A court in Indonesia’s Aceh province has sentenced two men to four years behind bars for attempting to sell a tiger skin, in the toughest ever penalty handed down for a wildlife crime there. Sarkawi Bin Warigo, 41, and Sabaruddin Bin M. Yusak, 45, were arrested last July. During the trial, they refused to be […]
Tag: Mongabay.com
Hunting, agriculture driving rapid decline of jaguars in South America’s Gran Chaco
New research finds that one-third of critical jaguar habitat in the Gran Chaco, South America’s largest tropical dry forest, has been lost since the mid-1980s. According to the study, led by researchers at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU Berlin) and published in the journal Diversity and Distributions this week, deforestation driven by agricultural expansion — mainly […]
One-two punch of habitat loss, capture hammers Southeast Asian birds
JAKARTA — Conservationists have underestimated the combined impact of deforestation and capture when assessing the threat to Southeast Asia’s bird populations — a one-two punch that a new report warns could lead to the extinction of dozens of species by the end of this century. Focusing on 308 forest-dependent bird species in the Sundaland subcontinent, […]
Poachers caught on video killing mother bear and cubs at den in Alaska
Authorities in Alaska say they have identified two poachers who reportedly killed a female black bear and her cubs from footage taken at the animals’ den in April. Unbeknownst to the hunters, 41-year-old Andrew Renner and his son, 18-year-old Owen Renner, a motion-activated video camera was trained on the den. The female bear was part […]
Millipedes might soothe itchy lemurs, research finds
Pesky itchiness caused by parasitic worms may have driven one of Madagascar’s lemur species to come up with a natural remedy. New research, published July 30 in the journal Primates, suggests that red-fronted lemurs (Eulemur rufifrons) apply millipede secretions to parts of their bodies, a process called “self-anointment.” “Self-anointment combined with eating millipede secretions may […]
The appeal acquittal of Feisal Mohamed Ali: A victory for rule of law, a process corrupted, or both?
Could it have come at a worse time for Kenya’s Tourism and Wildlife Ministry? 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 […]
Protected landscape across India-Bhutan border a refuge for wildlife during armed conflict
From the late 1980s until 2003, recurring ethno-political violence rocked Manas National Park, a protected area in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, in the Himalayan foothills. The conflict changed the park’s spread and abundance of wildlife, including the endangered Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris). But Manas’s continuity with Bhutan’s Royal Manas National Park (RMNP) […]
The Japan pig is a tiny colorful pygmy seahorse smaller than a fingernail
Researchers have just described a species of colorful pygmy seahorse that’s both adorable and very easy to miss. The newly described creature,occurring in the watersoff the coast of southeast Japan, is much smaller than the average fingernail and camouflages well against the corals and rocks it lives on, researchers report in a new study published in […]