Protected areas

A growing awareness of the links between wildlife trafficking and SARS, COVID-19, and other infectious diseases has prompted the Vietnamese prime minister to issue an executive order to clamp down on this vast smuggling trade in endangered species. During recent months, conservation NGOs and Hanoi’s Ministry ...

New sprawling development near Phnom Penh could prompt environmental catastrophe, including for the capital’s water systems. The destruction of critically-important wetlands by politically-connected developers in Cambodia threatens to flood more than one million Phnom Penh residents, ruin the city’s wastewater system, force hundreds of families from ...

Vietnam has banned the import of wildlife and wildlife products to reduce the risk of new pandemics. The move also bans wildlife markets for such items, including online sales. Vietnam has previously been accused of turning a blind eye to the sale of products such as pangolin ...

More than one million people in Phnom Penh face the risk of increased flooding and loss of livelihoods as wetlands in the Cambodian capital are destroyed to build apartments and industries, human rights groups warned on Monday. Developments – including the ING City township – will ...

Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc today issued a new directive with urgent and powerful measures to restrict wildlife trade and consumption, and reduce further pandemic risk.   With immediate effect, the directive (29/CT-TTg) bans imports of live wild animals and wildlife products, strictly eliminates any wildlife ...

The forests are rapidly dwindling. But the people living in forest areas need to live off the land. Supporting them to practise sustainable or green farming saves both the forests and the locals’ livelihoods. Why then is this win-win solution only applied to some local ...

Conservationists have warned a sudden change in Myanmar’s law allowing the commercial farming of tigers, pangolins and other endangered species risks further fuelling demand in China for rare wildlife products. The Southeast Asian nation is already a hub for the illegal trafficking of wildlife, a trade ...

In a Facebook post on Thursday (July 9), Kamphaeng Phet’s Khlong Lan National Park reported that camera traps set up in the park to track the population of tigers managed to capture the sighting of a black panther and leopard instead. “The appearance of the panther and ...

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry on Monday named the Eld’s deer conservation forest in Savannakhet province as a national conservation area for the endangered species. The announcement was made at the Ecosystem Conservation Centre in Xonbouly district of Savannakhet to mark the National Day for ...

Activists campaigning against wildlife crime say Thailand could be a global leader in stopping pandemics by further cracking down on and ceasing to be a gateway for the illegal wildlife trade. They believe this would help stop animal-to-human disease transmission. They said scientific information has shown that ...