Bolivia introduced a general and indefinite ban on the wildlife trade two decades ago, but this measure has failed to stop the trafficking of wild animals. Birds, monkeys, turtles and reptiles that are in high demand as pets remain particularly vulnerable to wildlife crime. In recent years, jaguars (Panthera onca) have also become victims of […]
Tag: wildlife crime
How wildlife may fare under Trump
What a president will do for wildlife has never been much of a campaign issue. Debates focus on national security, trade, economics, and to a lesser degree in this election cycle, on the environment. Wildlife, however, plays a part in all those concerns. Take, for example, the illegal wildlife trade. It’s a multibillion-dollar business that […]
POLL: Should subsidies to grouse shooting estates be stopped?
England’s vast grouse shooting estates receive millions of pounds in public subsidies according to an investigation by Friends of the Earth. Thirty of the estates received £4m of taxpayer’s money between them in 2014, the year examined by the pressure group, including one owned by the Duke of Westminster, the richest landowner in Britain with […]
POLL: Should there be a ban on driven grouse shooting?
MPs will debate whether to ban driven grouse shooting after a petition created by a leading conservationist passed the threshold of more than 100,000 signatures. Mark Avery, a campaigner and former head of the RSPB, launched the petition in March with backing from broadcasters Chris Packham and Bill Oddie, and the League Against Cruel Sports, […]
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 […]
POLL: Should driven grouse-shooting be banned?
The season for red grouse-shooting is about to begin. But its driven form, where beaters flush birds towards the guns, is having a terrible impact on the environment and on other birdlife, to the cost of every nature-lover and taxpayer. Mark Avery, former conservation director of the RSPB, explains why this most unsporting sport should […]
How to catch a poacher using fake eggs
Sometimes life really does imitate art. In the fourth season of the hit TV show, Breaking Bad, police put GPS devices on barrels of methylamine to try and track the show’s protagonists to their meth lab. Inspired by the episode, Kim Williams-Guillen, a conservationist with Paso Pacifico, decided to take the concept one step further: […]
One Expert’s Better Way to Save Elephants
Accompanying Kenya’s widely-publicized ivory bonfire last April were announcements that the country’s wildlife service was moving toward “intelligence-based conservation,” with more emphasis on the pursuit of traffickers and smugglers rather than on the poachers who actually do the killing. “We know there is limitless supply of poor guys on the ground who are willing to […]