite
- Over a period of four months in late 2023, Mongabay spoke with fishers and traders dealing primarily in rays and sharks in Indonesia’s East Java province.
- Advertisements for shark and ray products continued to feature on social media platforms despite pledges by companies to prevent users from conducting transactions in wildlife.
- Indonesia’s fisheries ministry said more needs to be done to enhance traceability to crack down on trade in protected shark and ray species.

Cambodia sea turtle nests spark hope amid coastal development & species decline
- Conservationists in Cambodia have found nine sea turtle nests on a remote island off the country’s southwest coast, sparking hopes for the critically endangered hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) and endangered green turtle (Chelonia mydas).
- It’s the first time sea turtle nests have been spotted in the country in a decade of species decline.
- Two nests have been excavated to assess hatching success; conservationists estimate the nests could hold as many as 1,000 eggs.
- Globally, sea turtle populations are declining, largely due to hunting for food and the animals’ shells, used in jewelry; other threats to sea turtles include tourism development, pollution and climate change.

Nepal’s ‘low-altitude’ snow leopard would face big hurdles in return to wild
- A snow leopard (Panthera uncia), typically found at high altitudes, has been brought to a zoo in Kathmandu from a town at a much lower altitude.
- The authorities are considering releasing the snow leopard back into the wild after it recovers, but experts say they believe this may be a challenging task, as the animal may have lost its hunting and adaptation skills during its time in captivity or recovery.
- The decision to release the snow leopard into the wild or keep it in the zoo is influenced by factors such as the animal’s potential habituation to humans, territorial nature and the limited space and financial challenges faced by the zoo.

EU’s legal loophole feeds gray market for world’s rarest parrot
- Loopholes in the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) have allowed near-extinct animals to be moved across borders for breeding; in principle, CITES allows species trading for research, zoos or conservation.
- It was in this context that dozens of Spix’s macaws, a blue parrot from Brazil that’s considered extinct in the wild, were introduced into the EU, despite an international ban on the species’ commercial trade.
- In 2005, German bird breeder Martin Guth acquired three of the parrots for breeding purposes, with CITES approval, before going on to amass nearly all the world’s captive Spix’s macaws and transferring several dozen of them to facilities throughout Europe and India under an EU permit not covered by CITES.
- At a CITES meeting last November, representatives from Brazil and other tropical countries affected by the illegal wildlife trade expressed frustration that the EU had allowed unregistered commercial breeders to flourish, despite CITES having created a dedicated registration program for legitimate captive breeders 20 years earlier.

Togo monkey seizure turns spotlight on illicit wildlife trafficking from DR Congo
- In December, Togo seized 38 monkeys in transit to Thailand.
- Nearly 30 of the animals in the shipment had not been declared in the official documentation.
- The monkeys, many of which were in poor health, were repatriated to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Only 24 monkeys from the group survived, and these have been taken in by a Lubumbashi animal refuge.

Crime analysis sheds light on tiger poaching in Malaysia
- Conservationists have successfully applied an urban policing strategy to assess and fine-tune their efforts to tackle poaching of tigers in Peninsular Malaysia.
- They reported in a new paper that poaching success by hunters from Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand — the main group of poachers in the country — declined by up to 40% during the study period.
- The conservationists used the EMMIE crime prevention framework (short for effect, mechanisms, moderators, implementation and economic costs) to identify what worked and areas to improve.
- There are fewer than 200 critically endangered Malayan tigers believed to survive in Malaysia, with snaring by poachers among the leading causes of their decline.

Nepal’s Madhesh province lacks in biodiversity research & conservation
- Madhesh province in Nepal, known as the “granary” of the country, faces significant challenges in biodiversity conservation and research due to a lack of focus and awareness.
- The region, primarily used for agriculture, experiences human-wildlife conflicts, including incidents like the mistaken killing of a leopard due to misconceptions about wildlife.
- Despite being rich in biodiversity, with various species of birds, mammals and traditional migratory paths of elephants, conservation efforts are hindered by the absence of a dedicated conservation agency and limited research initiatives.
- Experts emphasize the urgency of establishing a comprehensive strategic plan for wildlife conservation in Madhesh, highlighting the need to address habitat fragmentation, human-wildlife conflicts and unplanned urbanization.

In biodiverse Nepal, wildlife crime fighters are underpowered but undeterred
- Wildlife crime investigators in Nepal face various challenges, such as lack of training, resources, evidence and database, as well as political and legal pressure.
- They’re responsible for investigating and prosecuting cases related to the hunting and trafficking of iconic species such as tigers, rhinos, snow leopards and pangolins.
- A key obstacle, many say, is a constitutional provision that now requires more serious cases of wildlife crime to be tried before a court; prior to 2015, all such cases would be heard by district forest offices and protected area offices.
- Change is slowly coming, however, with additional training in scientific investigative methods, most recently funded by the U.S. State Department, and with transfer of knowledge.

In Indonesia, ‘opportunistic’ whale shark fishery shows gap in species protection
- Indonesia has since 2013 banned the capture, trade and exploitation of whale sharks, a protected species.
- Yet scores of records from 2002-2022 shown whale sharks continue to be butchered and sold along the southeastern coast of Java Island after either beaching or being unintentionally caught by fishers, according to a new study.
- The continuing illegal exploitation shows the need for more awareness raising against it by conservation authorities and groups, experts say.
- Indonesia is home to the longest coastline in Asia, and its waters serve as both a habitat and an important migratory route for species of marine megafauna like whale sharks.

Study: Wild meat trade from Africa into Belgium a health and conservation risk
- Up to 4 metric tons of wild meat is illegally entering Europe through Brussels’ international airport alone every month, a new study says.
- The source for much of this meat is West and Central Africa, with some of the seized meat found to be from threatened or protected species such as tree pangolins and dwarf crocodiles.
- The study comes more than a decade after the same group of researchers found an estimated 5 metric tons of bushmeat entering via Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris weekly, suggesting enforcement since then hasn’t been effective.
- Experts are calling for better detection of wild meat trafficking and stricter enforcement of penalties against the trade in protected species, as well as more frequent checks of the legal trade to uncover illegal shipments.

Online trade in Philippine hornbills threatens birds and forests
- A recent study by the wildlife monitoring group TRAFFIC found that Philippine hornbills are being sold on Facebook despite efforts by the social network and wildlife authorities to crack down on the trade.
- Birds found offered for sale on the platform included endemic species like the Luzon tarictic hornbill and critically endangered Visayan tarictic hornbill, as well as hornbills not native to the Philippines.
- Experts say this trade not only threatens to drive hornbill species to extinction, it also disrupts forest ecosystems, where hornbills play a crucial role in dispersing seeds.

A thriving online market for wild birds emerges in Bangladesh
- Mongabay discovered up to 10 YouTube channels, Facebook groups and profiles selling wild birds online, despite the illegality of capturing, caging and selling wild birds under the Wildlife Conservation and Security Act of 2012.
- Due to lax laws and limited authority of the Wildlife Crime Control Unit (WCCU), online dealers of wild birds can obtain quick bail and continue with their operations, which encourages more people to enter the trade; an online ecosystem to bring in more offline traders to the online marketplace has developed as a result.
- Hunting, capturing and selling wild birds raises the possibility of zoonotic disease transmission; according to the World Economic Forum, zoonotic diseases result in 2.5 billion cases of human illness and 2.7 million human fatalities each year.

Journalism’s role in the Nature Crime Alliance (commentary)
- Nature crime constitutes one of the largest illicit economies in the world, inflicting devastation and destruction upon people and planet.
- On August 23, 2023, the Nature Crime Alliance officially launched as “a new, multi-sector approach to fighting criminal forms of logging, mining, wildlife trade, land conversion, crimes associated with fishing, and the illegal activities with which they converge.”
- Mongabay is a founding member of the alliance. In this post, our founder Rhett A. Butler explains why Mongabay is involved and how it will contribute.
- “We decided to join the alliance because we firmly believe that journalism can contribute to real-world outcomes by highlighting the significance of nature, fostering accountability for environmental destruction, and inspiring people to work towards solutions,” writes Butler. “On the nature crime front specifically, we believe that shedding light on the corruption, collusion, and undue influence that drive environmental degradation can pave the way for more effective policies around the management of natural resources.”

When it rains, it pours: Bangladesh wildlife trade booms during monsoon
- The illegal wildlife trade in Bangladesh increases during the wet season due to a shortage of livelihoods and poor surveillance, a study has found.
- Killing and trading wildlife has been illegal in Bangladesh since 2012, but a culture of hunting means the problem still persists, wildlife officials say.
- Wildlife markets trade in animals and parts from species such as tigers and crocodiles, with the more lucrative end of the trade thriving in areas with a weak law enforcement presence and close proximity to a seaport or airport.
- Efforts to tackle the trade are limited by law enforcement restrictions, with the Wildlife Crime Control Unit (WCCU) lacking the authority to arrest suspects and reliant on local agencies for investigations and legal action.

Falcon trafficking soars in Middle East, fueled by conflict and poverty
- Worth thousands of dollars, migratory falcons are increasingly targeted by trappers in the Middle East, notably in Syria, where their value skyrocketed during the war.
- In Jordan, Iraq and Syria, authorities struggle to contain trafficking, which takes place nearly in the open; in Iraq and Syria, wildlife protection is hardly a priority given prevalent political instability and spiraling poverty.
- Experts say the capture and trade of falcons is driving the decline of wild populations in the Middle East.
- This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

Indonesian illegal shark and ray exports remain rampant amid poor monitoring
- Indonesia allows the trade of some endangered shark and ray species, but illegal exports remain rampant and unchecked.
- Mongabay-Indonesia conducted an investigation earlier this year to learn about the regulations, the loopholes and the challenges within the complex trade and fisheries of sharks and rays.
- The investigation found that the lack of oversight in the field was the leading cause of illegal shark and ray trade in the country.
- Indonesia is home to more than a quarter of the world’s 400 known shark species; a fifth of all shark species are endangered.

Bangladesh orchid losses signal ecological imbalance, researchers say
- Bangladesh has lost 32 orchid species from nature in the last hundred years out of 188 once-available species.
- Habitat destruction, overharvesting, and indiscriminate collection for sale in local and international markets cause the disappearance, researchers say.
- Considering the unique position of orchids in the ecosystem and their herbal, horticultural and aesthetic value, researchers consider this loss alarming.

As human-wildlife conflict simmers, Nepal revises compensation program
- Nepal has updated its guidelines for compensation for people affected by human-wildlife conflict.
- The new rules expand eligibility for compensation to damage or injury caused by 16 species of wildlife, up from 14 previously.
- They also cover loss of fish and poultry, as well as extend the claim period for compensation due to death.
- More than 200 Nepalis have been killed in the past five years due to human-wildlife conflict, a result of the country’s growing human population and successful conservation initiatives.

Cambodian conglomerate sparks conflict in Botum Sakor National Park
- For decades Cambodia’s Botum Sakor National Park has been carved up and the land handed out to companies as economic concessions, at the expense of the ecosystem and local communities.
- In 2021, a massive swath of the park, including its densest expanse of forest, was handed over to the Royal Group, led by politically connected business tycoon Kith Meng.
- While the companies developing the national park promised jobs, as well as homes with running water and electricity, and access to schools and health centers, none of this has materialized, affected residents say.
- Royal Group’s presence, and the threat of more companies grabbing a piece of the park, has instead sparked disputes that residents acknowledge they’re likely to lose.

Death of rare male gharial in Nepal highlights conservation crisis
- A male gharial, a critically endangered crocodilian, was found dead in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, entangled in a fishing net and hook.
- Male gharials are vital for the survival of the species, which has a skewed sex ratio and faces threats from fishing, habitat loss, and poaching.
- Park officials are trying to boost the male population by incubating eggs at a certain temperature, but critics question the effectiveness and sustainability of this approach.

Brazil claims record shark fin bust: Nearly 29 tons from 10,000 sharks seized
- Brazilian authorities announced the seizure of almost 29 tons of shark fins, exposing the extent of what they described as illegal fishing in the country. The previous record for the largest seizure reportedly took place in Hong Kong in 2020, when authorities confiscated 28 tons of fins.
- The seized fins, reportedly destined for illegal export to Asia, came from an estimated 10,000 blue (Prionace glauca) and anequim or shortfin mako (Isurus oxyrinchus) sharks, according to Brazil’s federal environmental agency IBAMA. Shortfin makos recently joined the country’s list of endangered species.
- IBAMA is filing infraction notices and fines against two companies over the seized fins. Other firms remain under investigation for illegal shark fishing related to the seizure, according to the agency.
- Through detailed analyses of the origins of these fins, an IBAMA statement said the agency identified a wide range of irregularities, including the use of fishing authorizations for other species and the use of fishing gear to target sharks.

When “cute” is cruel: Social media videos stoke loris pet trade, study says
- Conservationists are concerned that the popularity of social media videos depicting lorises as pets is stoking the illegal and often abusive pet trade, placing pressure on already flagging numbers in the wild.
- A study of the top 100 most-viewed loris videos on social media platforms found the vast majority depicted lorises far removed from their natural forest habitat, behaviors and ecology.
- Online videos of pet lorises consistently violated basic animal welfare guidelines, according to the study, with the most popular clips depicting stressed and ill animals.
- The authors say the online content could make it socially acceptable and desirable to own a pet loris, and by engaging with content showing trafficked animals in poor health, viewers are unwittingly complicit in abuse and illegalities.

Warfare for wildlife: Q&A with Rosaleen Duffy
- Rosaleen Duffy is a professor of international politics at Sheffield University in the U.K. and a longtime critic of military and law enforcement tactics in the conservation world.
- In 2021, she published “Security and Conservation” with Yale Press, drawing on anonymous interviews with dozens of conservation practitioners, as well as funders, private military companies, government officials and the private sector.
- Duffy is currently the principal investigator for a U.K. government-funded project analyzing the links between the legal and illegal wildlife trade in European brown bears, European eels, and songbirds.

Survival and economics complicate the DRC’s bushmeat and wild animal trade
- Hunting for bushmeat can impact the populations of rare and threatened wildlife in forests around the world.
- In the Democratic Republic of Congo, subsistence hunting is often intertwined with the trade of bushmeat and in some cases live animals to sate the demand from larger markets, which can increase the pressure on wildlife populations.
- The trade of bushmeat provides one of the few sources of income for hunters, porters and traders, as well as a source of protein for families, in the town of Lodja, which sits close to forests that are home to unique species.
- Activists in Lodja and the DRC are working to save live animals from entering the illicit trade of endangered species and encourage alternative sources of income to the commercial trade of wild meat and animals.

Study: Snares claim another local extinction as Cambodia loses its leopards
- Researchers say the Indochinese leopard is functionally extinct in Cambodia after a 2021 camera-trap survey failed to capture a single individual from what was once thought to be the country’s last viable population of the big cat.
- The study points to hunting as the most significant contributor to the decline of the subspecies, noting that the number of snares and traps observed in the study area increased despite years of law enforcement efforts.
- Experts have called for focused conservation measures in the critically endangered subspecies’ remaining strongholds in Peninsular Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand.

Low-key return for rescued rhino calves to Nepal’s Chitwan National Park
- Two of three rhino calves rescued from the wild have been returned to Nepal’s Chitwan National Park in what officials say was a “low-key and low-cost” release.
- The two female greater one-horned rhinos had been cared for at a facility on the outskirts of the park after being abandoned by their mothers.
- Officials had debated whether to move them to other parks with smaller rhino populations or to gift them to foreign countries as part of Nepal’s “rhino diplomacy.”
- A third rhino calf, rescued last October following a tiger attack, is also expected to be released back into Chitwan once she’s deemed old enough and ready to take care of herself.

Trapping holds back speed of bird recovery in a Sumatran forest, study shows
- A decade of protection and natural regeneration of tropical forests has helped bird populations increase in the southern lowlands of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, a new study says.
- However, it adds that continued wild trapping is preventing the reforestation effort from achieving its greatest results.
- The Harapan Forest, which straddles the provinces of Jambi and South Sumatra, in 2007 became the site of Indonesia’s first ecosystem restoration concession to recover biodiversity in the region after commercial selective logging ceased in 2005.
- Since 2004, Indonesia has awarded 16 licenses for ecosystem restoration concessions, including for the Harapan Forest, covering an area of 623,075 hectares (1.54 million acres) in Sumatra and Borneo, according to 2018 government data.

Snares don’t discriminate: A problem for wild cats, both big and small
- Millions of snares dot the forests and protected areas of Southeast Asia, set to feed the illegal wildlife trade and wild game demand, where they sweep up multiple species, including threatened wild cats; in Africa, snaring for subsistence hunting causes a similar problem.
- Snares are noose-like traps that can be designed to target certain groups, such as types of ungulates, while others may sweep up many more. Crafted from a variety of materials, such as wire, cable, rope or nylon, these low-tech and cheap devices are set to catch animals by either the neck, foot or torso.
- Snares have played a part in wiping out big cat populations from places such as Vietnam and Laos, but they also impact small cat species, such as the fishing cat, Asiatic and African golden cats, and clouded leopards.
- Conservationists say solutions to snaring must work at different levels to tackle drivers, which vary depending on the region. This includes working with communities and reducing demand for wild game.

