London’s Wildlife Crime Unit Saved from the Axe
London, UK, 29 Feb 2008 (WildlifeExtra Press Release) - The Metropolitan Police has responded to public pressure and reversed a decision to make cuts to London’s Wildlife Crime Unit. In March the Metropolitan Police confirmed that they were intending to cut core funding for two of the four posts within the wildlife crime unit due to police budget constraints. However, after receiving 6,000 letters and emails from members of the public urging them not to make the cuts, the Met has reversed the decision.

Trade is virtual but the wildlife isn’t
29 Feb 2008 (WWF Press Release) - Chinese conservationists met major internet auction site companies in January, urging action on illegal virtual trade in thousands of products made from threatened wildlife.  4300 advertisements for wildlife products, including elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses and marine turtles, have been found for sale on Chinese-language internet sites.  The meetings with authorities in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan follows an eight months survey of popular Chinese language auction sites by the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.

Wildlife Trade Booming in Burmese Casino Town
Burma, Feb 28, 2008 (National Geographic News) - In a run-down casino town in northern Myanmar (Burma) market-goers can find everything from bear paws to tiger parts—evidence of a booming wildlife trade. However, recent crackdowns by governments in Southeast Asia may slow the illegal business, experts say.

PHOTO GALLERY: Bear Bile, Tiger Parts Sold in Myanmar Markets

Sharks Decline Even as Attacks on Humans Rise
Feb 27, 2008 (Fox News) - Sharks are disappearing from the world's oceans due to overfishing, says Julia Baum, a researcher at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego.  Baum and some of her shark-tracking colleagues made comments to reporters earlier this month at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston.  Sharks killed one human in 2007, according to the International Shark Attack File, but humans killed an estimated 38 million sharks for their fins each year, Baum said.

Cactus poachers ravage Mexican desert
Mexico City, Feb 24, 2008 (The Statesman) - Cactus poaching is booming in Mexico, helping to make the trafficking of plant and wildlife species the third-largest smuggling industry in Mexico behind drugs and guns. The trade is fueled by private collectors and the burgeoning xeriscape movement in the United States. Rare cactus species can fetch hundreds of dollars on black markets from the United States to Japan.

Gorillas boost from joint conservation plan
UK, Feb 22, 2008 (The Telegraph) - Hopes have been raised for the survival of one of the world's most endangered species after Congo, Rwanda and Uganda launched a joint conservation campaign to protect mountain gorillas. Wars, poaching and spreading human settlements close to the apes' habitats have led to a soaring threat to the last 700 left alive in the wild, all of them in the three East African countries.  Until yesterday's announcement in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, separate national conservation bodies have been responsible for the primates' protection.

Related News:

Countries unite to save gorillas
Australian Broadcast Corp. (ABC News)

Three countries in pact to save mountain gorillas
The Guardian (UK)

Gorilla Project Unites Uganda, Rwanda And Congo
Reuters News

Rare cooperation to save gorillas
BBC News

List: The World's Worst Poaching Markets
February 2008 (Foreign Policy magazine) - What happens when ancient tradition collides with rampant, black-market capitalism? For certain endangered species, the rise of a Chinese middle class could be a death sentence.  Highlights: Pangolins, Tigers

Connect the Dots: Intelligence software tracks down wildlife smugglers
Published Feb 21, 2008 (Jan-Mar 2008 issue of Conservation magazine) - The illicit wildlife trade is thought to be nearly as large as narcotics and arms trafficking, but each year authorities nab only about 10 to 15 percent of illegal animal goods, according to Lynn Levine of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.  To sniff out connections between the evidence, authorities are turning to data visualization software.

Next human plague 'likely to come from animal contact'
Paris, France, 20 Feb, 2008 (AFP) — Scores of infectious diseases have emerged to threaten humans in the past decades as viruses leap the species barrier from wild animals and bacteria mutate into antibiotic-resistant strains, scientists have reported. Presenting the first-ever map of "hotspots" of new infectious diseases, they predict that the next pandemic is likeliest to come out of poor tropical countries, where burgeoning human populations come into contact with wildlife.

