It was a fairy tale ending when 33 lions rescued from circuses in Peru and Colombia were airlifted to a sanctuary in South Africa in May 2016. Setting foot on the sandy soil after years of abuse, they must have felt they were in paradise. Right from the start, two of the male lions, José […]
Tag: traditional medicine
POLL: Should there be a total ban on trade in rhino horn?
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 […]
Bearded giants gliding the barrier of spears
This is the first post from my trip to Giant’s Castle in the uKhahlamba Drakensberg park in mid-July. Apart from the breath-taking beauty, a key attraction at Giant’s Castle was its vulture hide. The uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park has Africa’s highest mountain range south of Kilimanjaro. It presents a formidable horizon of massive basalt cliffs in […]
POLL: Should the illegal rhino horn trade be shut down?
How do you disrupt the illicit rhino horn supply chain from Africa to Asia? That’s the question spurring a new investigation into rhino horn trafficking in China and Vietnam undertaken by the Elephant Action League (EAL), a Los Angeles-based conservation NGO. Rhinos are being decimated by poaching. In South Africa, home to almost 80 percent […]
POLL: Should the trafficking of Pangolins be stopped?
If during the past decade you’d wanted to see a scaly creature about the size of a house cat with a long skinny tongue for slurping up ants, California’s San Diego Zoo was the place to go in the U.S. Baba the pangolin arrived there in 2007 after wildlife officials intercepted him in an illegal […]
POLL: Should the sale of rhino horns be legalized?
A top court in South Africa just made it legal to trade in rhino horns within the country. The South African government, in 2009, imposed a moratorium that banned domestic trade in rhino horns. But after years of legal battle between commercial rhino breeders and the government’s Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), the constitutional court […]
POLL: Should zoos protect rhinos by removing their horns?
A Czech zoo has said it will use a chainsaw to remove the horns from its herd of rare rhinos after a brutal attack last week in a French zoo where poachers shot dead a white rhino and hacked off its horns. “It’s for the sake of rhino safety,” Andrea Jirousova, spokeswoman for the zoo […]
POLL: Should all tiger farms in China be closed down?
In China, around 6,000 captive tigers are raised on “farms,” often under inhumane conditions, and their pelts sold for hefty sums in a poorly regulated market upheld through legal loopholes by the Chinese government. Breeding tigers on these farms is legal, but sale of their parts is not — something that may be about to […]