Nepal’s vultures, recovering from a poisoning crisis, fly into another
- Poisoning continues to pose a serious threat to vultures in Nepal, where the birds’ population is only starting to recover from a massive plunge in the 1990s due to an earlier poisoning crisis.
- In most of the recent cases, the dead vultures were found to have fed on the bodies of feral dogs, jackals and big cats that had been poisoned by people, likely in retaliation for livestock losses.
- The earlier crisis, caused by the ingestion of the cattle painkiller diclofenac from the carcasses of dead livestock, ended with a ban on the drug in Nepal.
- Conservationists say the current wave of poisonings should prompt similar measures from the authorities to better regulate the sales and use of poisons, as well as awareness campaigns in poisoning hotspots.

SE Asia’s COVID legacy is less wildlife trade, but more hunting, study finds
- The wildlife origins of COVID-19 highlighted the risks of intruding into forests and consuming wildlife, but most discussions around the pandemic have focused on human health and wildlife conservation.
- A recent study investigated how the pandemic impacted hunting communities in Southeast Asia, a hotspot for wildlife hunting and trafficking.
- The results show that while there was a decrease in the wildlife trade as international borders were closed and people’s movements restricted, there was an increase in forest visits and hunting in these communities due to job losses and increasing prices of goods.
- The researchers suggest that to conserve wildlife in the region and rein in hunting, authorities need to work with hunting communities and support sustainable alternative livelihoods.

Nepalis’ love of momos threatens endangered wild water buffaloes
- The most sought-after dumplings (momos) in Nepal are filled with buffalo meat, which commands a higher price if it comes from a crossbreed of wild and domestic buffalo.
- Crossbreeding dometic and endangered wild buffaloes is illegal and can threaten the wild population, but people do it because of the high demand for the meat as well as a belief that crossbred females produce more milk.
- Authorities in the Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve are challenged with controlling the mixing of wild and domestic animals inside the reserve.

Rare case of rhino poaching jolts conservation community in Nepal
- A rare case of rhino poaching in Nepal has sent alarm bells ringing among conservationists, who say the method used could easily be replicated throughout the buffer zone of Chitwan National Park, the rhinos’ stronghold.
- Poachers appeared to have electrocuted a female rhino and her calf using a cable connected to a nearby temple’s power supply.
- Conservation officials say there’s a large number of grid-connected temples and other community buildings throughout Chitwan’s buffer zone that could serve a similar purpose.
- The incident is a rare setback for Nepal, which recorded zero rhino losses to poachers in six of the past 12 years, and only six poaching-related kills out of 165 rhinos that died in the past five years.

Rumors and misconceptions threaten tokay geckos in Bangladesh
- Widespread misconceptions about the medicinal benefits of tokay geckos are leading to these common nocturnal lizards being hunted across Bangladesh.
- Wildlife traffickers set an exorbitant price on trapped geckos, based on rumors about their international demand. There is no documented evidence that buyers pay a high price for geckos.
- In the last five years, more than 250 geckos were recovered and more than 30 suspected wildlife smugglers arrested. In Bangladesh, a study found that gecko populations are estimated to have declined by 50% due to trade on the international market based on claims that the species holds medicinal qualities.
- Tokay geckos maintain ecosystem balance by preying on invertebrates, including moths, grasshoppers, beetles, termites, crickets, cockroaches, mosquitoes and spiders.

Illegal orchid trade threatens Nepal’s ‘tigers of the plant world’
- Roughly 500 orchid species grow in Nepal’s forests, including a rare pale purple beauty that attracts thousands of pilgrims each April.
- Orchids are among the most diverse and charismatic plant groups in the world, and they are threatened by illegal and unsustainable trade, largely for Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine.
- Kathmandu-based NGO Greenhood Nepal has a project that outlines key steps for government agencies to take in efforts to curb illegal and unsustainable trade in Nepal’s orchids.

Wildlife at risk in Bangladesh as roads run rampant through protected forests
- Mongabay has identified 1,618 kilometers (1,005 miles) of roads in 38 restricted forests in Bangladesh using remote sensing data, with many of these routes passing through important national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.
- Unlike in neighboring India, where the formal guidelines ensure the environment ministry has a say in infrastructure projects running through forested areas, Bangladesh lacks such provisions, allowing for the proliferation of roads, railways and power lines.
- In addition to killing animals, this linear infrastructure also encouraged illegal logging, mining, hunting and poaching, the introduction of exotic species, pollution, and illegal settlements.
- Experts say it should be “common sense” to account for the needs of wildlife when planning infrastructure, and recent projects are starting to incorporate canopy bridges and over- and underpasses to accommodate animal movement.

Trafficking and habitat loss spell doom for Bangladesh’s western hoolock gibbons
- The western hoolock gibbon is a globally endangered species but in Bangladesh is considered critically endangered, due to continued habitat depletion, hunting and trafficking.
- According to a 2021 study, the country’s hoolock gibbon population dropped by around 84% over the past four decades, with the total estimated population now at just 469 individuals.
- Wildlife experts say the apes are hunted for food locally, and trafficked across the border to India and China for the illegal pet trade and for use in traditional medicine.
- They’ve called for an urgent conservation initiative to protect the gibbons and their habitats, including greater involvement by border guards and intelligence agents to crack down on trafficking.

For Philippine pangolins, tourism’s return could spell trouble
- Since lifting tourism restrictions at the beginning of the year, the Philippines has received more than 2 million international arrivals. Palawan, home of the Philippine pangolin, has already received more than 500,000 visitors this year.
- The Philippine pangolin is critically endangered, hunted to the brink of extinction for its scales and meat; China, the Philippines’ neighbor and a major tourism market, drives global demand for these products.
- A recent report on trafficking dynamics of the Philippine pangolin says the development of local pangolin trafficking networks since 2016 is tied in part to policies that encouraged Chinese tourism and direct investment.
- Experts warn the post-COVID-19 resurgence of tourism will also lead to a spike in pangolin trafficking.

‘It was a shark operation’: Q&A with Indonesian crew abused on Chinese shark-finning boat
- Rusnata was one of more than 150 Indonesian deckhands repatriated from the various vessels operated by China’s Dalian Ocean Fishing in 2020.
- Previous reporting by Mongabay revealed widespread and systematic abuses suffered by workers across the DOF fleet, culminating in the deaths of at least seven Indonesian crew members.
- In a series of interviews with Mongabay, Rusnata described his own ordeal in detail, including confirming reports that DOF tuna-fishing vessels were deliberately going after sharks and finning the animals.
- He also describes a lack of care for the Indonesian workers by virtually everyone who knew of their plight, from the Indonesian agents who recruited them to port officials in China.

Forest management tool could help rein in rampant wildlife trade in Bangladesh
- The Bangladesh Forest Department has introduced a Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) to help stop wildlife trafficking in several of the country’s protected forest areas.
- The pilot program follows the success of SMART technology used in the world’s largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, where a University of Calcutta study shows illegal logging and poaching have dropped significantly since the introduction of the tool.
- According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, major gaps in information about wildlife trade chains hamper the government’s ability to stop wildlife crimes.
- Experts say SMART patrolling should be introduced in protected forest areas across the country.

New protections for sharks, songbirds, frogs and more at CITES trade summit
- The 19th meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, known as CoP19, ended Nov. 25 in Panama, after two weeks of negotiations.
- Member states agreed on new trade regulations for more than 600 animal and plant species, including the protection of sharks, glass frogs, turtles, songbirds and tropical timber species.
- Experts say that while these new regulations are essential, implementing and enforcing the rules will have the most significant conservation impact.

Probe finds Vietnam faltering in bid to curb wildlife trade, animal suffering
- In recent years, authorities in Vietnam have made a series of pledges to curb illegal wildlife trade and the sale and consumption of dog meat.
- However, a new investigation by animal rights groups reveals that protected wildlife species are still being sold at wet markets, where animal suffering and public health risks are rife.
- The findings also indicate the dog meat industry shows few signs of abating, with slaughterhouses and restaurants still doing business despite calls to phase out the industry in major cities.
- Experts say sustained and coordinated efforts from provincial authorities, enforcement agencies and the public will be needed to fully curb the practices throughout the country.

Alleged macaque-smuggling ring exposed as U.S. indicts Cambodian officials
- U.S. federal prosecutors have charged eight people, including two Cambodian forestry officials, for their alleged involvement in an international ring smuggling endangered long-tailed macaques.
- The indictment alleges forestry officials colluded with Hong Kong-based biomedical firm Vanny Bio Research to procure macaques from the wild and create export permits falsely listing them as captive-bred animals.
- One of the officials charged was arrested in New York City on Nov. 16, en route to Panama for an international summit focused on regulating the global trade in wildlife.
- This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network where Gerald Flynn is a fellow.

Should more wildlife trade be legal and regulated? It’s complicated, say scientists
- As the global international trade treaty approaches its half century anniversary, some scientists say it needs an overhaul to make its structures fit for 21st century.
- Allowing for legal, regulated trade could be better than banning it for many species, they argue, referring to successful case studies where local communities were involved in sustainable trade.
- But some conservationists are worried that changing the way CITES operates will be bad news for endangered wildlife and point out it has been a significant factor in the survival of species such as elephants and tigers.

How Mitsubishi vacuumed up tuna from a rogue Chinese fishing fleet
- Last week, Mongabay revealed a massive illegal shark finning operation across the fleet of a major Chinese tuna fishing firm.
- The company, Dalian Ocean Fishing, mainly serves the Japanese market. Most of its tuna has gone to Japan’s Mitsubishi Corporation and its seafood trading arm, Toyo Reizo.
- While the general outlines of their partnership are well-documented, tracing specific tuna flows from individual fishing boats to Mitsubishi’s supply chain is impeded by the murky nature of the supply chain.
- Experts say this lack of transparency must be solved in order to prevent illegal fishing and labor abuses at sea.

‘There are solutions to these abuses’: Q&A with Steve Trent on how China can rein in illegal fishing
- Earlier this week, Mongabay published an article uncovering a massive illegal shark finning scheme across the fleet of one of China’s largest tuna companies, Dalian Ocean Fishing.
- China has the world’s biggest fishing fleet, but oversight of the sector is lax, with many countries’ boats routinely found to be engaging in illegal and destructive practices, especially in international waters.
- Mongabay spoke with Steve Trent, the head of the Environmental Justice Foundation, which has also investigated the fishing industry, about DOF’s shark finning scheme and how China can better monitor its vessels.

Exclusive: Shark finning rampant across Chinese tuna firm’s fleet
- Dalian Ocean Fishing used banned gear to deliberately catch and illegally cut the fins off of huge numbers of sharks in international waters, Mongabay has found.
- Just five of the company’s longline boats harvested roughly 5.1 metric tons of dried shark fin in the western Pacific Ocean in 2019. That equates to a larger estimated shark catch than what China reported for the nation’s entire longline fleet in the same time and place.
- The findings are based on dozens of interviews with men who worked throughout the company’s fleet of some 35 longline boats. A previous investigation by Mongabay and its partners uncovered widespread abuse of crew across the same firm’s vessels.
- Campaigners said Dalian Ocean Fishing’s newly uncovered practices were a “disaster” for shark conservation efforts.

Community study sheds light on wild cat killings in Brazil’s central Amazon
- Alongside other threats such as deforestation, poaching places wild felids in the Amazon at risk.
- A long-running community-based monitoring program in Brazil’s central Amazonia region identified the number of wild felids killed, motivations for hunting and more.
- Of 71 felids, jaguars were killed the most. Wild cats were predominantly killed opportunistically in flooded forests in areas where human population is highest.

Trafficked: Kidnapped chimps, jailed rhino horn traffickers, and seized donkey parts
- Armed intruders who kidnapped three young chimpanzees from a sanctuary in the DRC have threatened to kill them unless a ransom is paid for the apes’ return.
- Calls for renewed focus on organized crime in wildlife trafficking, as specialized courts in Uganda and the DRC are delivering convictions for wildlife crimes that in the past would likely have gone unpunished.
- A seizure in Nigeria has sounded the latest alarm over growing exports of donkey parts for traditional Chinese medicine.
- Trafficked is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the illegal wildlife trade in Africa.

Big data monitoring tool aims to catch up to Indonesia’s booming online bird trade
- A web-trawling tool developed by researchers in Indonesia has identified more than a quarter of a million songbirds in online listings from a single e-commerce site between April 2020 and September 2021.
- More than 6% of these were species listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List, including the Javan pied starling (Gracupica jalla) and the straw-headed bulbul (Pycnonotus zeylanicus), both critically endangered.
- In a newly published paper, the researchers say the online bird trade is highly successful thanks to well-developed e-commerce infrastructure such as internet and shipping services.
- The researchers have proposed the adoption of their tool by Indonesian authorities to monitor the online bird trade, given the absence of any other platform to crack down on trafficking.

As poachers poison wildlife, Zimbabwe finds an antidote in tougher laws
- Poisons like cyanide can be a deadly weapon for poachers, allowing them to kill dozens of animals without needing access to firearms or the backing of criminal syndicates.
- Wildlife poisoning is on the rise across Africa, targeting elephants as well as pushing endangered vultures toward extinction.
- A new study says Zimbabwe, which a decade ago witnessed some of the deadliest mass poisonings of elephants, has developed a sound basis for curbing poisonings by tightening laws to criminalize intent to use poison to kill wildlife.
- In addition to laws and renewed efforts to improve intelligence gathering, private players are pushing to ensure better law enforcement, resulting in more prosecutions and deterrent sentences.

Snares: Low-tech, low-profile killers of rare wildlife the world over
- Snares are simple, low-tech, noose-like traps that can be made from cheap and easily accessible materials such as wire, rope or brake cables. Easy to set, a single person can place thousands, with one report warning that snares “are a terrestrial equivalent to the drift nets that have devastated marine and freshwater biodiversity.”
- Used throughout the tropics, one estimate says 12 million snares are present in protected areas of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, with the number likely far greater across the wider Southeast Asian region. Snaring is also common in Africa.
- While many hunters target smaller game to eat or sell, snares are indiscriminate, and often maim or kill non-targeted animals such as elephants, lions and giraffes, and endangered species including gorillas, banteng, dhole and saola. One report calls snares “the greatest threat to the long-term presence of tigers in Southeast Asia.”
- Snaring is difficult to stop. Hunters hide snares from their prey, which makes them hard to spot, though rangers are known to collect thousands. It’s “like a game of hide and seek,” says one expert. “Forest rangers hasten to dismantle snare lines even as poachers reconstruct them at other locations.” Behavior change is one solution.

Mozambique busts notorious rhino poacher
- A sting operation led by Mozambique’s National Criminal Investigation Service has netted notorious alleged poacher Simon Ernesto Valoi and an associate in possession of eight rhino horns.
- Conservationists say Valoi and other poaching kingpins have operated freely from Massingir district to poach thousands of rhinos just across the border in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.
- Valoi’s arrest, following the January sentencing of another major rhino horn trafficker to 30 years in jail, may be a further sign that Mozambique’s law enforcement authorities are successfully targeting high-level poachers.

Myanmar wildlife trade remains opaque, despite focus on border hubs
- Myanmar supports some of the last refuges of rare and threatened species, such as tigers, leopards and pangolins, but lax law enforcement and porous borders make it a hotbed of illegal wildlife trade, imperiling the country’s remaining biodiversity.
- While a lot is known about flagrant trade in notorious markets in towns bordering China and Thailand, much of the trade with Myanmar remains opaque, new research shows.
- One-quarter of prior studies on the country’s wildlife trade have focused on just two border trade hubs, while little is known about patterns of domestic wildlife trade and consumption.
- The researchers call on authorities to establish a central wildlife crime database to promote data sharing of enforcement and research knowledge; further research on poaching motives; and improved enforcement of existing wildlife laws.

Study shines light, and raises alarm, over online trade of West African birds
- Researchers conducted a study on the online trade of West African wild birds in an effort to fill knowledge gaps about the trafficking of species from this part of the world.
- The study found that 83 species of wild birds from West Africa were being traded online, including three species protected under the highly prohibitive CITES Appendix I, and that many potential buyers originated from South Asia and the Middle East.
- In general, very little is known about wild birds in West Africa, so it’s difficult to assess whether the trade in certain species is sustainable, the researchers say.
- The authors have also raised concerns about the spread of disease upon viewing images of multiple species of birds confined together in small enclosures.