Escalating public outcry over rhino poaching
New Delhi, India, Feb 20, 2008 (News Track India) - The civil society and pressure groups of Assam have come together demanding stringent actions against the poachers of endangered one-horn rhinos at Kaziranga National Park. Recognized as a safe heaven for the rhinos, Kaziraga has lately received media attention, but for the wrong reasons. The park has lost as many as 20 rhinos during 2007 to poachers and is at an all time high in the last decade.

Sharks Disappearing As Fin Chopping Rises - Expert
New York, USA, Feb 18, 2008 (Reuters) - Populations of tiger, bull, dusky and other sea sharks have plummeted by more than 95 percent since the 1970s as fisherman kill the animals for their fins or when they scoop other fish from the ocean, according to an expert from the World Conservation Union, or IUCN.  At particular risk is the scalloped hammerhead shark, whose young swim mostly in shallow waters along shores all over the world to avoid predators. The scalloped hammerhead will be listed on the 2008 IUCN Red List as globally "endangered" due to overfishing and high demand for its valuable fins in the shark fin trade, said Julia Baum, a member of the IUCN's shark specialist group.

Six tigers killed in six weeks
New Delhi, India, Feb 18, 2008 (Time of India) - Tigers continue to die across India. Poisoned, being killed in road accidents or getting mortally wounded in alleged territorial fights - since January 1, 2008, at least six more tigers have been found dead in several wildlife sanctuaries ranging from Katerniaghat in UP to Wynad in Kerala.  That's not all. During the same period, wildlife officials have also seized two tiger skins and three bone pieces of the endangered animal, as per information collated by Wildlife Protection Society of India (See graphic). Forest authorities say this reaffirms that poachers and wildlife traders continue to be active.

Alarm as Indian tiger numbers fall to 1,400
Mumbai, India, Feb 14, 2008 (The Guadian – UK) - The number of wild tigers in India has dwindled to little more than 1,400, less than half the previous estimate, in an alarming decline blamed by wildlife experts on poaching and urbanisation.  The last major survey, in 2002, recorded 3,642 tigers. Until this census, India was thought to be home to 40% of the world's tigers, with 23 tiger reserves in 17 states. Rajesh Gopal, of the National Tiger Conservation Authority, said: "The tiger has suffered due to direct poaching, loss of quality habitat, and loss of its prey."

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India tiger population declines

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FACTBOX - The World's Dwindling Stock of Tigers

Indian wild tiger numbers almost halve

Project Tiger not a success

Falling tiger population prompts India to create 8 new sanctuaries

China targets online wildlife trade
China, Feb 14, 2008 (International Animal Rescue news) - Chinese authorities have announced new efforts to target the illegal trade of wild animals via the internet. The launch of the new campaign comes after reports from conservation groups last year of large numbers of endangered animals and animal products being sold online.

For Magic and Medicine, Sumatran Tigers Are Traded to Extinction
Washington DC, USA, Feb 13, 2008 (ENS) - Body parts of critically endangered Sumatran tigers are being openly sold in Indonesia despite international and Indonesian laws forbidding it and a recent Indonesian government commitment to protect the animals, according to a report issued Tuesday by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.  Tiger body parts, including canine teeth, claws, skin pieces, whiskers and bones, were on sale in 10 percent of the 326 retail outlets surveyed during 2006 in 28 cities and towns across Sumatra, the investigators found.

The report, "The Tiger Trade Revisited in Sumatra, Indonesia" is online at:
http://www.traffic.org/species-reports/traffic_species_mammals37.pdf

Related News:

Illegal trade decimating Sumatran tiger - report

Sumatran tigers being sold into extinction, report reveals

Indonesia failing to halt tiger decline: conservationists

Tiger Parts Sold in Indonesia

Sixth Defendant Pleads Guilty To Smuggling Sea Turtles
Washington, DC, USA, Feb 10, 2008 (Pacific News Center) - A Mexican national pleaded guilty in the United States District Court in Denver to one felony of smuggling and one felony count of money laundering in connection with the smuggling of sea turtle and other exotic skins and skin products into the U.S. from Mexico.

