I’m on an early morning tour bus with Vince Crichton, retired wildlife biologist and renowned moose expert. In between telling moose stories and pointing out other wildlife, like a red-tailed hawk, Crichton pauses to say, “Fresh tracks.” Soon afterward two moose, as fleet as they are massive, dart through the trees, away from our vehicle. […]
Tag: endangered species
Black, white and unique: the Malayan tapir struggles for recognition
Two-month old Asahan sucks milk greedily from a bottle. The baby Malayan tapir — his spotty brown juvenile coat already morphing to the distinctive black and white of an adult — was rescued by local villagers who found the displaced animal wandering alone through an oil palm plantation and then handed him over to Malaysia’s […]
POLL: Should humpback whales be taken off the endangered species list?
Federal authorities are taking most humpback whales off the endangered species list, saying they have recovered enough in the last 40 years to warrant being removed. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) said on Monday that nine of the 14 distinct populations of humpbacks would be removed, while four distinct populations remain listed as endangered […]
POLL: Should there be a worldwide ban on the pangolin trade?
Governments and NGOs are pushing to ban the commercial trade in pangolins, the world’s most trafficked mammal.They passed a motion last week at the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Hawaii 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 […]
POLL: Should Japan’s killing of dolphins and whales be stopped?
Twenty dolphins were slaughtered on Friday in the southwestern Japanese town of Taiji, marking the beginning of the cove’s infamous annual dolphin hunt, according to local media, Agence France-Presse reports. The hunt has attracted global condemnation since 2009, when it was featured in the Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, which depicted how fishermen round up […]
Another big predator in Southeast Asia faces extinction
Conservationists have long known that it’s hard – and in some cases – nearly impossible to survive as a tiger in Southeast Asia. Burning forests, high human populations and unflagging demand for tiger blood, tiger skin and crushed tiger bone means the big cats have to tread a daily gauntlet of snares, guns and desperate […]
POLL: Should there be a worldwide ban on the ivory trade?
The UK is putting elephants at risk of extinction through its broken promises on the ivory trade, according to campaigners. Before the last election, the Conservative party pledged to shut down the UK’s domestic ivory market: at the time 30,000 elephants a year were being slaughtered for their tusks. But no action has been taken. […]
In a world of 7 billion people how can we protect wildlife?
Consumers and collectors want sturgeon caviar, snakeskin bags, shark meat and fins, wild snowdrop bulbs, precious rosewood furniture, and quality agarwood oil, as well as rare birds, reptiles, cacti and orchids. But they rarely stop to think about their origins. There are now over seven billion people consuming biodiversity every day in the form of […]