Nepal conservationists work to overturn ‘all snakes are venomous’ mindset
- Snake conservation in Nepal is hampered by both a lack of research and poor awareness among the public and the government about the country’s snake species.
- Only about 20 of the 70-odd snake species found in Nepal are venomous, but deaths from snakebites have fueled perceptions that most are dangerous.
- The government’s approach to the problem is to treat all snakebites as toxic, but conservationists say a better understanding of the snakes involved would be more effective.
- Organizations like the Nepal Toxinology Association use different media such as street plays, social media posts and videos to spread awareness about snake conservation in the country.

Indonesian official charged, but not jailed, for trading in Sumatran tiger parts
- A local politician previously convicted of corruption has been charged in Indonesia for allegedly selling Sumatran tiger parts.
- Ahmadi, 41, the former head of Bener Meriah district in Aceh province, was arrested on May 24 with two alleged accomplices — but he wasn’t detained, pending an investigation.
- Critics say the authorities’ refusal to jail him is emblematic of a core problem in Indonesian wildlife conservation, which is the impunity that powerful politicians and officials enjoy when keeping and trading in protected species.
- Aceh province, at the northern tip of Sumatra, is believed to hold about 200 of the world’s remaining 400 Sumatran tigers — the last tiger endemic to Indonesia following the extinction in the last century of the Bali and Javan subspecies.

Study casts doubt on sustainability of regulated blood python snakeskin trade
- There’s no evidence to show that the trade in blood pythons from Indonesia, coveted for their skins for making luxury fashion items, is sustainable, a new study shows.
- In fact, the evidence indicates that much of the trade, which involves slaughtering and skinning the snakes by the tens of thousands every year, may be illegal.
- The species isn’t considered threatened or protected in Indonesia, the main producer of blood python skins, and exports are governed by CITES, the convention on the international wildlife trade.
- The study’s author calls on the Indonesian government to enforce stricter monitoring and scrutiny of annual harvests, traders to abide by the regulations, and global buyers to shift away from exotic leather and use alternatives.

Cash-strapped Zimbabwe pushes to be allowed to sell its ivory stockpile
- Zimbabwe is continuing to push for international support for selling off its stockpile of elephant ivory and rhino horn, saying the revenue is needed to fund conservation efforts.
- Funding for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority comes largely from tourism-related activity, which has virtually evaporated during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the authority with shortages of staff, equipment, and funds for communities living adjacent to wildlife.
- But critics say allowing the sale of the 136 metric tons of elephant ivory and rhino horn that Zimbabwe is holding (mostly from animals that died of natural causes) will only stoke demand and lead to a surge in poaching.
- They point to similar surges following other one-off sales in 1999 and 2008, but some observers say these were unusual circumstances (the latter sale coincided with the global recession), and that a poaching spike won’t necessarily follow this time around.

Ivory from at least 150 poached elephants seized in the DRC raid
- A three-year investigation has led authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo to 2 metric tons of ivory hidden in a stash house in the southern city of Lubumbashi.
- The tusks are valued at $6 million on the international market and estimated to have come from more than 150 elephants.
- The three people arrested in the May 14 raid are allegedly members of a major wildlife trafficking ring in the Southern African region.

Shell of a comeback: New app, awareness campaigns bring hope for hawksbill turtles
- Hawksbill turtles are due for a status assessment on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
- One of the largest threats to global hawksbill recovery is the continued illegal tortoiseshell trade in Japan, a major consumer, and Indonesia, a top exporter.
- Conservation successes include a dramatic decrease in tortoiseshell sales in Colombia, previously one of the largest shell sellers in the Western Hemisphere.

‘A risky business’: Online illegal wildlife trade continues to soar in Myanmar
- A new report from WWF shows that trade in protected wild animals and their body parts in Myanmar via the social media platform Facebook rose by 74% in 2021 compared to the previous year.
- The scale of the online trade, the purpose of the trade, and the species seen in the trade are all of major concern in terms of impacts on biodiversity and the potential risks to public health from disease transfer, according to the report.
- Posts advertising live civets and pangolins as wild meat, as well as posts referring to their commercial breeding potential are a particular concern, argue the report authors. Both species are considered to be potential vectors in passing zoonotic diseases to humans.
- The report calls on online platforms to do more to monitor their platforms and take swift action, and for greater involvement and collaboration from multiple sectors to strengthen enforcement, disrupt the illegal wildlife trade, and increase awareness of the health risks posed by illegally traded wildlife.

Coalition against online wildlife trafficking shares little evidence of success (analysis)
- Officials from the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online say progress is being made, but the evidence is minimal, a new analysis shows.
- The Coalition’s three NGO partners – TRAFFIC, IFAW and WWF – divide up primary “point of contact” duties with big online platforms like eBay where wildlife and illegal animal products can be found for sale.
- Critics call the Coalition “a black box” from which little light emerges, allowing member companies like Facebook to say they’re part of the solution by pointing to their Coalition membership.
- This post is an independent analysis by the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Mongabay.

Cold case: Half-hearted prosecution lets ivory traffickers escape in Uganda
- More than three years since Ugandan authorities seized a shipment of nearly 4 tons of elephant ivory and pangolin scales, no one has been prosecuted for the trafficking attempt.
- Two Vietnamese nationals were arrested in the bust, but they vanished after being granted bail.
- Wildlife trade investigators have questioned the commitment of the Ugandan authorities to pursue the case, saying their efforts to find the suspects since then appear half-hearted at best.
- They add the failure to prosecute this case is a missed opportunity to break up a major trafficking network moving wildlife parts from East and Central Africa to Southeast Asia.

In Nigeria, a decade of payoffs boosted global wildlife trafficking hub
- An investigation by Nigeria’s Premium Times and Mongabay has found evidence of systematic failure by Nigerian law enforcement and the judicial system to hold wildlife poachers and traffickers accountable.
- Our analysis of official wildlife crimes data, supported by numerous interviews with prosecutors, environmental campaigners and traders at wildlife markets in Lagos, Cross River, Abuja, Ogun and Bauchi states, found a near-total reliance on minor out-of-court settlements in trafficking cases.
- Despite numerous high-profile, multimillion-dollar trafficking busts at Nigeria’s ports since 2010, no one has faced jail terms as a result.
- The reliance on informal payments to local officials encourages corruption, experts say, while sporadic crackdowns on wildlife markets have not stopped traders operating in the country’s commercial capital.

Refuge of endangered ‘African unicorn’ threatened by mining, poaching, deforestation
- Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) shelters some 470 mammal and bird species, including up to 20% of the world’s remaining endangered okapi (Okapia johnstoni), which are related to giraffes.
- While Okapi Wildlife Reserve has escaped much of the environmental destruction affecting surrounding areas, satellite data show deforestation has been increasing in the reserve in recent years.
- Satellite imagery shows the expansion of what appear to be gold mines in the latter half of 2021.
- Conservationists say illegal mining is attracting more people to the reserve, which in turn increases poaching and deforestation.

Photos: Caged orangutan found in Indonesian politician’s home
- The head of Langkat district had an illegal pet orangutan, authorities say.
- The politician is only the latest in a long line of public officials found to be keeping protected species.
- Authorities also found dozens of people in iron-barred cells in the home who were allegedly forced to work on the politician’s oil palm plantation, prompting calls for an investigation into whether they were subject to “modern slavery.”

New study highlights hidden scale of U.S. illegal tiger trade
- A new study highlights the previously underestimated role of the U.S. in the illegal tiger trade: According to newly compiled seizure data, tiger trafficking in the U.S. from 2003 to 2012 corresponded to almost half of the global tiger trade reported for that period in prior studies.
- By analyzing hundreds of U.S. tiger trafficking incidents, the researchers uncovered noteworthy routes from China and Vietnam into the country, with the vast majority of seizures involving traditional medicines.
- They also found significant legal trade in captive-bred tigers into the country, mainly for use in roadside zoos and circuses; experts say the patchwork of U.S. federal, state and local laws that govern the roughly 5,000 captive tigers in the country is insufficient to safeguard them from the illegal trade.
- Experts are calling on U.S. legislators to pass the Big Cat Public Safety Act, a bill that would improve the welfare and protection of tigers in captivity and therefore strengthen the country’s integrity on international tiger conservation matters.

Links between terrorism and the ivory trade overblown, study says
- As killings of elephants in Africa spiked in the early 2010s, some conservation organizations claimed the ivory trade was financing armed groups like al-Shabaab and the Lord’s Resistance Army.
- According to a study published in Global Environmental Politics, those ties were overstated and strategically pushed by NGOs in order to attract funding for anti-poaching efforts.
- Despite shaky evidence for some of the claims, they helped frame wildlife trafficking as a global security issue and were subsequently repeated by policymakers from the U.S. and elsewhere.
- The study said the confluence of conservation and security policy has had “material outcomes for marginalized peoples living with wildlife, including militarization, human rights abuses, enhanced surveillance, and law enforcement.”

The Years of the Tiger: The demand for tigers and the price they pay (commentary)
- Trade in tiger parts as medicine has been historically significant in China for many decades, and the traction and beliefs have only increased with the wealth of the nation.
- Having initiated tiger farms in their own country, and influencing other countries to open farms, China has long been making promises to phase out the farms following CITES’ regulations.
- As the Year of the Tiger approaches, many brands and businesses have started marketing campaigns with themes featuring the charismatic animal, but are yet to comprehend the price that tigers pay for their popularity.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Online trade and pet clubs fuel desire for little-known Javan ferret badgers
- Researchers identified an increase in online sales of Javan ferret badgers, a small carnivore relatively unknown to the general public outside its native Indonesia.
- Pet clubs and online forums are driving demand for small mammals such as ferret badgers, civets and otters.
- Enforcement against the illegal wildlife trade online and in open-air markets in Indonesia remains lax.

Elephant protector and fossil hunter Richard Leakey leaves outsized legacy in Kenya
- Famed paleontologist and conservationist Richard Leakey died on January 2nd, 2022 at the age of 77.
- Leakey made his mark on the field of wildlife conservation after he assumed the helm of Kenya’s Wildlife Service in 1989.
- Leakey cracked down aggressively on poachers and fortified the country’s national parks, arresting the ongoing decline in wildlife populations in the country and revitalizing the tourism sector.
- But his approach proved controversial, leading him to step down from the head of the agency in 1994. Leakey continued to be active in conservation and paleontology through the last years of his life.

‘Huge blow’ for tiger conservation as two of the big cats killed in Thailand
- Authorities in Thailand have arrested five suspects for killing two Indochinese tigers in a protected area in the country’s west; the suspects said the tigers had been killing and eating their cattle.
- Authorities seized the two tiger carcasses, which had been stripped of their skins and meat, raising suspicions among experts that financial motives, namely selling the tiger parts in the illegal market, may have driven the killing.
- Indochinese tigers have been declared extinct in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in recent years, and while several breeding populations persist in Thailand’s protected area networks, they number no more than 200 individuals.
- The killing on Jan. 8 comes days before officials from Thailand and other tiger range countries are due to meet to discuss progress toward an ambitious goal set in 2010 to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022.

Greater Mekong primates struggle to cling on amid persistent threats: Report
- The Greater Mekong region is home to 44 species of non-human primates, including gibbons, lorises, langurs, macaques and snub-nosed monkeys, several of which were first described within the last few years.
- Habitat loss and hunting driven by the wildlife trade and consumption have driven many of the region’s primates to the brink of extinction, with many species now only existing as tiny populations in isolated, fragmented pockets of habitat.
- Experts say controlling the illegal wildlife trade is complicated by the presence of legal markets for primates, often for use in biomedical research.
- Despite the challenges, conservation action at local levels is achieving results for some primate species in the region while also enhancing livelihoods and ecosystem services for local communities.

Wild cat trade: Why the cheetah is not safe just yet (commentary)
- Data collected by researchers show that the cheetah trade has actively continued between East Africa/Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, although news reports say there’s been a major decline in cub trafficking.
- The high numbers involved in this illegal trade is relevant to actions by the CITES, which determined that cheetah trade was limited and agreed to delete important decisions adopted in previous years pertaining to enforcement and demand reduction.
- As exotic pets are considered a status symbol in the Gulf States, fueled by the popularity of posts on social media, most people fail to understand that these pets were acquired illegally and the trend will not stop
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Tiger farms doing little to end wild poaching, Vietnam consumer study shows
- More than 8,000 tigers are kept in captivity in China, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam in commercial facilities ranging from residential basements to licensed venues operating under the guise of tourism, and battery-farm operations holding hundreds of tigers.
- Evidence shows that captive tigers and their body parts enter the legal and illegal trade, where they perpetuate the demand for tiger-based traditional medicines and decorative curios, primarily in China and Vietnam.
- A new study that investigates the motivations of consumers of “tiger bone glue” in Vietnam reveals that consumers prefer products from wild tigers and would carry on purchasing illegal wild products even if a legal farmed trade existed.
- The findings back up calls from conservationists and wildlife trade experts to phase out tiger farming entirely since it doesn’t alleviate pressure on wild tigers, and only encourages the consumption of tiger parts.

Want a wild bird on the hush-hush in Singapore? There’s a Facebook group for that
- Singapore’s live bird trade is thriving on Facebook, where it is largely unlicensed, according to a new report from wildlife watchdog group TRAFFIC, which tracked 44 Singapore-based Facebook groups over five months.
- Researchers found hundreds of online sellers, most of them unlicensed and therefore acting illegally, and thousands of birds offered for sale, some of them smuggled from abroad or poached locally.
- Singapore’s efforts to target the illicit wildlife pet trade have so far focused on monitoring and enforcement actions at the trader level instead of imposing licensing requirements at the consumer level, the researchers said.
- They recommend implementing a compulsory wildlife-pet registration system, under which owners must prove they obtained their wildlife pets from licensed sources.

In wildlife traffickers, the internet finds a cancel target everyone agrees on
- The Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online has removed more than 11 million posts linked to the wildlife trade on platforms ranging from Facebook to eBay to Alibaba since it was established in 2018.
- But as more tech companies join the cause, and algorithms to weed out trafficking keywords grow more sophisticated, traffickers are becoming savvier and evolving new ways to keep operating in the internet’s vast gray zone.
- With the proliferation of online platforms, and the increasing shift of commerce online since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, coalition supporters are emphasizing the industry-led approach as the most effective way to clamp down.
- However, law enforcement is still lacking because of the jurisdictional challenges when it comes to fighting online crime; although there have been some successful convictions, proponents say private sector collaboration is necessary to navigate the vastness of the internet.

Indonesia ranks high on legal wildlife trade, but experts warn it masks illegal trade
- Indonesia sits at No. 9 on a list of the 80 countries with the highest number of wildlife specimens legally exported abroad since 1975, new research shows.
- The legal international trade in wildlife is governed by CITES, whose trade database shows that Indonesia exported 7.7 million live animals over the past 46 years, more than a quarter of them arowana fish.
- While these trades are legal, experts say the government should try to minimize the practice and focus more on conserving wild populations of these species.
- Critics of the legal wildlife trade have long accused it of helping mask the illegal trade, primarily through the “laundering” of wild-caught animals through captive-breeding facilities.

Wildlife trade hub Vietnam is also hub of impunity for traffickers, report says
- Only one in every seven wildlife seizures made in Vietnam in the past decade has resulted in convictions, a new report by the U.K.-based Environmental Investigation Agency has found.
- Low numbers of arrests and prosecutions highlight problems of weak enforcement and a lack of coordination between law enforcement agencies, the researchers said.
- Three-quarters of the shipments originated from African countries, they found, with numerous large-scale seizures indicating transnational organized crime.
- With pandemic-related restrictions easing, the worry is that the cross-border wildlife trade will come roaring back even as Vietnam struggles to follow up on investigations into past and current seizures.

Study shines a light on Indonesia’s murky shark fishery and trade
- Indonesia is home to one-fifth of known shark and ray species and to the world’s largest shark and ray fishery, but a recent study reveals gaps in fisheries regulations that facilitate illegal and unregulated trade.
- Earlier this year, scientists reported that shark and ray numbers have declined globally by some 70% over the last half century, lending fresh urgency to improving fisheries regulations and limits on landings.
- The recent study revealed major discrepancies between export and import figures between Indonesia and trading partners. It also documented the complex web of domestic trade in shark and ray products and a surge in live exports.
- Authorities face challenges with verifying the origin of a vast array of processed shark and ray products, from fins and cartilage to meat and oils; new techniques that enable authorities to use DNA barcoding to identify protected species have the potential to close regulatory loopholes and protect threatened species.

‘The images are confronting’: Q&A with animal photojournalist Jo-Anne McArthur
- Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene, published in December 2020, is a photojournalism book that documents the lives and deaths of animals in a human-dominated world.
- The “hidden” animals of the title are those that we humans use for food, fashion, research and cultural purposes.
- The book showcases the work of more than 40 photographers, including co-editor Jo-Anne McArthur, working in the burgeoning field of animal photojournalism.
- Mongabay interviewed McArthur about the creation of the book, the importance of engaging with images of animal suffering, the intersection between animal advocacy and environmentalism, and the growth of animal photojournalism.

