A comprehensive survey of the wildlife sold in the markets of Tuensang has resulted in a stunning record of the wildlife trade in the state of Nagaland in northeast India, as reported in a new study published in mongabay.com’s open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science (TCS). Once a week, researchers with the Sálim Ali Centre for […]
Tag: wildlife trade
Illegal wildlife trade flourishes in Sumatra
In a chilly rain on Sunday, in a town just a few kilometers beyond the edge of a protected Sumatran rainforest, a young orangutan sat perched on a piece of plywood and grabbed the metal wires of his tiny cage. He has sat in that cage for six months and, like dozens of other species […]
US gets a taste for lion burgers
In America over the past few months, a battle has been raging over big cat burgers. Lion meat, sourced from captive-raised populations in the US, crops up in restaurants every once in a while, and each time it provokes the same response: at one pole, rage about the unsound ethics of eating the ‘king of […]
Monitor lizards vanishing to international trade in pets and skins
The world’s monitor lizards remind us that the world was once ruled by reptiles: this genus (Varanus) includes the world’s biggest lizards, such as the stunning Komodo dragon and many other island kings. A large number beautifully-colored and patterned, these lizards are known for their intelligence and their apex role in many island food chains. […]
Manta ray tourism worth 28 times more than killing them for Traditional Chinese Medicine
A new study in the open access journal PLoS ONE estimates that manta rays are worth $140 million a year in tourism across 23 countries, significantly outweighing the worth of manta ray gill plates, which have become the newest craze in Traditional Chinese Medicine. “As an example in Indonesia, revenue to fishermen from manta gill […]
Rhinos moved from South Africa to Botswana for safekeeping
A private safari company has moved six white rhinos (Ceratotherium simum) from their home in South Africa to Botswana in a bid to save them from an out-of-control poaching crisis in their native land. Currently, around two rhinos are killed everyday in South Africa for their horns, which are then smuggled to East Asia. This […]
Elephants massacred for ivory in Central African Republic
Dozens of elephants have been slaughtered in the Dzanga Bai World Heritage Site in the Central African Republic just days after conservationists warned about an impending threat from the movement of 17 heavily armed poachers. The massacre occurred at a site renowned as “village of elephants”, where tourists and scientists have for decades observed wild […]
A Tale of Two Elephants: celebrating the lives and mourning the deaths of Cirrocumulus and Ngampit
On March 21st, the organization Save the Elephants posted on their Facebook page that two African elephants had been poached inside a nearby reserve: “Sad news from the north of Kenya. Usually the national reserves are safe havens for elephants, and they know it. But in the last two weeks two of our study animals […]