Tibet: the wild yak

The wild Tibetan yak (野牦牛) was once widespread across the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, with an historical range stretching from northern India and Nepal, and throughout the Chinese provinces of Gansu, Sichuan, Qinghai and Xinjiang. It was even found in Kazakhstan, Mongolia and parts of southern Russia until the 18th century, though any real trace of it […]

U.N. trafficking resolution passed

It has long been known that wildlife crime, be it trafficking or poaching, is committed by organised, transnational criminal gangs. The global illegal wildlife market is estimated at $10 to $20 billion dollars by Interpol, with links and trade routes that snake across the global – the majority of which lead to and from Southeast […]

Africa: Bounty hunting

Namibia is home to almost 2,000 endangered black rhinos, and in order to finance conservation efforts they have been auctioning off permits to hunt one of the animals. They auction off 5 permits a year, and hunting permits have long been a source of income for Namibian conservation efforts. The most recent permit was auctioned […]

China: Leizhou, where they butcher tigers

Something I recall having seen on Xinhua (新华网) last year (2014) was a report of tigers being butchered on the street in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, in a town called Leizhou (雷州市). The pictures you can find if you search 雷州市宰杀老虎 (Leizhou City slaughter tigers) are particularly shocking, with the corpses of tigers […]

China bans ivory imports … for 1 year

China has released a notification via CITES that it intends to suspend the import of ivory carvings from February 26th 2015 to February 26th 2016. This affects the ivory that is legally imported into the country – an apparently negligible amount – and the measure has no bearing on the massive illegal ivory trade that […]

Spilled Water

覆水难收

Poaching