Tracking white-bellied pangolins in Nigeria, the new global trafficking hub
- Nigeria has in recent years become a major transit point for the illegal trade in pangolins, the scaly anteater known for being the most trafficked mammal in the world.
- With the four Asian pangolin species increasingly scarce, traffickers have made Nigeria their hub for collecting scales and meat from the four African species and shipping them to East Asia.
- In Cross River National Park, home to the elusive white-bellied pangolin, researcher Charles Emogor is working to both study the species and work with communities to end the poaching.
- “Until our government faces up to the fact that we’ve become a staging ground for the pangolin trade, I fear we’re only going to see more cross-border smuggling of scales, and more pangolin flesh for sale in wild meat markets,” he says.

Malawi court sentences Chinese wildlife trafficking kingpin to 14 years in jail
- A court in Malawi has sentenced a Chinese national to 14 years in jail for masterminding an illegal wildlife trafficking cartel that operated across Southern Africa.
- Yunhua Lin and his accomplices, including his wife, were arrested in 2019 and found in possession of pangolin scales, elephant ivory, hippo teeth and rhino horns.
- Wildlife authorities have hailed the stiff sentence as “a message to all criminals out there that we are no longer functioning in a business-as-usual way.”

Beached whale shark in Indonesia reportedly cut up by locals to eat
- Locals in Indonesia’s West Java province reportedly cut up and ate a whale shark that washed up on a beach last week.
- Authorities have deplored the incident, noting that the species is protected under Indonesian law.
- Marine animal strandings are common in Indonesia as its waters serve as both a habitat and an important migratory route for dozens of species.

Malaysian hornbill bust reveals live trafficking trend in Southeast Asia
- The recent seizure of eight live hornbills at Kuala Lumpur International Airport confirmed experts’ suspicions that live hornbill trafficking is on the rise in Southeast Asia.
- Analysis of seizure records across Southeast Asia indicates that the incident is just the tip of the iceberg: Between 2015 and 2021, there were 99 incidents of live hornbill trafficking involving 268 birds spanning 13 species.
- Among the recent haul was a baby helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil), a critically endangered species hunted to the brink of extinction for its distinctive ivory-like bill casque, which is prized by collectors in parts of Asia.
- Specialists say more information on how poaching for live trade affects wild populations is urgently required; only then, they say, will it be possible to push for stronger enforcement and close loopholes that allow the illegal trade to flourish.

As tigers dwindle, Indonesia takes aim at poaching ring
- Indonesian officials recently confiscated three tiger skins from a man in Sumatra.
- They believe the perpetrator is connected to a larger ring of wildlife traffickers.

Nigeria seizes scales from 15,000 dead pangolins
- 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, a raid last month in Lagos turned up 196 sacks of pangolin scales representing about 15,000 dead pangolins.
- According to the Wildlife Justice Commission, the the Netherlands-based NGO which provided intelligence to the customs service, the seizure is the ninth largest of pangolin scales since March 2019, and Nigeria’s third largest during that time span.
- Nigeria said it had arrested three foreign nationals in association with the bust.

New study finds that minority of animals host majority of zoonotic viruses
- After contracting COVID-19, a scientist in India delved into data on what mammal species pose the greatest risk for future pandemics.
- Researchers found that 26.5% of mammals in the wildlife trade housed 75% of known zoonotic diseases.
- The findings present an opportunity for greater risk management by governments more closely focusing on these species.

Study warns of impacts of unregulated trade in Indonesian porcupines
- The unmonitored illegal trade in porcupines across Indonesia has prompted calls from conservationists for stricter protection of the species’ population in the wild.
- A new study examining seizure data of porcupines, their parts and derivatives in Indonesia has found more than 450 of the animals in nearly 40 incidents between January 2013 and June 2020
- Indonesia is home five porcupine species, but only one is currently protected by under the law.
- The study’s author has recommended that all porcupines be categorized as protected species under Indonesian wildlife laws and listed under CITES to monitor the impacts of the trade on the wild population.

Chinese special economic zones hotspots for wildlife trafficking, surveys say
- From 2019 to 2020, market surveys from wildlife trade watchdog TRAFFIC found close to 78,000 illegal wildlife parts and products on sale in more than 1,000 outlets across Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar and Cambodia.
- A significant part of this trade activity came from special economic zones established between local firms and Chinese companies, TRAFFIC revealed.
- Chinese tourist demand had been an important driver of illegal wildlife trade in the Lower Mekong region before the COVID-19 travel restrictions.
- While the pandemic has reduced trade activity, experts call for increased monitoring and investigations to dampen wildlife crime in the long term.

‘Conservation litigation’ tries to put a true price on wildlife crime
- An international team of experts says it’s possible to sue environmental and wildlife offenders for the damage they inflict upon ecosystems and biodiversity and seek compensation to help restore what has been lost.
- Several countries, including Indonesia, the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mexico, already have legislation that allows for this “conservation litigation,” experts say.
- There have also been several successful civil lawsuits in which environmental offenders have had to provide compensation for ecological restoration.
- However, conservation litigation is not commonly used due to a lack of understanding about its feasibility, and the difficulties of coming up with defensible, scientifically robust remedies for environmental and wildlife crimes — but experts say they hope this litigation is used more frequently in the future.

Unregulated by U.S. at home, Facebook boosts wildlife trafficking abroad
- The world’s largest social media company, Facebook, regularly connects wildlife traffickers around the world, and advocates are stepping up the pressure to address the problem in the company’s home country.
- Proposed U.S. legislation targets a decades-old law that protects online companies’ content as free speech on their platform. Advocates say wildlife crime is not speech, and that online companies lack the regulation that other “real-life” companies must follow.
- Trafficking has increased since Facebook chose to self-regulate in 2019, researchers say. The company could cooperate with law enforcement or conservationists, but it has rarely chosen to do so.
- Meanwhile, researchers are gathering more and more evidence that wildlife trafficking is one of the biggest threats to global biodiversity.

CSI, but for parrots: Study applies criminological tool CRAAVED to wildlife trade
- Parrots as the most traded animal taxon have the potential to provide a primary source of data for investigating the causes and consequences of the animal trade.
- A new study applies the CRAAVED model analysis to shed new light on key drivers of the illegal parrot trade in Indonesia, home to the highest diversity of the birds and a thriving wildlife market.
- The analysis identified three main factors for which species were targeted by traffickers: how accessible parrot species are to people and traders; whether legal export of the species is possible; and whether the species is enjoyable through its color, size or mimicry.
- Other experts have welcomed the findings and their implications, but point to limitations in the CRAAVED model and the importance of considering other factors such as harvest quotas and the motivation behind wildlife crime.

Wildlife trafficking, like everything else, has gone online during COVID-19
- Regional and national reports show a decline in illegal wildlife trade activities in Southeast Asia in 2020, with operations down by more than 50% across the most-traded animals.
- Despite the decrease, experts say traders have shifted from face-to-face interactions and increased their presence on online platforms.
- Authorities also reported confiscating caches of stockpiled animal parts, indicating that the trade continues amid the pandemic. Traders may be waiting for looser border controls to carry on with business, experts say.
- While these trends suggest that the trade will bounce back in a post-COVID-19 era, experts suggest strengthening enforcement collaboration, improving wildlife laws, and increasing awareness of the health risks posed by illegally poached wildlife.

New bill seeks to end Hong Kong’s days as an illegal wildlife trade hub
- Hong Kong is a leading transportation hub for the illegal wildlife trade: In the past two years, Hong Kong authorities seized more than over 649 metric tons of illegal wildlife and wildlife products across 1,404 seizures, according to a new report.
- While many seizures lead to prosecution, the people who tend to be punished are the “mules” rather than the leaders of organized criminal syndicates. Additionally, some of the largest wildlife seizures in Hong Kong have not been followed by any prosecution, possibly due to the lack of evidence.
- A new bill may change the status quo by allowing wildlife crimes to be subject to the provisions of Hong Kong’s Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance, which would allow authorities to conduct more in-depth investigations and hand out harsher penalties.
- Supporters of the bill say there is a strong possibility that it will pass into law due to strong political support and a lack of opposition.

Latest mass stranding raises concerns for endangered Caspian seals
- About 170 endangered Caspian seals were found dead on Russia’s Dagestan coast near the city of Makhachkala from May 4-6, with fishing activities most likely to blame.
- People harvest Caspian seals for their skin and even their blubber, which is made into an oil and promoted as a cure for COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses, according to experts.
- An expert says more than 15,000 Caspian seals are killed each year through fishing activities and then filtered into the wildlife trade.
- With only about 68,000 mature individuals left in the wild, experts say international cooperation by countries bordering the Caspian Sea is urgently needed to protect the imperiled species.

Novelizing wildlife crime investigations: Q&A with author Bryan Christy
- 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.
- Christy’s newest project builds on his wildlife crime expertise, but takes it in a more dramatic direction: He’s written a novel titled In the Company of Killers, which tells the story of Tom Klay, an investigative reporter leading a double life as a CIA spy, who travels to the same places where Christy did his investigative work.
- “After years investigating wildlife crimes around the world, I realized environmental crimes were only part of criminal ecosystems too large to fit into any magazine article or documentary,” Christy told Mongabay. “When power and corruption feel too big to do anything about, it’s the job of storytellers to reframe things in a way that makes sense.”
- Christy spoke with Mongabay founder Rhett A. Butler in April 2021.

Skin in the game? Reptile leather trade embroils conservation authority
- The reptile skin trade is a controversial issue, with some experts saying that harvesting programs help conserve species and provide livelihood benefits, while others say that the trade is fraught with issues and animal welfare concerns.
- From a conservation standpoint, there is evidence that the reptile skin trade is sustainable for some species and in some contexts, but other research suggests that the trade could be decimating wild populations and doing more harm than good.
- Exotic leather is falling out of favor in the fashion industry: Numerous companies and brands have banned products made from reptile skin as well as fur, replacing them with products made from materials such as apple, grape or mushroom leather.
- Experts connected with the IUCN have written open letters and op-eds to lament the decisions of companies to ban exotic leather, arguing that these bans have damaged conservation efforts, but other experts question the IUCN’s unfailing support of an imperfect trade.

Life and new limbs: Creative thinking, 3D printers save injured wildlife
- Prosthetics for injured animals are becoming increasingly possible and accessible thanks to 3D printing. Historically, artificial devices for wildlife have been expensive and very time-consuming to produce. 3D printing is changing that calculus by making it easier to design and build better-fitting prosthetics.
- A team of dedicated caregivers with vision, creativity and persistence is often the common thread that is key to helping injured animals.
- While 3D printing of animal prosthetics allows for multiple iterations that helps improve the device so that the animal can function more normally, size and materials can limit their use.
- Today, the use of 3D printers to aid animals is expanding beyond prosthetics, with veterinary anesthesia masks for small primates and other experimental uses being tried.

Exposing organized crime in the Amazon: Q&A with Robert Muggah of the Igarapé Institute
- Relentless deforestation has pushed the Amazon to the brink of an ecological shift from rainforest to savannah with potentially devastating consequences for climate change and biodiversity.
- Home to most of the world’s tropical forest land, almost all logging in the Amazon is thought to be illegal, yet few penalties are imposed on offenders.
- To address the culture of impunity, a new data visualization platform, Ecocrime, has been developed by the Igarapé Institute, which seeks to expose the organized criminal networks that sustain illicit trade in the Amazon.

Amid South China Sea dispute, Philippines’ Palawan is besieged by political split
- The Philippine province of Palawan is set to decide on a law that will divide the province into three: Palawan del Norte, Palawan Oriental and Palawan del Sur.
- Palawan stands on the Philippines’ western border and is the country’s sentinel in the maritime dispute in the South China Sea.
- Anti-division groups have raised concerns that the split will weaken the implementation and management of environmental programs Palawan has been known for, and in the process, endanger the province’s already threatened ecology.
- Palawan’s marine ecosystems have been under constant threat from illegal fishing and poaching by foreign vessels encroaching on its waters.

Chinese triads target Bolivia’s jaguars in search of ‘American tiger’ parts
- An intelligence-gathering investigation by Earth League International and the Dutch national committee to the IUCN has revealed that Chinese-controlled trafficking syndicates are responsible for smuggling jaguar body parts out of Bolivia.
- These groups hide behind legitimate businesses like restaurants and shops, which also serve as fronts for the transit of other wildlife and illegal drugs, the investigation found.
- An influx of Chinese investment into infrastructure projects in Bolivia in recent years has coincided with a rise in poaching, with traffickers targeting jaguars as a replacement for nearly depleted tiger populations back in Asia.
- Some Bolivian officials are pushing for legal reforms that will impose heavier sentences for wildlife, but the country’s political crises has held up those efforts for now.

Electronic ears listen to poachers in a key Central American jaguar habitat
- The international NGO Panthera has been using acoustical monitoring systems to support their anti-poaching patrols in Guatemala and Honduras since 2017.
- The acoustical recorders can pick up gunshots, conversations and wildlife sounds, and help rangers plan their patrols to be more effective in combating illegal activities.
- Panthera is particularly concerned about protecting the jaguar, which is threatened by poaching, wildlife trafficking and habitat loss in this region.

Nigeria emerges as Africa’s primary export hub for ivory, pangolin scales
- Increased political buy-in for law enforcement and interdiction efforts at ports in East Africa have pushed wildlife smuggling westward to Nigeria.
- Between 1998 and 2014, the top two countries associated with ivory seizures were Tanzania and Kenya. Since 2014, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo have overtaken them.
- Corruption at the ports, the involvement of influential politicians, and rural poverty make Nigeria an attractive waypoint for smugglers.

Songbird trade in Indonesia threatens wild Sunda laughingthrush
- The wild population of the Sunda laughingthrush, a once common songbird species, has been battered by the illegal trade in Indonesia, according to a recent study.
- Field surveys over the course of 30 years show a significant decline in the number of laughingthrushes sold at markets across 30 Indonesian cities, with an attendant rise in price.
- The absence of known commercial captive breeding records of the species also indicates that all Sunda laughingthrushes observed in trade were sourced from the wild, the study shows.
- The authors have called on Indonesian and international conservation authorities to reassess the status of the bird’s wild population to reflect the current condition and ban its trade outright.

Herd opportunity: Hundreds of elephants return to DRC’s Virunga
- A group of about 580 savanna elephants recently returned to Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after crossing over from Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda.
- The reappearance of the elephants brings hope to a park that’s been beset with civil unrest, violence, and poaching for decades.
- In May, Virunga National Park closed due to the spread of COVID-19, which caused serious financial damage to the park.

Colombian environmental official assassinated in southern Meta department
- Historically, this is a zone of armed conflict in the Amazon with frequent issues related to deforestation and land grabbing.
- Parra was coordinator of the Corporation for the Sustainable Development of the La Macarena Special Management Area (Cormacarena). He was a 20-year veteran of the environmental authority.
- Between January 1 and December 6, 2020, a jaw-dropping 284 environmental leaders and defenders have been assassinated in Colombia.

China still making pangolin-based treatments despite banning use of scales, report says
- A new report has found that medicines containing pangolin scales are still being produced and sold throughout China, despite a recent ban on pangolin scales from the official list of approved ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine.
- According to the report, 56 companies are actively producing and selling 64 medicines containing pangolin scales, and that an additional 165 companies and 713 hospitals have the authority to produce such medicines.
- The only legal way for pharmaceutical companies and hospitals to obtain pangolin scales is through government-registered stockpiles, but conservationists say these stockpiles are poorly regulated and allow for the possibility of illegal trade.

Vietnam conservation regulations improving, but much work remains
- Vietnam made headlines earlier in the year for considering a wildlife trade ban in response to COVID-19, but such a development has not occurred.
- Nonetheless, the country’s laws related to biodiversity conservation are robust and generally comprehensive, with strong penalties for violations in place.
- But enforcement remains a problem, while corruption and other issues also hinder improved protection of Vietnam’s wildlife.
- Conservation organizations have been heartened by recent legal and regulatory improvements, but caution that there is still a long way to go.

Stolen from the wild, rare reptiles and amphibians are freely traded in EU
- A new report illustrates that protected reptiles and amphibians are being illegally caught in their countries of origin, but then legally traded within the European Union due to a lack of internal trade barriers and controls.
- This is the third report in a series highlighting the trade of exotic pets within Europe; it shows that the trade is continuing, and has even become more extensive.
- Traders are particularly interested in rare, endemic reptiles and amphibians, and will refer to scientific papers to locate newly identified species, the report says.
- The report authors recommend that the EU adopt new legislation similar to the Lacey Act in the U.S., which prohibits the trade of species that are protected in foreign countries.

