News

SE Asia’s COVID legacy is less wildlife trade, but more hunting, study finds

The COVID-19 pandemic, which began spreading in a seafood and poultry market in Wuhan, China, shone a spotlight on zoonotic diseases and the risks that markets selling wild meat can pose to human health. Following the outbreak, some countries like China temporarily closed down wet markets, while ...

Spoorthy Raman

Small Monkeys are Big Business in Cambodia's Animal Trade

Gangs of humans follow troops of monkeys in Angkor Archaeological Park. In the shadow of Bayon Temple, bloggers spend their days documenting every move the long-tailed macaques make. “I got into filming monkeys because I see them as a natural resource in Cambodia and I wanted ...

ANTON L. DELGADO

Thailand aims at pandemic risks by fighting wildlife trade

Thailand is ramping up efforts to curb trade in wildlife to help reduce the risk of future pandemics, officials said Thursday, though it was unclear whether that would mean an end to all such sales in the wildlife trafficking hub. The government intends to make Thailand ...

ELAINE KURTENBACH

Coronavirus: Vietnam bans wildlife trade over pandemic risk

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 ...

Billion-dollar wildlife industry in Vietnam under assault as law drafted to halt trading

Vietnam’s prime minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, has asked the country’s agriculture ministry to draft a directive to stop illegal trading and consumption of wildlife over fears it spreads disease. The directive, seen as a victory for animal rights organisations, will lead to a clamping down on ...

Chris Humphrey

The Stalemate Driving Vietnam's Illegal Wildlife Trade

Education for Nature – Vietnam’s (ENV) Wildlife Crime Unit recently enabled the rescue of the “Nghe An Three” in one of the most protracted and violent bear bile rescues to date. This positive outcome is offset by the knowledge that 10 bears were left behind despite video recordings of bile ...

Kate Fox

Hunting the hunters

On a cliff overlooking the southwest plains of Cambodia, there is a bullet-ridden casino. Built in the 1920s, when Bokor was a hill resort largely reserved for wealthy French colonials, during the 1970s and 1980s it became the front line in the battle between the ...

Asia’s Environmental Apocalypse 2019?

This year’s environmental news kicked off in grisly fashion: a Vietnamese poaching gang recording one of its members straddling and punching a snared and presumably dead tiger (the Thai authorities say they have caught the perpetrators) in one of Thailand’s protected areas. Thailand has always seemed, to ...

Regional Short Film Contest Launched to Combat Wildlife Trade

The British Embassy in Yangon launched a regional short-film competition on Thursday as part of a UK government initiative to combat the global illegal wildlife trade (IWT). The UK government, in association with the Luang Prabang Film Festival, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Wildlife ...

China's ivory ban sparks dramatic drop in prices across Asia

The price of raw ivory in Asia has fallen dramatically since the Chinese government announced plans to ban its domestic legal ivory trade, according to new research seen by the Guardian. Poaching, however, is not dropping in parallel.Undercover investigators from the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC) ...

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