By Tamasin Ford, with additional reporting by Iloniaina Alain Rakotondravony23 December 2013 CAP EST, Madagascar (The Guardian) – Blood-red sawdust coats every surface in the small carpentry workshop, where Primo Jean Besy is at the lathe fashioning vases out of ruby-coloured logs. Besy and his father are small-scale carpenters in Antalaha in north-east Madagascar, and […]
By Nikolas Kozloff23 November 2013 (Huffington Post) – Despite mounting evidence that global warming is leading to devastating environmental disasters in the Pacific region, the U.S. and its partners are suspicious of climate change advocates. Rather brazenly, Washington and its Pacific allies spy on those who are intent on reining in global warming. Indeed, […]
10 December 2013 (ABC) – The Australian Government says it intends to honour its promise to send a Customs ship to monitor Japanese whalers. But the Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt says he’s still working through some of the “operational issues”. “We will have clear monitoring in the Southern Ocean, and I just ask for […]
SHIMONOSEKI, YAMAGUCHI PREF., 7 December 2013 (KYODO) – Three ships have left Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, to join the mother vessel Nisshin Maru and hunt up to 935 Antarctic minke whales and 50 fin whales through March. The Fisheries Agency had kept secret the departure date of the whaling fleet as a precaution against obstruction by […]
By Laura Beans 6 December 2013 (EcoNews) – New data pointing to a dramatic rise in polar bear hunting surfaced this week as the biennial meeting of the international Polar Bear Agreement kicked off in Moscow, Russia. Clearly, climate change isn’t the only challenge facing Polar Bears. Hunting of Canadian polar bears is rising at […]
Contact: Mart Dixon (1-347-840-1242; mdixon@wcs.org) Stephen Sautner (1-718-220-3682; ssautner@wcs.org)3 December 2013 NEW YORK – A new study led by the Wildlife Conservation Society and Zoological Society or London warns that the world’s largest tropical desert, the Sahara, has suffered a catastrophic collapse of its wildlife populations. The study by more than 40 authors representing 28 […]
19 November 2013 (AFP) – Poachers slaughtered a rhino in one of Kenya’s best guarded wildlife parks, officials said Tuesday, in a brazen attack highlighting the risks gunmen are taking during a surge of killings. “Poachers infiltrated Lewa’s borders during the full moon on November 17 and killed Meluaya,” a 17-year-old black rhino suspected to […]
By Jon Swaine17 November 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – A US television presenter has prompted outrage after boasting online that she had killed a lion in South Africa. Melissa Bachman, a keen hunter who produces programs on the American outdoors, posted a photograph on Facebook and Twitter of her holding a rifle and smiling beside […]
By Michael Carlowicz; design by Paul Przyborski22 October 2013 (NASA) – About 300 to 500 kilometers (200 to 300 miles) offshore, a city of light appeared in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. There are no human settlements there, nor fires or gas wells. But there are an awful lot of fishing boats. Adorned […]
By Rhett A. Butler 23 October 2013 (mongabay.com) – Illegal logging remains pervasive in the Brazilian state of Pará, finds an assessment released Monday by Imazon. Analyzing satellite data and records from Pará’s environmental agency Sema, the Brazil-based NGO found that 78 percent of logging documented via satellite between August 2011 and July 2012 was […]