Philippine wildlife reporting app promises to upgrade fight against trafficking
- The Philippines’ environment department plans a year-end rollout of an app, currently being tested, that should make it easier for citizens and enforcement officials to report wildlife crimes.
- Illegal wildlife trafficking is the fourth-biggest transnational crime in the world, following the trafficking of drugs, people, and weapons; in the Philippines, the trade is estimated at $1 billion a year, and threatens the country’s unique wildlife, of which many species are found nowhere else.
- The WildALERT app is designed to overcome one of the main problems with reporting any kind of crime from remote areas — patchy internet reception — by using an offline mode that allows users to enter photographic and location data on-site and upload it when they get reception.
- The app also has a library feature, essentially a Facebook for endangered species, to allow users to quickly identify and report species they encounter; the lack of specialist knowledge is currently one of the big gaps in the existing campaign against the illegal wildlife trade.

Rangers protecting Philippine tamaraws go hungry as pandemic bites
- Rangers tasked to protect the critically endangered Philippine tamaraw (Bubalus mindorensis) are facing a different kind of threat: hunger, as budget cuts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic bite into their already meager salaries.
- The tamaraw, also known as the dwarf buffalo, is a critically endangered species found only on the island of Mindoro, with an estimated population of just 480.
- The tamaraw’s island stronghold is Mounts Iglit-Baco Natural Park, which is protected by 24 rangers and Indigenous volunteers.
- But the tamaraw program has been chronically underfunded, and diversion of funds to help fight the pandemic has left some of the rangers unemployed and the rest going hungry, even as they continue to do their jobs.

Forest crimes persist in Peru following Indigenous leader’s murder
- The leader of an Indigenous community in Peru’s Huánuco region was murdered when he went fishing earlier this year. Despite this, criminal groups have reportedly continued to operate in the area.
- The death of Arbildo Meléndez Grandes is one of a series of environmental crimes reported since the COVID-19 state of emergency began in Peru.
- Operations against illegal mining and logging have been carried out in the Madre de Dios, Loreto and Ucayali regions in recent months.

Ornithologists discover more rare hornbills than thought on Philippine island
- A new study of the endemic and rare Visayan tarictic hornbill (Penelopides panini) on Negros Island in the Philippines shows that the population of the endangered bird may be double the previous estimate of the IUCN.
- A 2001 assessment by the IUCN estimated the total number of tarictic hornbills on the islands of Negros and Panay at 1,800; this new study finds nearly 3,600 hornbills in Negros alone.
- Hornbills are among the most threatened bird species in the Philippines; a subspecies of the taritic hornbill was the first first hornbill in the country to be declared extinct, in 2013, after it disappeared from the island of Ticao.
- The study is the first to establish an existing population of tarictic hornbills for the island of Negros and the first to identify bird populations in each remaining forest area on the island.

Anticipated new restrictions on wildlife trade in Vietnam fall short of a ban
- Earlier this year, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc called for the drafting of a ban on wildlife trade and consumption by April 1.
- After a delay of several months, on July 23, the government finally released a directive aimed at strengthening enforcement of existing rules governing the wildlife trade, but not banning the trade outright, as conservationists had hoped.
- Conservationists expressed support for the directive as a major step forward, but cautioned that much work remains, particularly in terms of enforcement.

Trafficking of thousands of songbirds highlights rampant trade in Indonesia
- Smugglers in Indonesia managed to ship more than 7,000 birds on commercial flights from Sumatra to Java last month.
- Another shipment of 2,300 birds was foiled by authorities days later; more than 800 of the seized birds were found to have died due to the cramped conditions they had been kept in.
- Wildlife watchers say up to 40,000 birds a month are trafficked out of Kualanamu Airport in North Sumatra, likely with the help of complicit officials.
- The high volume strongly suggests the birds are wild-caught rather than captive-bred; the former is illegal, while the latter requires a permit and is subject to a quota.

Vietnam wildlife trade ban appears to flounder amid coronavirus success
- In March, responding to the novel coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc requested a draft of measures to restrict the trade and consumption of wildlife in Vietnam by April 1.
- That date has come and gone, but no information on the requested draft has been made public since March.
- Some conservationists are concerned that Vietnam’s thus far successful containment of the coronavirus outbreak means the government is no longer prioritizing wildlife regulations.
- NGOs are still working, both behind the scenes and in public, to press the issue.

As COVID-19 pandemic deepens, global wildlife treaty faces an identity crisis
- The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is a global environmental agreement of great consequence: it regulates the global trade in some of the most threatened species on Earth.
- While many conservation groups jumped at the chance the COVID-19 pandemic offered to highlight the link between pandemics and wildlife exploitation, the CITES Secretariat appeared to distance itself from the crisis, drawing criticism and scrutiny.
- The treaty, one of the few binding environmental conventions, should be part of the solution, many believe, but it would need to expanded and strengthened to respond to new challenges like COVID-19.
- Doing this and tackling larger issues of biodiversity and habitat loss would require leadership from the countries that are party to this and similar conventions, experts say.

What’s in a name? ‘Wet markets’ may hide true culprits for COVID-19
- The term “wet market” is typically used to describe places in China and other Asian countries that sell fresh vegetables, fruits, seafood and meat from domesticated animals.
- Only a small minority of Asian wet markets sell wildlife, including illegally trafficked wildlife, although wet markets are unduly conflated with the wildlife trade, experts say.
- Wet markets, or their equivalents, are found in many places around the world, including the U.S.
- The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released new hygiene and sanitation guidelines for food markets around the world.

Malaysian authorities seize record 6 tons of African pangolin scales
- On April 1, authorities seized more than 6 tons of African pangolin scales in Port Klang, Malaysia. This is the biggest shipment of pangolin scales ever to be discovered in this particular port.
- The exact origins of this shipment are unknown, especially since traffickers frequently change their routes.
- Pangolins are the most trafficked animal in the world, with over 1 million animals taken from the wild and traded since 2000.
- Wildlife trafficking continues despite the pandemic, and smugglers may be trying to take advantage of the lockdowns.

In Madagascar, revived environmental crime hotline leads to tortoise bust
- A Malagasy civil society group recently relaunched a hotline for people to report environmental crimes while avoiding the reprisals that often follow when they make such reports to the authorities.
- The group hired four environmental lawyers to answer the phones and investigate the cases, referring some to government agencies for enforcement.
- An anonymous caller told hotline lawyers about a classified ad for endangered tortoises in a Malagasy newspaper. The call led to the arrest in March of the seller, a government worker who is now in prison awaiting trial.
- Many governments have online and telephone reporting options for environmental and wildlife crimes. However, in countries with corrupt institutions and weak law enforcement, NGOs and civil society groups often run the hotlines.

Vietnam considers wildlife trade ban in response to coronavirus pandemic
- Last month, conservation organizations sent an open letter to Vietnam’s prime minister recommending action against the wildlife trade as a means of preventing future outbreaks of disease, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
- In response, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc tasked the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development with drafting a ban on the trade and consumption of wildlife by April 1.
- The COVID-19 outbreak has been relatively contained in Vietnam, with 75 confirmed infections at the time of writing, but the economic impact is severe.
- Conservationists hope to see strong enforcement on both the supply and demand sides of the wildlife trade.

Conservationists set the record straight on COVID-19’s wildlife links
- The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been characterized by the World Health Organization as a pandemic. As the virus spreads, so too does misinformation about its origins.
- Rumors that COVID-19 was manufactured in a lab or that we know with full certainty which animal host passed the disease to humans are unfounded.
- Given the clear risks to animals as well as to human health, the Wildlife Conservation Society and Global Wildlife Conservation are calling for a permanent ban on wildlife trafficking and live animal markets.

Coronavirus outbreak may spur Southeast Asian action on wildlife trafficking
- Illegal wildlife trafficking remains a perennial problem in Southeast Asia, but with the ongoing spread of the new coronavirus, there’s added impetus for governments in the region to clamp down on the illicit trade.
- The coronavirus disease, or COVID-19, has infected more than 90,000 people worldwide and killed more than 3,000, according to the World Health Organization.
- Initial findings, though not conclusive, have linked the virus to pangolins, the most trafficked mammal on Earth and one of the mainstays of the illegal wildlife trade in Southeast Asia that feeds the Chinese market.
- Despite having a regional cooperation framework designed to curb wildlife trafficking, Southeast Asian governments have yet to agree on and finance a sustainability plan to strengthen efforts against the illegal trade.

Call for prosecution of Indonesian politician who kept baby orangutan as pet
- Conservationists are calling for a district chief in Indonesia to face charges after he was found to have kept a baby Tapanuli orangutan as a pet and later released it into the wild unsupervised.
- Local media began reporting about the critically endangered ape at Nikson Nababan’s house on Jan. 26; the next day, he instructed his staff to release it in secret, ahead of an inspection by conservation officials.
- Orangutans are protected species under Indonesian law, and keeping one as a pet is punishable by up to five years in prison; however, there have never been any prosecutions of perpetrators, who tend to be influential figures such as politicians and military officers.
- Wildlife experts have also condemned the unregulated release of the baby orangutan: on its own, they say, it’s likely to die, and if it encounters wild orangutans, it could pass on human diseases picked up from its months in captivity.

Investigation reveals loopholes for illegal shark fin exports from Indonesia
- An undercover reporting initiative by Indonesian media has highlighted loopholes that allow protected sharks to be sold abroad.
- Shark products, mostly fins, end up being exported to Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Japan and Thailand.
- In Indonesia, some endangered shark species are allowed for limited catch, but not for export, but traders find their way around this prohibition by concealing the fins from customs authorities.
- Indonesia is home to more than a quarter of the world’s 400 known shark species; a fifth of all shark species are endangered.

Rhino poaching in South Africa declines for fifth straight year
- South Africa reports that rhino poaching has declined for a fifth straight year in the country, with 594 rhino poached in 2019, down from the 769 rhino killed for their horns in 2018.
- According to an official press release from the South African government, the decline in poaching in 2019 is due to a combination of measures, including deployment of technologies that allow for better reaction times to poaching incidents, improved information collection and sharing between law enforcement agencies, greater cooperation between entities at the regional and national level, and more meaningful engagement of the private sector, NGOs, and donors.
- There were 2,014 incursions and poaching-related activities recorded in South Africa’s Kruger National Park in 2019, leading to 327 rhinos being lost. Some 178 alleged poachers were arrested within the Park last year, while 332 arrests were made throughout the country.

Sea turtles continue to swim in troubled waters: report
- TRAFFIC released new data about the prevalence of sea turtle trafficking in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.
- The group says at least 2,354 turtles were seized in the three countries from January 2015 to July 2019.
- Tens of thousands of turtle eggs were also seized, mostly in Malaysia.

Indonesian man jailed for smuggling 7,000 ‘living fossil’ horseshoe crabs
- A court in Indonesia has sentenced a boat captain to 15 months in jail and fined him $3,500 for attempting to traffic thousands of dead horseshoe crabs to Thailand.
- All three horseshoe crabs found in Indonesian waters are protected under the country’s laws, but conservationists say the illegal trade continues largely unchecked.
- Horseshoe crabs have existed for nearly half a billion years, but today face rapidly declining populations across their range as a result of overfishing for use as food and bait, production of biomedical products derived from their blood, and habitat loss from coastal development and erosion.

Nearly extinct vaquita mothers with calves spotted in recent expeditions
- The latest expeditions in the Gulf of California, Mexico, to survey the vaquita, the world’s smallest cetacean, have yielded sightings of both vaquita mothers and calves. This, researchers say, indicates that the mammals are still reproducing despite threats.
- In a survey carried out between August and September, researchers spotted what they say were likely six distinct individual vaquitas.
- During a subsequent expedition in October, researchers say they spotted vaquitas several times, including six different vaquitas in two groups, and three pairs of mothers and calves.
- This news is hopeful, but the mammal’s future is still perilous due to the continued use of illegal fishing nets in its habitat, experts say.

Mischaracterizing the conservation benefits of trade (commentary)
- The authors of a Science paper on global wildlife trade respond to an editorial published on Mongabay that criticized their methodology.
- Brett R. Scheffers of the University of Florida/IFAS; Brunno F. Oliveira of the University of Florida/IFAS and Auburn University at Montgomery; and Leuan Lamb and David P. Edwards of the University of Sheffield say their paper ‘uses a rigorously assembled database to make the first global assessment of traded species—both legal and illegal, and from national to international scales—and to identify the global hotspots of trade diversity.’
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

’Rampant’ fishing continues as vaquita numbers dwindle
- An expedition surveying the Gulf of California for the critically endangered vaquita porpoise has reported seeing more than 70 fishing boats in a protected refuge.
- Vaquita numbers have been decimated in the past decade as a result of gillnet fishing for another critically endgangered species, the totoaba, a fish whose swim bladder can fetch more than $20,000 per kilogram ($9,000 per pound) in Asian markets.
- Local fishing organizations in the region say that the government has stopped compensating them after a gillnet ban, aimed at protecting the vaquita from extinction, went into effect in 2015.

For one Indonesian fisher, saving caught turtles is a moral challenge
- Sea turtles are protected species under Indonesian law, but continue to be caught and killed for food and ornaments in many parts of the country.
- Official wildlife conservation agencies are typically underfunded, and large-scale conservation programs run by NGOs are far from effective, a conservationist says.
- But in a fishing village on the island of Sulawesi, a lone fisherman is playing his part by buying live turtles accidentally caught by other fishers and usually injured, and caring for them until they heal and can be released back into the ocean.
- Conservationists have welcomed his initiative and intent, but raised questions about his expertise, with some of the more than 20 turtles he has cared for so far dying.

Expansion of a famous elephant park holds out hope for Africa’s big tuskers
- Eight of Africa’s remaining 30 “big tuskers” live in South Africa’s Tembe Elephant Park.
- The park is set to be expanded by up to 26,000 hectares, allowing its herd of 200 to grow.
- The park is owned and managed by local communities.

International wildlife trade sweeps across ‘tree of life,’ study finds
- About one in five land animals are caught up in the global wildlife trade, a new study has found.
- The research identified species traded as pets or for products they provide, and then mapped the animals’ home ranges, identifying “hotspots” around the world.
- The team also found that nearly 3,200 other species may be affected by the wildlife trade in the future.
- The study’s authors say they believe their work could help authorities protect species before trade drives their numbers down.

Finally, Latin America is tackling wildlife trafficking (commentary)
- On October 3-4, a High Level International Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade in the Americas will take place in Lima, Peru. This is the first-ever such conference organized exclusively around wildlife trafficking in the Americas, with particular focus on South and Central America. Why has it taken so long, and why is it so important?
- Latin America is the single most biologically diverse region in the world, and trade in its wildlife, including illegal trade, is not a new issue. Latin America’s unique and precious wildlife has endured threats from illegal and unsustainable commercial trade, both domestic and international, for decades—and in some cases, even longer.
- There are still large intact forest and grassland habitats across the region, and populations of species that can either be maintained or restored, if strong action is taken today. Preventive measures can and must be taken now, to ensure that Latin America’s wildlife thrives, from Mexico to the tip of Patagonia.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Indonesian officials foil attempt to smuggle hornbill casques to Hong Kong
- Indonesian authorities have arrested a woman for allegedly attempting to smuggle 72 helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil) casques to Hong Kong.
- The distinctive-looking bird is critically endangered, its precipitous decline driven by poaching for its casque — a solid, ivory-like protuberance on its head that’s highly prized in East Asia for use as ornamental carvings.
- Tackling the hornbill trade will be on the agenda at next month’s CITES wildlife trade summit in Geneva.

‘Let us trade’: Debate over ivory sales rages ahead of CITES summit
- Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe want to sell off their ivory stocks to raise money for conservation.
- Growing human and elephant populations in these southern African countries have provoked increased human-wildlife conflict, and the governments see legal ivory sales as a way to generate revenue for conservation and development funding.
- Other countries, most notably Kenya, oppose the proposal, on the grounds that previous legal sales stimulated demand for ivory and coincided with a sharp increase in poaching.

Chinese nationals arrested in US after smuggling totoaba swim bladders worth $3.7 million from Mexico
- According to a report this week by Quartz, two Chinese nationals were arrested last month in the state of California with $3.7-million-worth of totoaba swim bladders that they had smuggled from Mexico.
- More than 800 totoaba maws were confiscated by Mexican authorities last year in two separate busts of Chinese nationals who were attempting to smuggle the swim bladders out of the country. Also last year, Chinese customs officials confiscated 980 pounds of totoaba maws, estimated to be worth as much as $26 million.
- These enforcement actions are welcome news, Andrea Crosta, executive director of wildlife trade watchdog group Elephant Action League wrote in a commentary for Mongabay earlier this year. But he added that, without further action to directly disrupt the totoaba maw supply chain and the operations of the wildlife crime networks involved in the illegal trade, there is “absolutely no chance” to save the vaquita.

