Wildlife Trade

After hundreds of elephants are found slaughtered, efforts increase to secure a national park and its elephant population

Elephants are under increased threat from illegal ivory trade.

Massive seizures of illegal ivory have taken place in Asia and Africa.

An infant mountain gorilla was rescued from poachers in Rwanda.

Since 1986, there has been an internationally agreed upon moratorium on commercial whaling. But a few countries have elected to ignore, or find ways around the ban.

A free and confidential phone hotline launched in Namibia as a proactive measure to stop potential acts of poaching.

A man was detained at Thailand’s international airport as he tried to smuggle almost 200 live animals.

A new chapter in South Asian regional cooperation for strengthening wildlife law enforcement began with the formal launch of the South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network, which was announced at an inter-governmental meeting in Bhutan in January 2011.

Rare and endangered Asian big cats are sold in black markets along Myanmar, Thailand and China’s shared borders, facilitating a deadly illicit trade in tigers and other endangered species says TRAFFIC and WWF’s joint report “The Big Cat Trade in Myanmar and Thailand.”

Parts of at least 1,069 tigers have been seized in tiger range countries over the past decade, according to new analysis of tiger seizures carried out by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. Reduced to Skin and Bones shows that from January 2000 to April 2010, parts of between 1,069 and 1,220 tigers were seized in 11 of the 13 tiger range countries—or an average of 104 to 119 animals per year. Of the 11, India, China and Nepal ranked highest in the number of tiger part seizures, the report states, with India by far the highest number of tiger part seizures.

Anatoly Belov, a long-time Russian anti-poaching ranger working on the frontlines of protecting tigers has been awarded the 2010 WWF Duke of Edinburgh Conservation Medal. The medal was first given in 1970 and is awarded annually by WWF for outstanding service to the environment.

Africa’s rhinos received a massive—and loud—show of support during Rhino Day on September 22. South Africans all around the country blew their vuvuzelas as a symbolic call for immediate action to stop rhino poaching through strengthened law enforcement and strict legal penalties.

A two-month-old tiger cub was found sedated and hidden among stuffed-tiger toys in the luggage of a woman at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport on Sunday.

On July 17, 2010, police detained two people involved in the Sumatran tiger illegal trading syndicate in Pekanbaru, Riau Province of Sumatra. Yoga Rusdiansyah, 26, and Hidayat Saldi, 45, are under investigation.  Yoga was caught with six decapitated tiger heads, five tiger pelts and seven kilograms of tiger bones. The tiger body parts were set to be exported to Malaysia. Based on Yoga’s testimony, he has conducted illegal activities for three years with up to five packages sent in one month. Hidayat’s status is still under further investigation.

Vietnam’s Environmental Police have confiscated two frozen tigers and a frozen leopard in the central province of Nghe An.

David Ankoh has what it takes to have his name entered into the Guinness Book of Records. He is 109 years old living in the sub Saharan country of Cameroon where life expectancy for men is about 50, is a father of 88 children, lives in a village at the periphery of the Boumba-Bek National Park and is not only a witness to a disappearing abundance of wildlife, but is also a strong supporter of WWF work in the area.

Significant findings have come to light in the ongoing investigation into the suspected poaching of a Javan rhino in Vietnam’s Cat Tien National Park, perhaps the last of its kind.

A few years ago, India’s Panna Tiger Reserve made global headlines when all of its tigers were lost to poachers. Now Panna is once again in the news, this time for three very good reasons. This spring, a trio of cubs were photographed with their mother, marking the very first time in recent conservation history that a translocated tiger has given birth in the wild.

Experts from seven countries laid the foundation for a South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network (SAWEN) as a coordinated regional response to combat illegal wildlife poaching and trafficking at a special meeting convened in the Nepali capital of Kathmandu this week. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka agreed to establish a secretariat and an outline work plan for the new network.

The Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management is helping Russian tiger conservation efforts thousands of miles away by sharing its secrets to raising prey animals like deer and wild boar.

This month, suspected members of a Chinese poaching gang were captured by Russian border patrol after sneaking into a tiger sanctuary near Kymen-Rybolov, a Russian village near the Chinese border.

Images of the near-extinct Sumatran rhino were recently captured by WWF-Malaysia and the Sabah Wildlife Department’s camera traps. Experts believe that this rhino is pregnant, giving hope for the species and adding urgency to the enforcement of anti-poaching laws in the region’s forest and wildlife reserves.

It was the second week of March and nearly 2,000 wildlife trade experts and delegates from over 150 countries were in Doha, Qatar to participate in the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES, the United Nations wildlife trade treaty.

At the close of the world’s largest wildlife trade convention meeting, global conservation organization WWF welcomed the statement today by the regional fisheries management organization in charge of the Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery – the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, ICCAT – that its members should agree and implement a scientifically sound recovery plan for the species when they meet in November in Paris, France.

Urgent law enforcement action by governments in Central and West Africa and South-east Asia is crucial to addressing the illicit ivory trade, according to a new analysis of elephant trade data released today.

Governments meeting March 13 for the largest wildlife trade convention will have a unique opportunity to help preserve the world’s oceans and simultaneously stem a worldwide poaching crisis.

The release of six alleged rhino poachers from custody two weeks before a meeting of the largest wildlife trade convention is emblematic of the chronic lack of political will to enact enforcement efforts required to save these endangered species.

Kathmandu, Nepal- The Government of Nepal announced today an expansion of Bardia National Park in the Terai Arc Landscape by 900 sq km, which will increase critical habitat for tigers.

China received praise here today from the International Tiger Coalition (ITC) for promising to work with its neighbors to end tiger trade and bring back wild tigers.

A five-year-old male Tiger was freed from a poacher’s snare on Sunday after it was found by WWF’s Wildlife Protection Unit (WPU) just off a highway that cuts through the Belum-Temengor forest complex in the northern state of Perak.

The governments of Norway and Japan are using taxpayer money to subsidize their unprofitable whaling industries, according to a first-time analysis of the economics of whaling.

More than a ton of illegal bushmeat – including primate and elephant meat – was seized in the Congo Basin last week and 15 wildlife poachers arrested in an unprecedented police operation.

Southeast Asia’s few surviving elephants are under increasing threat from booming illegal ivory prices in Vietnam, according to a new market analysis released by TRAFFIC – the world’s largest wildlife trade monitoring network, and a joint program of IUCN and WWF.  

Nepal’s Suklaphanta (Sook-lah-fahn-tah) Wildlife Reserve was once considered prime tiger habitat because of abundant prey and the relative scarcity of competing predators. A sustainable population in this protected area is crucial for maintaining the genetic diversity of tigers in the region. Because of concerns that Suklaphanta’s tiger population was shrinking due to illegal poaching, WWF and partners began conducting more frequent and comprehensive surveys of the tigers.

On 27 May 2008, Primorskii regional court handed out its verdict in the trial of three Russian and three Chinese individuals charged with trafficking Amur tiger body parts and 480 bear paws, for which they had tried to pass to China in August 2007.

Customs and the Frontier Service in the Primorskii province in the Russian Far East have seized a massive cache of illegal wildlife products bound for China.