Deep in the steamy rainforest of Gabon, a poaching gang’s night-time fire is smouldering and two long elephant tusks lie among the tangled roots. The axe that hacked them off lies nearby. Just after dawn, the insect buzz and bird chatter is suddenly pierced by a whistle blast and camouflaged park guards burst out from […]
Tag: poaching
Chinese man caught smuggling five rhino horns is jailed by Dutch court
A Dutch court has sentenced a Chinese man to a year in jail for smuggling five rhino horns and four other horn objects worth about €500,000 ($613,000) in his luggage. The man was caught by customs officials at Schiphol airport in December as he traveled through Amsterdam on his way from South Africa to the […]
Madagascar: Conservation official arrested for killing 11 endangered lemurs
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Two weeks ago, the bodies of 11 critically endangered lemurs were discovered in Iaroka forest inside the Zahamena Ankeniheny Corridor protected area in eastern Madagascar. The lemurs were allegedly killed by one of the local officials charged with protecting them, to the dismay of conservation leaders. The protected forest is managed jointly […]
California Man Killed Over 135 Birds in State’s Worst Raptor Poaching Case
Someone near the town of Standish in Northern California fortunately took the adage, “See something, say something,”to heart and called a poaching hotline when they saw Richard Parker shoot a hawk on his 80-acre property near the Nevada border. Parker hadn’t killed only the one hawk. As a game warden walked up to Parker’s front […]
Last male northern white rhino is put down
The last male northern white rhinoceros has died, leaving only two females with which conservationists hope to save the species from extinction. Sudan, the “gentle giant” who lived in the Ol Pejeta conservancy in Kenya, was put down on Monday after the pain from a degenerative illness became too great. He is survived by his […]
Mammals of Kruger Park
In my last post from South Africa, I will share some photos of mammals and reptiles we encountered in Kruger Park. Even though we did not find any surprising animals, it was exciting to see large numbers of common mammals. After the low densities we had experienced in Hluhluwe, Kruger Park felt like the Real […]
Cambodia’s banteng-eating leopards edge closer to extinction, new study finds
For Cambodia’s last remaining Indochinese leopards (Panthera pardus delacouri), extinction could be just around the corner, a new study has found. The only breeding population of this leopard subspeciesin Cambodia is believed to occur within a large protected area complex in a part of the country called the Eastern Plains Landscape (EPL). But in just five […]
Borneo Lost Half of its Orangutans in Just 16 Years
Conservationists have worked to secure the survival of critically endangered Bornean orangutans, but researchers have found they’re still declining at an alarming rate and have lost about half their population in less than two decades. According to a study published in the journal “Cell Biology“, which drew on field survey data collected from 38 research […]