Researchers and customs officials unite to fight wildlife trafficking using eDNA
- A novel, fast-acting eDNA test can help airport customs officials identify illegally trafficked European eels, which as juveniles cannot be visually distinguished from legally-traded species.
- Although international treaties have historically provided a framework for imposing restrictions when nations violate agreements, enforcement remains a challenge in part because many trafficked specimens go unnoticed.
- Where enforcement proves difficult, technology such as this fast-acting eDNA test can improve monitoring of illegally traded flora and fauna.

Otter cafés and ‘cute pets craze’ fuel illegal trafficking in Japan and Indonesia
- A new investigative film reveals the extent of illegal trafficking of otters to supply Tokyo’s ‘cafés’ where people pay to cuddle the wild animals, and it also shows their unsuitability as domestic pets.
- Otters kept in these cafés endure poor conditions and are fed items like cat food, which is not good for them.
- The business is highly profitable and is likely linked to organized crime, according to the film’s undercover investigation. Adults are often killed and their young captured for the trade.
- Mongabay interviewed the filmmaker as the movie was released, and one can also watch the film below.

Social media enables the illegal wildlife pet trade in Malaysia
- Conservationists say that prosecuting wildlife traffickers in Malaysia for trading in protected species isn’t easy, as traders have several loopholes to aid their efforts.
- One wildlife trafficker known as Kejora Pets has been operating in Peninsular Malaysia for years, selling “cute” pets to individuals through social media.
- Malaysia’s wildlife act doesn’t address the posting of protected animals for sale on social media, and operators like Kejora Pets appear to avoid ever being in possession of protected animals, allowing them to skirt statutes aimed at catching illicit traders.
- Proposed changes to Malaysia’s wildlife act could offer some relief to besieged populations of protected species by making it easier to prosecute online trafficking of protected animals.

Solving the mystery of the UK’s vanishing hen harriers
- The numbers of breeding hen harriers, one of England’s rarest birds and a protected species, dropped sharply in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
- To better understand why hen harriers were vanishing, researchers tracked the movements of 58 birds using satellite-based tags in conjunction with remote sensing land management data.
- Birds with tags that stopped transmitting spent their last week of life predominantly on moors where hunters shoot grouse and were 10 times more likely to disappear or die when grouse moors dominated their ranges, suggesting they were killed.
- The findings indicated that 72 percent of the tagged harriers were either confirmed or considered very likely to have been illegally killed.

Indonesia arrests 7 for allegedly selling Komodo dragons over Facebook
- Indonesian officials have arrested seven suspected members of a trafficking network that sold at least 40 Komodo dragons, along with other rare species, through Facebook and other social media platforms.
- Komodo dragons are found only in Indonesia and are a protected species, which means the suspects could face up to five years in prison and up to $7,000 each in fines for trading the animals.
- Six baby Komodo dragons were seized from the suspects, and are now being cared for by conservation officials ahead of a possible release back into the wild.
- The arrests have highlighted the dominant role of social media platforms in facilitating the illegal trade in Indonesia’s protected wildlife, with up to 98 percent of transactions believed to be carried out online.

Indonesia investigates mass shark deaths at captive-breeding facility
- An investigation is underway after 127 sharks died at a captive-breeding facility in a marine national park in Indonesia.
- Experts suspect poor water quality may have triggered the die-off.
- The breeding facility, operating since 1960 and a key attraction inside Karimunjawa National Park, was shut in June 2018 after a visitor swimming in one of the floating cages was bitten by a shark.

Indonesia rescues captive orangutans, but leaves their owners untouched
- Authorities in Indonesia have confiscated two juvenile Sumatran orangutans, a critically endangered species, being kept as pets.
- Possession of an orangutan is punishable by up to five years in prison in Indonesia, but authorities have never prosecuted any pet owners, who tend to be powerful and influential figures, and instead go after the poachers and traders.
- Conservationists say there need to be legal consequences for keeping orangutans as pets, in order to discourage the illegal trade, which involves poachers killing mother apes to capture babies and juveniles.

Bans on the bird trade in South America yield mixed results
- After decades of rampant exports, several South American countries banned the international trade of wild-caught birds.
- In some cases, in concert with conservation, the bans have helped bird populations recover, leading several countries to invest in birdwatching tourism.
- However, the bans have also led to a significant illegal trade on the continent and a shift of the economic benefits from the wild bird trade to other countries.

Asiatic black bear cubs rescued from illegal wildlife trade in Vietnam
- Vietnamese authorities confiscated the two female bear cubs from wildlife smugglers in Hai Phong province on January 9, according to Vienna, Austria-based animal welfare NGO Four Paws.
- After spending a night in a hotel, the cubs were taken to a Four Paws bear sanctuary in Ninh Binh on January 10, where they are receiving intensive medical care.
- Authorities do not know who was meant to buy the bear cubs or where their ultimate destination was. It’s likely that the bears were imported from Laos, though they could also have come from a bear farm in Vietnam.

Indonesia confiscated some 200 pet cockatoos. What happened to them?
- As Indonesia cracks down on the illegal wildlife trade, it is struggling to deal with the influx of animals confiscated from traffickers.
- Birds are among the most trafficked creatures. Due to a lack of rehabilitation centers, where they would slowly be prepared for life in the wild, many birds are released prematurely.
- That seems to have been the case with a group of cockatoos that were handed into the state after the infamous “water bottle bust” of 2015, in which a smuggler was caught with 23 yellow-crested cockatoos stuffed into plastic water bottles in his luggage.

Is captive breeding the answer to Indonesia’s songbird crisis?
- In Indonesia, singing contests for songbirds have skyrocketed in popularity. Even the president is a fan.
- Demand for some species has made them extremely valuable. Poaching has risen accordingly, and some birds have been driven to the brink of extinction.
- The government is pushing captive breeding as a solution to the crisis. But some conservationists warn the policy may do more harm than good.
- A prime concern is that breeding licenses are easily exploited by “wildlife launderers” who pass of wild-caught animals as captive-bred. This only increases poaching.

Social media, e-commerce sites facilitate illegal orchid trade
- Wild orchids are collected for their beauty and are also used in traditional foods and medicines. This demand has left the plants prone to illegal trafficking.
- Despite having some of the best legal protections afforded to plants, wild orchids remain under immense threat globally for the illegal trade.
- While many orchids sold online are grown in greenhouses and have proper documentation, wild orchid traffickers are increasingly poaching the plants from protected forests, posing grave risks to the impacted species.
- There is often an overlap between legal and illegal online orchid sales, sometimes involving the same platforms, buyers and sellers, and little enforcement to prevent illegal transactions.

DNA test helps officials spot dodgy shark shipments
- Researchers have developed a rapid DNA testing method to detect the presence of nine trade-restricted shark species in shipments of wildlife products.
- When tested on shark fins collected from retail markets in Hong Kong, the protocol reliably detected the presence of these species in less than four hours, at a cost of less than $1 per sample.
- The protocol doesn’t determine which specific CITES-listed species is illegally present, only that at least one is, which is sufficient to justify customs officials holding a shipment for more detailed inspection.
- The approach enables amplification and detection of long DNA fragments, which ultimately allows customization to detect for other types of wildlife that cannot be visually identified.

In eastern Indonesia, a bird-trafficking hotspot flies under the radar
- Indonesia, one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth, is a major hub of the illegal bird trade. Demand comes from both inside and outside its borders.
- Aru, a remote archipelago near the giant island of New Guinea, is a major supplier of cockatoos and other exotic birds.
- The relevant government agency is too understaffed to keep up with traffickers, officials say.

Protection flip-flop leaves rare Indonesian shrikethrush in harm’s way
- The Sangihe shrikethrush is an elusive songbird found only on a single remote island in Indonesia’s North Sulawesi province.
- The species, which numbers less than 300 in the wild, was one of hundreds granted protected status by the Indonesian government earlier this year.
- But the government inexplicably struck it from the list soon after, leaving wildlife activists concerned that the lack of protection will harm efforts to conserve the species.
- Activists say one workaround would be to push for protective measures by local authorities.

Indonesia’s Aceh sees harshest penalty yet for a wildlife crime
- Two men who tried to sell a tiger pelt received four-year sentences in Indonesia’s Aceh province earlier this month.
- Sentences for wildlife traffickers have typically been low. Activists are pushing to revise the law to increase the maximum five-year penalty for wildlife crimes, but courts have tended to impose even lower sentences.
- Just a few hundred Sumatran tigers remain in the wild. The big cat is one of a number of rare species sought after by poachers in Indonesia.

5 bird species lose protections, more at risk in new Indonesia decree
- Five bird species in Indonesia have lost their protected status under a new ministerial decree, issued last month in response to complaints from songbird collectors.
- The decree also establishes additional guidelines for birds to be granted protected status, which effectively sets the stage for any species to be dropped from the list if it is deemed of high economic value to the songbird fan community.
- Scientists and wildlife experts have criticized the removal of the five species from the protected list, and the new criteria for granting protected status.
- Indonesia is home to the largest number of threatened bird species in Asia, but their populations in the wild are severely threatened by overexploitation.

One-two punch of habitat loss, capture hammers Southeast Asian birds
- The combined impact of habitat loss and exploitation has been underestimated in the assessment of dangers to bird populations in Southeast Asia, a new report says.
- Of the 308 species studied by researchers, up to 90 could go extinct by the end of this century.
- The researchers have called for urgent policy intervention to curb deforestation and throttle the caged-bird trade, warning that dozens of species could otherwise be lost.

World Gorilla Day: good news and grave threats
- September 24 marks World Gorilla Day, when humanity celebrates one of its closest relatives.
- All species of gorillas are critically endangered, but that does not mean there’s no hope for these animals.
- New populations have recently been discovered, and programs to care for orphaned and injured ones are growing.

Indonesia gives in to bird traders, rescinds protection for 3 species
- The Indonesian government has removed three popular songbirds from its newly updated list of protected species. They are the white-rumped shama, straw-headed bulbul and Javan pied starling — a critically endangered species.
- The move comes amid protests from songbird owners and breeders, who have raised concerns about loss of livelihoods.
- The owners and breeders now say they will push for more species to be removed from the list.
- Conservationists and scientists have blasted the ministry for backing down and called into question its assessment that protecting the three species would have had an adverse economic impact.

The appeal acquittal of Feisal Mohamed Ali: A victory for rule of law, a process corrupted, or both? (commentary)
- With Kenya still stinging from the humiliation and embarrassment over the translocation-related deaths of 11 rhinos, a Kenyan court declared on August 3 that convicted ivory trafficker Feisal Mohamed Ali was to be set free.
- Lady Justice Dora Chepkwony ruled that he should be acquitted for a number of reasons, ranging from constitutional concerns to original trial irregularities.
- Following Feisal’s conviction, Feisal’s counsel said that the “trial court erred in law and fact [and] that it convicted [Feisal] on the basis of mere suspicion.” The counsel also stated that Feisal had been made a “sacrificial lamb so as to appease the public.” Considering the substantial national and international media attention that this trial had received as well as the political climate at the time, this possibility cannot be ignored.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

In protecting songbirds, Indonesia ruffles owners & breeders’ feathers
- Songbird owners and breeders have denounced the Indonesian government’s recent decision to add hundreds of bird species to the national list of protected species.
- Birdkeeping has long been a popular and highly lucrative pastime in the country, with deep cultural roots.
- The government has sought to accommodate the owners’ concerns by insisting that enforcement of bans on capturing and trading in the newly protected species will not be applied retroactively.
- It has also given owners and breeders a generous window in which to register their birds — an opportunity that conservation activists say could be exploited by people looking to stock up on wild-caught birds.

Indonesia adds hundreds of birds to protected species list
- Indonesia has revised its list of protected species of plants and animals that are endemic to the country for the first time since 1999.
- A total of 919 endemic species, most of them birds, are now banned from trading and hunting in one of the most biodiverse countries on Earth.
- Wildlife experts in Indonesia have welcomed the update, but also warned that technical changes may hinder law enforcement against wildlife crime.
- With the new list, conservation activists also expect people to hand over captive species that are now protected under the law.

In Kenya’s Maasai Mara, detection dogs are a ranger’s best friend
- For World Ranger Day 2018, we highlight how detection dogs help rangers keep wildlife — and the rangers themselves — safe in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve.
- Sniffer dogs search vehicles for ivory and firearms, while tracker dogs enable rangers to track and capture wildlife poachers, thieves in lodges, and cattle rustlers in surrounding villages.
- The dogs have enabled rangers to follow up on intelligence and increase their arrest rate, which they hope will make poaching less viable for local communities and improve security in the region.

Orangutan found shot, hacked at palm plantation with history of deaths
- An orangutan previously captured from an oil palm plantation in Borneo and released into a nearby national park has been found dead inside the plantation, with extensive bullet and knife wounds.
- The killing is the third being investigated this year, and the fifth recorded at the plantation in question, run by a subsidiary of palm oil giant Best Agro Plantation, since September 2015.
- The company says it has made efforts to protect the wildlife entering its plantation, but declined to answer questions about the string of orangutan deaths.
- Warning: Some photos may be disturbing or graphic.

Two suspected poachers arrested for killing of Sumatran elephant
- Indonesian authorities have arrested two of four suspects alleged to have killed a rare Sumatran elephant and hacked off one of its tusks.
- The arrest took place about a month after the elephant was found dead in the Leuser Ecosystem in Sumatra’s Aceh province. News of the killing garnered widespread attention and calls to solve the case.
- There are only an estimated 2,400 Sumatran elephants left in the wild, scattered across 25 fragmented habitats on the island.

Shark fisheries hunting dolphins, other marine mammals as bait: Study
- Global shark fisheries have for decades engaged in the deliberate catch of dolphins, seals and other marine mammals to use as bait for sharks, a new study has found.
- The researchers found the practice picked up when prices for shark fin, a prized delicacy in Chinese cuisine, went up from the late 1990s onward.
- The researchers have warned that the targeting of these species could hit unsustainable levels, and have called for more studies into the species in question as well as better enforcement of existing law protecting marine mammals.

Poachers blamed in second Sumatran elephant death this year
- Forest rangers in northern Sumatra have found one of their patrol elephants dead and missing a tusk inside a protected forest.
- Authorities have cited poisoning by poachers as the cause of death, making it the second such poaching-related elephant killing in Sumatra this year.
- The local conservation agency has called on law enforcers to bring the perpetrators to justice, but past cases suggest this will be slow in coming.

Online pet trade in Southeast Asia poses a major new threat to otters
- 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 otter species.
- A report from the wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC and the IUCN Otter Specialist Group released today details the results of a two-year investigation that uncovered hundreds of otters for sale on Facebook and other online platforms. Sales of juvenile otters were especially prominent: over 70 percent of the animals found for sale online were under one year old, according to the report.
- The report identified a lack of strong national legislation to protect these species in many of their range countries as a major reason the illegal exploitation of otters has been able to flourish online.

Rangers face a ‘toxic mix’ of mental strain and lack of support
- Wildlife rangers are facing numerous psychological pressures leading to potentially serious mental health implications.
- Rangers tackling wildlife crime and defending natural habitats in parts of Africa and Asia are frequently subjected to violent confrontations inside and outside their work.
- Many rangers see their families as little as once a year, causing immense stress to personal relationships.
- There is currently very little awareness of the mental strain placed on rangers, and a dearth of research into the potential mental health issues they face.

‘Monumental’ bust in Madagascar triggers effort to save thousands of endangered tortoises
- Authorities discovered 9,888 starving and dehydrated radiated tortoises in a vacant house in southwestern Madagascar on April 10.
- Since then, a team of organizations led by the Turtle Survival Alliance has been working to provide care for the critically endangered tortoises, 574 of which died during the first week.
- The tortoises, endemic to Madagascar, have lost around 40 percent of their habitat to deforestation, and poachers commonly capture them for the pet trade in Asia and the United States.

Indonesian conservation bill is weak on wildlife crime, critics say
- Lawmakers in Indonesia have submitted for review to President Joko Widodo’s administration a bill that would overhaul the country’s 28-year-old conservation law.
- While environmental advocates have long pushed for updates to the law, the new draft has alarmed many with its various provisions that critics say represent a regression from the existing legislation.
- Problem articles include a “self-defense” clause that would waive criminal charges for killing protected wildlife; a more nebulous definition of wildlife crime that some fear could make it harder to crack down on traffickers; and the opening up of conservation areas to geothermal exploration and other “strategic development” projects.
- The ball is now in the court of the government, which is required to review the bill before sending it back to parliament for final passage. However, a minister says the government will “hold off” on its review, and suggests the existing conservation law is sufficient.

New sloth book features amazing photographs and busts myths [PHOTOS]
- Sloths have gained in popularity in recent years but some misconceptions about them remain, such as their being ‘lazy,’ which is not true. Rather, it’s increasingly clear that sloths are quite active and incredibly stealthy.
- A new book by an award-winning wildlife photographer and a world expert on sloths aims to raise awareness of facts like this, and raise funds for their conservation.
- Sloths in fact sleep just 8-10 hours a day, and are otherwise quite active. And when they swim, they can move quite quickly.
- Mongabay interviewed the authors and shares here several of the stunning images printed in the book.