Art dealer's case continues 4 years later
Medina, Ohio, USA, Feb 10, 2008 (UPI) - A Canadian art dealer is in a jail cell in the United States for allegedly trafficking in ivory tusks taken from endangered African elephants.  Tania Siyam was indicted in U.S. District Court in Cleveland in 2004 after allegedly shipping more than 125 pounds of ivory to an Elyria, Ohio, artisan who was secretly working as an informant for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported.  The allegedly illegal ivory was worth about $169,000.

Illegal pet trade threatens Malagasy tortoises
Port Louis, Madagascar, Feb 8, 2008 (Reuters) - Madagascar's turtles and tortoises are crawling towards extinction, threatened by the illegal pet trade and a local taste for tortoise, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said.  "Five of the nine assessed species (of turtles and tortoise) have been downgraded to critically endangered, with one variety -- the ploughshare tortoise -- now numbering only a few hundred individuals," a WCS statement issued on Thursday said.

African Nations Join Forces to Form Anti-Ivory Trade Coalition
Bamako, Mali, Feb 8, 2008 (PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX) - Delegates and experts of wildlife conservation agencies in Africa from 17 countries came together and formally created a united front to save their countries most valued flagship species, the African elephant.  Delegates gathered in the West African country of Mali's capital for a two-day meeting to discuss how they will pave the way forward for elephants following decisions at the 14th Conference of the Parties of CITES (Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species) to allow huge ivory stock sales, which will take place before commencement of a nine-year trade suspension. There is a great concern by range states that huge tons of ivory being released into the markets will only stimulate demand and prompt poachers to kill more elephants.

South Asian nations pledge cooperation on rampant wildlife trade
Kathmandu, Nepal, Feb 6, 2008 (WWF Press Release) - All eight South Asian nations have agreed to step up cooperation in addressing wildlife trade problems in the area.  Wildlife trade officials from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka met in Kathmandu last week and defined a series of joint actions under the new South Asia Wildlife Trade Initiative (SAWTI).

Related News:

SAARC nations pledge cooperation to curb wildlife trade
Feb 8, 2008

Group Calls on China to Respect Rats
Beijing, China, Feb 4, 2008 (AP) - An animal rights group called Monday for China to treat rats with kindness and respect, as millions across the nation begin to celebrate the coming Year of the Rat. "Rats sing, they dream, and they express empathy for others," Coco Yu of PETA's Asia-Pacific branch said in a statement.  …The country has a shoddy animal rights record. There is little animal welfare legislation, many zoos are poorly run and animal parts are traded for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Activists have called on China to phase out bear farms, where bile is harvested for traditional medicine, complaining that the animals are often raised in inhumane conditions.

Anti-Whalers to Chase Japan Fleet for Second Time
Canberra, Australia, Feb 1, 2008 (Reuters) - Hardline anti-whaling activists said on Thursday they would return to harass Japan's whaling fleet for another three weeks after departing Antarctic waters to refuel in Australia unless they were blocked by police.  "This is a retreat for supplies only. We have not surrendered the Sanctuary to the whale killers," Sea Shepherd protest skipper Paul Watson said after leaving an Australian-declared whale haven in the Southern Ocean.

Launch Of Guidebook To Curb Illegal Trading Of Turtles
Singapore, Feb 1, 2008 (Bernama.com) - Trading of tortoises and freshwater turtles in Southeast Asian countries will come under closer scrutiny by enforcement agencies when they are armed with a new guidebook soon.  The guidebook is called, "An Identification Guide to the Tortoises and Freshwater Turtles of Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore and Timor Leste".  Written by Dr Mark Auliya of the Kuala Lumpur-based wildlife trade monitoring network, Traffic Southeast Asia, it is published in Bahasa Malaysia and Indonesia, English, Chinese and Tagalog.

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