By Michael Bachelard, Indonesia correspondent for Fairfax Media15 January 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Some of the richest and most biodiverse forests in Indonesia will soon be opened up for commercial exploitation under a plan drafted by the new government of Aceh. The chairman of the Aceh parliament’s spatial planning committee, Mr Anwar (who goes […]
9 January 2013 (Desdemona Despair) – In February 2009, Desdemona was new to blogging. The world was still reeling from the global financial collapse caused by the deregulated, automated, shadow banking system – currently valued at $67 trillion and growing! Global warming was fading into the background of the public consciousness. Except in Australia, where […]
By Erica Santana 3 January 2013 The trading of big cat pelts is nothing new, but recent demand for snow leopard pelts and taxidermy mounts has added a new commodity to the illegal trade in wildlife products, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). Traditionally, the market for large cat products has centered around tiger […]
By Ned Potter5 January 2013 (ABC News) – The narwhal, a kind of Arctic whale, has been called “the unicorn of the sea” because of the long, straight, often spiraling tusk that males of the species can grow. It is illegal to import the tusks into the United States because narwhals are listed by the […]
By MALCOLM FOSTER4 January 2013 TOKYO (Associated Press) – A bluefin tuna sold for a record $1.76 million at a Tokyo auction Saturday, nearly three times the previous high set last year. In the year’s first auction at Tokyo’s sprawling Tsukiji fish market, a 222-kilogram (489-pound) tuna caught off northeastern Japan sold for 155.4 million […]
Hong Kong, 3 January 2013 (AFP) – Hong Kong conservationists expressed outrage Thursday after images emerged of a factory rooftop covered in thousands of freshly sliced shark fins, as they called for curbs on the “barbaric” trade. The southern Chinese city is one of the world’s biggest markets for shark fins, which are used to […]
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN31 December 2012 KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa (The New York Times) — They definitely did not look like ordinary big-game hunters, the stream of slender young Thai women who showed up on the veld wearing tight bluejeans and sneakers. But the rhinoceros carcasses kept piling up around them, and it was only […]
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, 21 December 2012 (AP) – Two types of ice seals joined polar bears Friday on the list of species threatened by the loss of sea ice, which scientists say reached record low levels this year due to climate warming. Ringed seals, the main prey of polar bears, and bearded seals in the Arctic […]
Manila, 6 December 2012 (AFP) – Efforts to curb overfishing of tuna in the Pacific were blocked by big countries that refused to cut their catch at a meeting of tuna-fishing nations in the Asia-Pacific, delegates said Thursday. The Western and Central Pacific Commission, comprising 30 member nations and territories, ended a five-day meeting in […]
By Miguel Llanos, NBC News6 December 2012 Africa’s lions are running out of habitat and some populations, especially those in West Africa, are running toward extinction, according to a study published Tuesday. Using new satellite data, a research team at Duke University found that about 75 percent of Africa’s savannahs were fragmented by farmers and […]