In Jakarta, wildlife monitors find a hotspot for the illegal tortoise trade
- Indonesia’s capital has seen an increase in the sale of non-native species of tortoises and freshwater turtles that are prohibited for international commercial trade, according to a report by the wildlife-monitoring group TRAFFIC.
- Growing demand for these species, coupled with Indonesia’s lax enforcement of customs regulation at international ports of entry and an outdated conservation act, have allowed the illicit international animal trade to grow, TRAFFIC said.
- The group has called on the Indonesian government to improve the country’s conservation laws and regulations, and urged more stringent monitoring of the markets, pet stores and expos in Jakarta and across the country to document and assess the extent of any illegal trade.

Villagers cite self-defense in tiger killing, but missing body parts point to the illegal wildlife trade
- Villagers in Indonesia have killed a critically endangered Sumatran tiger, after labeling it a menace to the village.
- Conservation authorities, though, have found strong indications that the animal may have been killed for its body parts, which are highly prized in the illegal wildlife trade.
- Habitat loss and poaching have already driven two other species of tiger in Indonesia to extinction, and conservationists warn the Sumatran tiger is being pushed along the same same path.
- Warning: The article contains some disturbing images.

Four Indonesian farmers charged in killing of orangutan that was shot 130 times
- Police in Indonesia have arrested four farmers for allegedly shooting a Bornean orangutan whose body was found riddled with 130 air gun pellets.
- The suspects claimed to have killed the animal because it had encroached onto their pineapple farm and ruined the crop.
- The killing was the second such case reported this year in Indonesia, where orangutans are ostensibly protected under the conservation act. But lax enforcement means few perpetrators ever face justice for killing or trading in these great apes.

Indonesian police bust Chinese nationals with 200 kg of turtle shells
- Police in eastern Indonesia have arrested two Chinese men for illegally being in possession of 200 kilos (440 pounds) of turtle shells, which they believe was headed to China.
- All turtle species are protected under Indonesian law, and the possession or trade in their parts is punishable by up to five years in prison and $7,000 in fines. The estimated value of the seized shells was $13,200.
- The bust highlights the continued role of the city of Makassar as the main gateway for traffickers moving wildlife products out of the biodiversity haven of Papua, where the suspects say they obtained the turtle shells.

Orangutan shot 130 times in Indonesia, in second killing reported this year
- A second Bornean orangutan has been killed in Indonesia this year after being shot multiple times with an air gun.
- An autopsy revealed 130 pellets in the animal’s body, most of them in its head. Authorities managed to recover 48 of them.
- Wildlife conservation activists have called on the authorities to launch an investigation into the killing of the critically endangered ape.

Scientists deploy DNA analysis and radiocarbon dating in latest salvo against ivory trafficking
- Scientists are analyzing ivory samples confiscated from the U.S. retail market to help reduce elephant poaching.
- Two teams of scientists will use radiocarbon dating to determine when each elephant was killed and DNA analyses to locate where it came from in Africa.
- Determining the location and year an elephant that produced a tusk was killed establishes if the ivory being sold is legal, helps assess the current extent of poaching, and assists law enforcement in targeting the poachers responsible.

Indonesian rubber farmers charged in gruesome killing of Bornean orangutan
- Police in Indonesia have arrested two rubber farmers for allegedly shooting and beheading a Bornean orangutan whose body was discovered last month in a river.
- The suspects claimed they killed the animal in self-defense, saying it attacked them after encroaching on their farm.
- Wildlife conservation activists have lauded the police’s determination to catch the perpetrators and have called on the courts to be just as strict in trying them.
- Warning: Some photos may be disturbing or graphic.

Hong Kong votes to ban ivory trade by 2021
- Hong Kong, one of the world’s largest ivory markets, has overwhelmingly voted to ban its domestic ivory trade.
- This ban comes just a month after China shut down all of its ivory markets on the mainland.
- The ban will be implemented in a three-step plan over the next three years.

Elephant tusks and pangolin scales seized, six suspects arrested in Ivory Coast
- Ivory Coast officials have announced the seizure of over half a ton each of elephant tusks and pangolin scales.
- The ivory and pangolin scales were being shipped to Vietnam and other Asian countries, officials said.
- Six people, including a Vietnamese national alleged to be the leader of the criminal syndicate, were also arrested.

Rhino poaching in South Africa dipped slightly last year, but ‘crisis continues unabated,’ conservationists say
- South African Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa announced in a press briefing today that 1,028 rhinos were illegally killed in the country in 2017.
- In Kruger National Park, which has typically been the epicenter of rhino poaching in South Africa, 504 illegal killings were recorded last year, Molewa reported. That’s a 24 percent reduction over 2016 — but these gains were offset by poaching in other regions, particularly KwaZulu Natal province.
- While the rhino poaching rate in South Africa has slowly decreased every year since peaking in 2014 with 1,215 animals lost, conservationists were not encouraged by the slightly lower number of rhinos killed last year.

Crowdsourcing the fight against poaching, with the help of remote cameras
- A U.S. non-profit and a cadre of volunteers have teamed up with reserves in South Africa and Indonesia to combat wildlife poaching through a series of connected camera traps.
- The group’s monitoring system, wpsWatch, can transmit visual, infrared, and thermal camera images as well as data from radar, motion detectors, and other field devices.
- The volunteers monitor image feeds while rangers sleep and have become an effective part of the team, which has detected roughly 180 intrusions into the reserves, including rhino and bushmeat poachers.

Thai police bust leading wildlife trafficker
- Thai police have arrested Boonchai Bach, the alleged kingpin behind one of the world’s biggest and most notorious wildlife trafficking syndicates.
- Bach and his family operation have been the target of authorities and anti-trafficking groups for more than a decade for moving vast quantities of rhino horns and elephant tusks to markets in China, Vietnam and Laos, via their hub in Thailand.
- One of the family’s main customers remains at large, however. Vixay Keosavang, said to be the most prominent wildlife dealer in Southeast Asia, is beyond the reach of Thai authorities, in Laos.

To Counter Wildlife Trafficking, Local Enforcement, Not En-Route Interdiction, Is Key (commentary)

The global poaching crisis has induced large segments of the conservation community to call for far tougher law enforcement. Many look to policing lessons from decades of counter-narcotics efforts for solutions. Boosting enforcement of wildlife regulations is overdue, as they have long been accorded the least priority by many enforcement authorities and corruption has further […]
Decapitated orangutan found near palm plantations shot 17 times, autopsy finds
- Indonesian authorities have found 17 air gun pellets in the headless body of an orangutan found floating in a river in Borneo’s Central Kalimantan province earlier this week.
- The body was found in an area close to five plantations, whose operators the government plans to question about the killing of the protected species.
- Orangutans are often killed in human-animal conflicts, and wildlife activists have slammed the authorities for not doing enough to prosecute such cases.
- Warning: Some photos may be disturbing or graphic.

Facebook being used for illegal reptile trade in the Philippines
- Researchers from TRAFFIC, who monitored 90 Facebook groups over a three-month period in 2016, recorded 2,245 live reptile advertisements representing more than 5,000 individual animals from 115 taxa.
- Most advertisements were for the ball python and the Burmese python, and also included critically endangered species such as the Philippine crocodile and the Philippine forest turtle.
- At least 80 percent of the documented online traders on Facebook were selling reptiles illegally, the report concluded.

Orangutan found tortured and decapitated prompts Indonesia probe
- The discovery of a headless orangutan body bearing signs of extensive physical abuse has prompted an investigation by authorities in Central Kalimantan, in Indonesian Borneo.
- Authorities, however, have drawn criticism for hastily burying the body before carrying out a necropsy, which could have helped determine the cause of death and aided in the investigation.
- Orangutans face a range of threats in the wild, including loss of habitat as their forests are razed for plantations and mines, and hunting for the illegal pet trade.
- Warning: Some photos may be disturbing or graphic.

Poachers blamed as body of Sumatran elephant, missing tusks, found in protected forest
- Farmers in southern Sumatra found the body of a young male elephant inside a protected forest and missing its tusks.
- No external injuries were found that could point to a cause of death, leading wildlife activists to suspect it was killed by poisoning, a common tactic used by poachers.
- The discovery comes less than a month after a pregnant elephant was found poisoned to death in northern Sumatra — although in that case the tuskless female appeared more likely to have been killed for encroaching on farms than by poachers.

Indonesian ex-soldier among three jailed for illegal trade in Sumatran rhino, tiger parts
- A court in Indonesia has jailed three men for the illegal trade in endangered Sumatran rhino and tiger parts.
- An ex-Army captain and a middleman were sentenced to two years for trying to trade in a rhino horn, while a similar sentence was handed down to a man convicted of trapping and killing a tiger and trying to sell it
- While both the Sumatran rhino and Sumatran tiger are deemed critically endangered, or just a step away from being extinct in the wild, conservationists say enforcement of local laws meant to protect them remains lax.

Rhino DNA database helps officials nab poachers and traffickers
- A DNA-based system is helping authorities prosecute and convict poachers and rhino horn traffickers in Africa.
- RhODIS, as the system is called, is built on a foundational database with genetic information from nearly 4,000 individual rhinos.
- By comparing the frequencies of alleles in confiscated horn and horn products with those in tissue from a poached animal, investigators can then come up with a probable match for where that horn came from.
- So far, RhODIS has been instrumental in nine convictions in East and Southern Africa.

Ivory trade in China is now banned
- China has shut its legal, domestic ivory markets and banned all commercial ivory trade.
- Conservationists have welcomed this ban, calling it “one of the most important days in the history of elephant conservation”.
- But for China’s ivory ban to work, neighboring countries must follow suit, conservationists say.

Indonesia to kick off 10-year plan to save critically endangered helmeted hornbill
- The Indonesian government is currently drafting a 10-year master plan to protect the endangered helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil), set to be launched in 2018.
- The program will comprise five action plans: research and monitoring; policies and law enforcement; partnerships; raising public awareness; and funding.
- The helmeted hornbill has been driven to the brink of extinction by poaching for its distinctive scarlet casqued beak, which is pound-for-pound three times as valuable as elephant ivory.

USAID Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge awards Acceleration Prizes for rapid tech developments
- The Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge announced three winners of a $100,000 Acceleration Prize for rapid progress in developing a wildlife crime solution system.
- The winning devices were: an artificial sea turtle egg to track illegal movements of eggs and identify transit routes; a genetic reference map of pangolin poaching hotspots; and a camera-ground sensor system to monitor and communicate illegal human activity in remote reserves.
- The poaching, trafficking, and consumption of meat, scales, tusks, skin, fur, feathers, and horns of many hundreds of species has depleted populations worldwide and caused local extinctions.

Two Indonesian soldiers found to be smuggling dozens of porcupines
- The Indonesian conservation agency caught a pair of army officers trying to smuggle dozens of porcupines across provincial borders in Sumatra.
- The animal’s stomach produces a stone used in traditional Chinese medicine.
- The soldiers were questioned by civilian authorities, and then turned over to the military.

Pangolin hunting skyrockets in Central Africa, driven by international trade
- The study pulled together information on markets, prices and hunting methods for pangolins from research in 14 countries in Africa.
- Pangolins are hunted for their meat in some African countries, and their scales are used in traditional medicine, both locally and in several Asian countries, including China.
- The researchers found that as many as 2.71 million pangolins from three species are killed every year across six Central African countries – at least a 145 percent increase since before 2000.
- They recommend better enforcement of the 2016 CITES ban across the entire supply chain, from Africa to Asia.

Kenya cracks down on illegal trade in rare and venomous vipers
- Early this year Kenyan authorities placed tight new restrictions on the trade and export of several snake species, including the Kenya horned viper (Bitis worthingtoni) and the Mt. Kenya Bush Viper (Atheris desaixi).
- The two snake species are regularly trafficked abroad for the pet trade as well as for luxury food and medical reseach.
- Authorities say criminal networks regularly bribe officials and are investigating whether politicians may be involved in the trade.
- Nevertheless, the Kenyan government appears to be taking a hard line against viper traffic, cracking down on smugglers and ramping up international cooperation to fight viper traffic.

Illegal trade threatens nearly half the world’s natural heritage sites: WWF
- Poaching, illegal logging and illegal fishing of rare species protected under CITES occurs in 45 percent of the natural World Heritage sites, a new WWF report says.
- Illegal harvesting degrades the unique values that gave the heritage sites the status in the first place, the report says.
- Current approaches to preventing illegal harvesting of CITES listed species in World Heritage sites is not working, the report concludes.

South Africa makes it legal to sell rhino horns
- Commercial rhino breeders have welcomed the decision, arguing that an open, legal trade in rhino horns will end the poaching of rhinos and will help pay for their protection.
- However, several conservationists argue that there is no domestic market for rhino horns within South Africa and that a legal domestic trade would only worsen rhino poaching in the country.
- The Environment Affairs Minister said that all domestic trade in rhino horn would be subject to obtaining the relevant permits and to applicable provincial legislation being obtained.

Kaziranga: the frontline of India’s rhino wars
- Kaziranga National Park in India’s Assam State is home to around 2,400 one-horned rhinos, as well as elephants, tigers and hundreds of other mammal and bird species.
- India’s rhinos were hunted nearly to extinction by the early 20th century, but have rebounded since the park was established. However, rhino horn is highly sought in the black market and poaching remains a constant threat.
- Rangers in Kaziranga rely on antiquated weaponry to face off against poachers, whose links with international crime syndicates mean they are often better armed and better financed than forest guards.
- The park’s approach to conservation has drawn criticism from indigenous rights group Survival International, a critique that gained prominence in a recent BBC documentary.

The military family that kept a pet orangutan in Indonesia
- Wildlife traffickers are chipping away at the dwindling populations of Sumatran and Bornean orangutans. Deforestation lends poachers an assist, rendering the primates homeless and easier to catch.
- Keeping an orangutan pet is illegal in Indonesia, but not once has a citizen been prosecuted for it. The owners tend to be influential figures — police officers, soldiers, politicians.
- Krismon was separated from his mother as an infant in the late 1990s. Only last year was he finally recovered from the military family he was living with.
- The ape will spend the rest of his life behind metal bars — unless a plan to construct an orangutan haven comes to fruition in North Sumatra.

Translating the barcode of wildlife into action
- The multi-country Barcode of Wildlife Project combines innovative technology with capacity-building to apply DNA barcoding to wildlife protection.
- The Project has successfully been adapting standard scientific procedures to the sociopolitical dimensions of each partner country’s legal landscape.
- Translating the codes of law and procedure between the scientific and law enforcement communities, in a single country and across the globe, remains a major challenge in applying technology to combat wildlife crime.

Scanning the barcode of wildlife
- DNA barcoding—the collection, extraction, sequencing, and translation of a species’ DNA into a digital barcode—is being used to combat poaching and illegal wildlife trade.
- Investigators compare wildlife barcodes of evidence at crime scenes or confiscated animal products to the known barcode sequences of the suspected species.
- The Barcode of Wildlife Project fosters collaboration among partner countries to build a global reference library that connects the work of researchers across the globe on a single platform and allows for a species’ barcode to be a public resource for biodiversity conservation, invasive species monitoring, and wildlife crime mitigation.

27 critically endangered Javan slow lorises rescued from online traders in Indonesia
- The Javan slow loris (Nycticebus javanicus) is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and is considered one of the most endangered primate species in the world due mainly to habitat loss and the illegal wildlife trade.
- Mortality rates of confiscated lorises is typically quite high, according to Christine Rattel, a program advisor at International Animal Rescue Indonesia, because traders load them into small, cramped crates, which can cause wounds, stress, and more serious medical problems that can result in death.
- Perpetrators of wildlife crime can be prosecuted under Indonesia’s Natural Protection Law and face up to five years in prison as well as fines of 100 million Indonesian Rupiah (about $7,400).

Trouble in India’s rhino paradise
- Two one-horned rhinos were shot in Kaziranga National Park in December, bringing the park’s total number of poaching-related rhino deaths to 18 for the year.
- Anti-poaching efforts face huge challenges: burgeoning demand for rhino horn in nearby China and Vietnam, easy terrain for poachers, poverty in the fringes of the park, and the presence of armed insurgent groups in the region.
- Officials have responded by boosting anti-poaching patrols and punishing rangers found to be neglecting their duties, adopting new technologies and clearing encroachments on parkland.
- Despite the ongoing threat of poaching, Kaziranga’s rhino population is growing.

‘Too rare to wear’: new campaign targets tourists to end Hawksbill turtle trade
- The Hawksbill turtle’s striking shell is carved into jewelry, combs and other trinkets, which is then sold in markets across Latin America and the Caribbean.
- The campaign, Too Rare to Wear, will help people learn about turtleshell souvenirs and how to avoid buying them while traveling in those regions.
- The campaign includes a coalition of conservation organizations, tour operators, and media partners.

