While Mark Zuckerberg was testifying before Congress about Facebook providing user information to Cambridge Analytica, additional disturbing news about his company was making headlines. Facebook has been making a profit by selling ads on pages that are operated by illegal wildlife traffickers. The pages sell the body parts of endangered animals, according to a complaint […]
Tanzania is auctioning off nearly four tons of hippopotamus teeth today, raising concerns among conservationists that legally purchased teeth may end up on the black market, where demand for hippo “ivory” is already threatening their long-term survival. The teeth are from hippos that died naturally or were killed because they had dangerous encounters with humans, […]
War is by nature a deadly affair, yet when all is said and done, we tend to only take stock of the human casualties. The loss of human life is plenty devastating on its own, but make no mistake: in times of war, animals get caught up in the carnage, too. It probably goes without […]
The EU has traditionally been a global leader in tackling the problem of wildlife trafficking and in encouraging other countries to take action. Last year it published a far-reaching Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking, which set out a comprehensive list of actions to address the problem. So why is it dragging its heels when it […]
It seems almost incomprehensible that the desire for an ivory ornament or piece of jewellery justifies the slaughter of a majestic elephant, but as their populations continue to crash, the ever-hungry black market has become creative in order to satisfy its greed. Now, ivory hunters are setting their sights on everything from arctic narwhals to […]
September 22 was World Rhino Day. Rhinos were once widespread across Asia and Africa and even in Europe, where they are depicted on cave paintings. Today their situation is precarious. The world population of the northern white rhino now consists of three individuals. Sudan, the last surviving male, is now beyond breeding age. He and […]
The distinctive yellow/pink ivory of this Forest Elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) is just one of the differences within the three species of elephant still surviving on the planet. Somewhere in the forests of the Republic of the Congo.
Thousands of jewelry, seals, scrolls and other items made of elephant ivory continue to be sold online in Japan each week, concludes a new report by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. In just four weeks in May and June, 2017, nearly 10,000 ivory items were sold on Yahoo Auction, one of Japan’s largest e-commerce […]
The United Kingdom ships more legal ivory beyond its borders than any other country, according to an analysis released today by the London-based NGO Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). The announcement comes two days before World Elephant Day on Saturday. Globally, elephant numbers are falling, down 30 percent between 2007 and 2014 — a decline driven […]
The owners of an antiques shop in Manhattan, New York, pleaded guilty on July 26 for trying to sell $4.5 million worth of illegal elephant ivory from a back room. On Thursday, some of that confiscated Manhattan ivory and more will be crushed in Central Park as part of a public event organized by the […]
Strange news: Theresa May has decided to drop a Tory pledge to push for a total ban on ivory trading (only the sale of ivory items produced after 1947 is prohibited). Why would she do that? Doesn’t she need votes? I thought nearly everyone loved elephants – who votes for helping to wipe them out? […]
The cover of the Lorsch Gospels is one of the most unexpected beauties in any of our museums. This yellowish-white carving comes from the depths of the dark ages, when Europe was supposedly a primitive and barbaric place – yet it is a delicate and subtle artistic masterpiece. It was made in Aachen, Germany, in […]
Even the planet’s smallest elephants, tucked away on the island of Borneo, are no longer immune to the global poaching crisis for ivory. On New Year’s Eve, wildlife officials in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, found the bones of a beloved male elephant, nicknamed Sabre for his unusual tusks that slanted downwards like the extinct sabre-toothed tiger’s […]
