Millions birds, tropical fish, turtles, and mammals and large volumes of wildlife products are trafficked domestically and internationally in and from the Brazilian Amazon each year according to a new report from TRAFFIC, a UK-based nonprofit that studies the wildlife trade. Brazil is home to 60% of the Amazon Basin, holds 13% of the world’s […]
Tag: COVID-19
Brazilian Amazon drained of millions of wild animals by criminal networks: Report
The Brazilian Amazon is hemorrhaging illegally traded wildlife according to a new report released Monday. Each year, thousands of silver-voiced saffron finches and other songbirds, along with rare macaws and parrots, are captured, trafficked and sold as pets. Some are auctioned as future contestants in songbird contests. Others are exported around the globe. Fish bound […]
Sea turns red in Faroe Islands as 250 whales slaughtered in ‘barbaric’ hunt
Sickening pictures show the sea turning red with blood as dozens of whales are slaughtered in an annual ritual in the Faroe Islands. Activists have voiced their horror as the killings – a tradition believed to date back 1,000 years – got underway in spite of the Covid-19 pandemic. On the year’s first hunt, more […]
A million mink culled in Netherlands and Spain amid Covid-19 fur farming havoc
Spain has ordered the culling of nearly 100,000 mink on a farm and an estimated one million mink have already been culled on Dutch fur farms, as coronavirus wreaks havoc in the European fur farming industry. Joaquin Olona, agriculture minister for the north-eastern Aragon region, said the cull would involve the slaughter of 92,700 mink […]
Team Lioness: the Kenyan women rangers risking their lives for wildlife
Her black boots brushing through swathes of yellow-brown bush, 24-year-old Purity Amleset is feeling tense. But fear is just part of the job, she says, as she patrols her section of the 147,000-hectare (363,000-acre) community land around Kenya’s Amboseli National Park, a Unesco-designated biosphere reserve. Amleset, pictured, is one of eight rangers in the all-female […]
Wildlife traffickers target lion, jaguar and leopard body parts as tiger substitutes
Lion, jaguar and leopard body parts are being increasingly sought as substitutes to tiger products by wildlife traffickers, a major UN report has found, but demand for ivory and rhino horn has shown signs of a sustained fall. Wildlife trafficking continues to pose a major threat to nature, global biodiversity and human health, the UN’s […]
Pandemic or not, the mission to save the rare Philippine eagle grinds on
MANILA — “How can we rehabilitate a Philippine eagle during a lockdown?” That was the first thought Jayson Ibañez says crossed his mind after he answered a phone call bearing news of a rescued raptor on April 17. As the Philippine Eagle Foundation’s resident eagle expert and head of its research team, Ibañez has always […]
For two rhino species on brink of extinction, it’s collaboration vs. stonewalling
Fatu doesn’t seem to care about the carrot she’s been offered by her caretaker. She raises her enormous head and gives it a sniff before returning to what she was doing, which is nipping delicately at the dry, scraggly grass at her feet. A few yards away, her mother, Najin, is doing the same. “They’re […]