Elephants in Borneo slaughtered for ivory (WARNING: graphic photos)
- The carcass of the first elephant was discovered on December 27, and that of the second elephant — a sabre-tusked bull named Sabre — was found on New Year’s Eve.
- Both elephants had their tusks removed.
- According to Sabre’s satellite collar, the elephant was likely killed on 21 November 2016.

China seizes over 3,000 kg of pangolin scales in biggest-ever smuggling case
- On Wednesday, Chinese customs officials announced the seizure of more than three metric tons (3,000 kilograms or 6,600 pounds) of pangolin scales in Shanghai.
- Some 5,000 to 7,500 wild pangolins are estimated to have been killed for these scales.
- Between January 2008 and March 2016, more than 21,000 kilograms (~46,000 pounds) of scales and 23,109 individual pangolins were recorded in a total of 206 seizure reports.

Signatories to Hanoi Statement urged to do more to combat illegal wildlife trade
- According to a report issued jointly by the United Nations Environment Programme and the international police agency Interpol, environmental crime is now estimated to be worth between $91 and $258 billion annually, with the illegal wildlife trade estimated to represent $7 to $23 billion of that total.
- The global illegal wildlife trade continues to grow thanks to the high profits and minimal risk involved, says the EIA, which published a report ahead of the Hanoi Conference that looked at public policies as well as records of thousands of seizures, arrests, and prosecutions in 15 different countries that are key players in the illegal wildlife trade.
- Records examined by EIA show that there hasn’t been any meaningful dip in the rate at which a number of key species are being illegally traded since the London Declaration was signed in 2014.

Public hearing concludes Vietnam fails to crack down on wildlife trafficking
- At a Nov. 14-15 public hearing, an “accountability panel” unanimously endorsed the Map of Facts presented by anti-trafficking NGO Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC).
- After an undercover investigation in Nhi Khe, Vietnam found a thriving wildlife market, WJC argued Vietnamese authorities were failing to live up to their obligations to curb the trade.
- Investigators presented evidence that 907 elephants, 579 rhinos, 225 tigers and other endangered species were being trafficked through Nhi Khe.

Its own rhinos hunted to extinction, Vietnam is a hub for the rhino horn trade
- The last Vietnamese rhino, a subspecies of the Javan rhinoceros, was shot by a poacher in 2009.
- Vietnam is both a destination for rhino horn and other wildlife products, and a hub for the trafficking of endangered species from Africa and Asia into China.
- Vietnam is facing global scrutiny for its failure to crack down on the trade.

Most illegal ivory comes from recently killed elephants: new study
- The multi-billion-dollar illegal ivory trade is almost entirely being fueled by African elephants killed within the last three years, a new study has found.
- This indicates that it is new ivory that is moving rapidly into the illegal market, and not old ivory from stockpiles that was previously thought to be leaking into the market, researchers say.
- The results of the study can help law enforcement focus their efforts on the regions worst hit by poaching and can also provide information on the killing rate of elephants, researchers add.

Elephant poaching costs African nations $25 million a year in lost tourism revenue
- The elephant poaching crisis does not harm elephants alone, it is bad for the economy too, according to a new study.
- The loss of elephants to wildlife trafficking is costing African countries about $25 million a year in lost tourism revenue, the study found.
- The tourism revenue lost due to declining elephants exceeds the anti-poaching costs necessary to stop the decline of elephants in east, west and southern Africa, the researchers found.

Over 200 snow leopards killed every year: new report
- According to the report, these numbers could be considerably higher since many illegal killings in remote mountain areas go undetected.
- Five countries — China, India, Mongolia, Pakistan and Tajikistan — account for more than 90 percent of the estimated snow leopard poaching.
- Skins, usually used as wall displays in homes and restaurants, are the most commonly seized snow leopard products, the report found.

Rhino killed in India’s Kaziranga Park, highlighting the ever-present threat of poachers
- At least 16 rhinos have been killed for their horns this year in India’s Assam State.
- The most recent killing happened last Friday in Kaziranga National Park.
- The state’s new government has vowed to crack down on poaching and has worked to build collaboration between police and forest patrols.
- Arrests are increasing, but forest officials still struggle to get convictions in court.

Park ranger murdered while trying to protect rare gorillas
- On October 4, a park ranger, Munganga Nzonga Jacques, was killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kahuzi Biega National Park while trying to protect the park’s rare Grauer’s gorillas.
- Jacques is the second ranger to be killed in Kahuzi Biega in the last six months.
- Kahuzi Biega National Park is believed to be the last stronghold of Grauer’s gorillas, so the murder of Jacques has conservationists worried about the future of the rangers, their families, as well as the gorillas.

International trade in African grey parrots banned
- All cross-border commercial trade in wild-caught African grey parrots is now banned.
- Captive-bred birds can be traded, but only from breeding facilities that are registered with CITES.
- Currently, most African grey parrot exports originate in the Congo basin, according to WWF.

No decline in tiger trafficking: new report
- A minimum of 110 tigers are being seized annually by enforcement agencies, a new report by TRAFFIC found.
- Analysis of the trafficking data revealed that both the number of reported tiger seizures as well as the minimum number of tigers being traded appears to be increasing every year.
- At least 297 of the 1755 tigers seized during the 16-year period reportedly originated from a captive facility such as a tiger farm, zoo or a tourist facility.

Commercial trade in all eight pangolin species has just been banned
- Following a landslide vote, all eight species of pangolin will now be listed under CITES Appendix I, which bans commercial trade and represents the highest level of protection available under international law.
- Pangolins, which can be found in Asia and Africa, have been called the “world’s most trafficked mammal,” and consensus has been building amongst the conservation community that it was time for such a move.
- Hunting and poaching of pangolins are the primary threats to the species. The majority of the pangolins and pangolin parts that are traded end up in China and Vietnam.

Conservationists: It’s time for pangolins to be listed on Appendix I of CITES
- According to a new report by San Francisco-based NGO WildAid, more than one million pangolins have been taken from the wild in the past decade, making them the world’s most-trafficked mammal.
- Hunting and poaching of pangolins for illegal international trade — the majority of which will end up China and Vietnam — is the primary threat to pangolins, according to WildAid.
- At its World Conservation Congress in Hawaii earlier this month, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) voted to approve a motion in support of transferring all eight pangolin species from Appendix II to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES), which would ban all commercial trade in pangolins.

Lao PDR commits to shut its commercial tiger farms
- Lao PDR’s Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, H.E. Mr Sommad Pholsena, announced last Friday that the country will shut its commercial tiger farms.
- Lao PDR, with its weak laws and law enforcement and its strategic location close to China, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, has emerged as a key transit hub for the trade of many threatened species including the tiger.
- While the country’s decision has been welcomed, conservationists caution that it will take more than words to actually shut down all of Lao PDR’s tiger farms.

Lao PDR failing to curb pangolin and hornbill trafficking: new reports
- A TRAFFIC team opportunistically surveyed markets within seven Lao PDR cities for 10 days in April 2016 and three days in July 2016, and found nearly 2,800 pangolin scales for sale.
- TRAFFIC researchers also found 74 helmeted hornbill products during an eight-day market survey in Lao PDR between April 2016 and July 2016.
- A report by the CITES Secretariat, too, highlighted gaps in the country’s laws, a lack of law enforcement, as well as the need to work with neighboring countries to tackle transboundary trafficking of species.

Indian rhino horns being smuggled to China via Myanmar
- In the past, poachers would move horns of the Greater one-horned rhinos from India to China through Nepal.
- But the trade route has shifted to Myanmar because of increasing anti-poaching efforts in Nepal, according to a new report.
- This shift to Myanmar may be temporary however, rhino expert said, depending on how Nepal continues its efforts to check wildlife crimes.

Poaching in Africa becomes increasingly militarized
- Due to skyrocketing consumer demand, particularly from Asia, today’s wildlife traffickers have the resources to outfit their henchmen with weaponry and equipment that often outmatches that of the local park rangers.
- The poachers doing the most damage in Africa today are employed by professional trafficking syndicates, and they enjoy a level of support and financial backing unimaginable during earlier poaching crises.
- The poachers’ arsenal includes the expanding use of military-grade equipment like helicopters, machine guns, infrared scopes, and heavy armored vehicles.

Countries at IUCN Congress vote to ban domestic ivory markets
- At the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress in Hawaii last week, delegates passed a motion to ban all domestic ivory markets.
- The ban is not legally binding, but urges governments with legal domestic markets for elephant ivory to close them down.
- Countries like Namibia, Japan and South Africa opposed the motion arguing that domestic markets should be regulated but kept open.

IUCN motions to ban the pangolin trade
- The IUCN World Conservation Congress last week passed a motion urging all IUCN members to support the transfer of all eight pangolin species from Appendix II to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
- The next CITES conference begins in late September.
- The motion was proposed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), with 18 co-sponsors, and adopted with a majority of IUCN members.

Guest Commentary: Are grassroots organizations our best hope for combating the illegal wildlife trade?
- Despite the tremendous amount of resources being poured into conservation, global wildlife populations remain under siege and the illegal wildlife trade flourishes.
- Earlier this year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released its first-ever World Wildlife Crime Report. The report finds, among other things, that more ivory has been seized than cocaine, and that broad corruption is facilitating illegal trade in plants and animals.
- The value of environmental crime is $91-258 billion today, which is 26 per cent higher than previous estimates of $70-213 billion in 2014.

657 pangolins found wrapped in plastic, hidden in freezers
- More than 600 pangolins were found vacuum sealed in plastic and frozen in five large freezers, Indonesian authorities said.
- The police have arrested a 55-year-old man, who has been named a suspect.
- If found guilty of illegally trading pangolins, the suspect could face five years in jail and a fine of 100m rupiah ($7,500).

Detector Dogs sniff out illegal ivory, help nab poacher in Tanzania
- Two dogs — Jenny, a Belgian Malinois dog, and Dexter, an English springer spaniel — are members of a new team of specially trained dogs and handlers from Tanzanian National Parks (TANAPA), according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).
- Following a tipoff, Jenny and her handler successfully detected four concealed elephant tusks hidden in plastic under a parked vehicle.
- The tusks are small, TANAPA officials report, and have presumably come from “young elephants that had not even reached middle age”.

Indonesia must do more to protect whale sharks, conservationists say
- Most whale sharks live in the Indo-Pacific, where Indonesia lies.
- The giant fish is a protected species in Indonesia, but that hasn’t stopped poachers from hunting it for its fins, skin and oil.
- Advocates want the Indonesian government to crack down on traffickers and do more to promote sustainable ecotourism that contributes to the creature’s conservation.

Three murders highlight troubles of Iran’s park rangers
- In the final days of June, three Iranian park rangers were shot by poachers, bringing the tally of rangers killed in such instances in the country to 119.
- At least eight rangers have spent years behind bars after being convicted of murder for killing poachers while on the job.
- The Iranian Department of Environment claims the rangers were released during the last year. But the conditions of their release concern environmentalists, who point to flaws in the system meant to protect both rangers and the country’s rich biodiversity.

China jails 7 people, including airport employee, for smuggling rare tortoises
- The defendants would reportedly transport the illegally caught tortoises from Madagascar to China onboard a commercial flight.
- Once the tortoises arrived in China, the defendants would hand the animals over to an airport employee who worked at the Guangzhou Baiyun Airport who would then help the defendants get the tortoises out without a customs inspection.
- The smuggling racket was finally busted on 3 February 2015 when Chinese authorities caught the airport employee with 316 tortoises stuffed inside two knapsacks.

Indonesia mulls revision of orangutan conservation plan
- Indonesia’s 2007 strategy for saving the endangered Sumatran and Bornean orangutans has not gone according to plan, with both species continuing their decline.
- The authors of the 2007 action plan thought Indonesia’s worst environmental problems, such as the rapid loss of forest where orangutans live, would be solved by now, according to a government official who helped to write the plan.
- Last year, the government set a new target to increase the population of 25 “priority species,” including the Bornean orangutan, by 10% over 2013 levels by 2019.

Ivory poaching kingpin gets 20 years in jail
- Feisal Ali Mohamed was found guilty of dealing in ivory worth $433,000, which involved the killing of at least 120 elephants.
- Principal magistrate Diane Mochache found Mohamed guilty and sentenced him to to 20 years in jail and fined him $200,000.
- “This is the first time that Kenya has prosecuted a large ivory seizure to conclusion,” conservation group says.

Vietnam is one of world’s biggest illegal ivory markets
- The sale of ivory products has increased by over six times from 2008 to 2015, according to a new report by Save the Elephants.
- The number of ivory carvers have increased at least 10-fold, the researchers estimate, while the number of shops selling ivory have risen by nearly three times.
- The primary change, the report found, was the expansion of the ivory trade in villages south of Hanoi, which have lower labor and machine production costs, making ivory items cheaper in Vietnam and more attractive to the Chinese.

Amazon, eBay involved in illegal wildlife trade: Indian government
- The list, collated by India’s Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), includes popular websites such as Amazon, eBay, OLX, Snapdeal, Quikr, Alibaba, Petsmart and Rediff.
- A meeting with the representatives from online trade portals was conducted on May 19 to sensitize them on issues regarding illegal wildlife trade, India’s environment minister said.
- The Wildlife Crime Control Bureau has hired Cyber Crime Specialists to monitor online advertisements of wildlife items.

GDELT: Mining and mapping global wildlife crime news
- The GDELT Project is a vast open-access tool that scours and live translates news media in 65 languages to quantify, describe and map broad societal trends worldwide.
- GDELT will harness data from even minor information sources to track and understand the incidents, players and networks of wildlife crime as it happens globally.
- This iteration of the platform, set to launch this fall, will eventually incorporate information from wildlife crime literature and wildlife protection organizations on the ground.

PHOTOS: On a Chinese mountain, an aging anti-poaching hero ponders the future
- Yu Jiahua, a 65-year old villager living on Jiuding Mountain in Sichuan province, was a skilled hunter when he was in his 20s.
- After an influx of outside poachers severely curtailed local wildlife populations, he and his brother began patrolling the mountain, confronting poachers and confiscating their rifles and snares.
- Eventually Yu convinced other villagers to help, establishing an organization that won outside acclaim and financial support.
- Wildlife on the mountain has rebounded, but finances remain thin and patrollers few. As Yu Jiahua ages, it is unclear who will take on his mission.

From endangered species to commodities: report reveals scale of wildlife crime
- The report was produced by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime using data on thousands of species and seizures from more than 120 countries.
- It found that trafficking is faciliated by widespread corruption at many levels of government and society, and that crimes are generally not restricted to certain countries.
- To better fight wildlife crime, officials urge a stepping-up of enforcement and monitoring, as well as increased transnational cooperation.

International treaty targeting illegal fishing takes effect
- Illegal fishing puts the world’s already-strained fish stocks at risk, capturing as much as 26 million metric tons of fish valued at up to $23 billion each year.
- The treaty, known officially as the Agreement on Port State Measures to Prevent, Deter, and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing, will enter into force this Sunday, June 5.
- It represents an international effort to shore up the global seafood supply by preventing vessels from landing illegal catches.

Great Ape trafficking — an expanding extractive industry
- There are two main uses to which trafficked young apes are put: as pets or as attractions in commercial wildlife facilities (such as disreputable zoos, safari parks, circuses, hotels and use as photo-props).
- The trade is facilitated by celebrities who pose with great ape pets in the press or in social media posts, which act as advertisements that say that owning an ape is “cool.”
- Stiles has been investigating great ape trafficking for the past three years, since being invited to be a co-author of the United Nations report Stolen Apes, released in March 2013 at the 16th CITES Conference of the Parties in Bangkok.

Half of Sumatra’s forests within reach of the average bird trapper
- Conservationists generally believe Indonesia’s booming pet trade is driving the decline of wild bird populations, but few studies have explored its impact.
- The results of a new study bolster the case that the pet trade is driving down wild bird populations.
- The researchers looked at North Sumatra and South Sumatra.

Fiery end for the last of the toothfish pirates
- Toothfish, often sold as “Chilean sea bass” have long been targeted by poachers in the remote and hostile Southern Ocean.
- Poaching has not only harmed toothfish stocks, but rendered the study and sustainable management of them all but impossible.
- The conservation group Sea Shepherd launched a campaign in late 2014 to disrupt illegal toothfish fishing. With the scuttling of the Viking, six of the worst offenders have either been destroyed or apprehended.

5 reasons why many conservation efforts fail
- Managing natural resources is complex.
- Some conservation efforts, such as the recovery of the southern white rhinos, have seen triumph. But often these wins are short-lived.
- Mongabay examines five reasons (in no particular order) that may have contributed to the failure of many conservation efforts.

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