#wildlifeproject

Kenya to Burn Biggest Ever Stockpile of Ivory

By Fiona Harvey via The Guardian

Tusks from more than 6,000 illegally killed elephants will be burned in Kenya on Saturday, the biggest ever destruction of an ivory stockpile and the most striking symbol yet of the plight of one of nature’s last great beasts.

The ceremonial burning in Nairobi national park at noon will be attended by Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, heads of state including Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, high-ranking United Nations and US officials, and charities. A wide network of conservation groups around the world have sent messages applauding the work.

On Friday, Kenyatta said Kenya would seek a “total ban on the trade in elephant ivory” at an international wildlife trade meeting in South Africa this September. “The future of the African elephant and rhino is far from secure so long as demand for their products continues to exist,” he said.

On Saturday about 105 tonnes of elephant ivory and 1.5 tonnes of rhino horn will burn in 11 large pyres, about seven times the amount previously burned in a single event. The bonfire, so big it will take about four hours to burn completely, highlights the continuing crisis in elephant populations. About 30,000 to 50,000 elephants a year were killed from 2008 to 2013 alone, according to the Born Free Foundation, and the rate of killing is outstripping the rate of births in Africa.

Tiger Sanctuary in Thailand Closes Amid Accusations of Wildlife Trafficking

By Richard C. Paddock via The New York Times

The last tiger, sedated and caged, left the Tiger Temple in Thailand on Saturday in the back of a pickup truck. The abbot who founded the Buddhist-themed zoo has vanished. And five people, including three monks, have been arrested on suspicion of wildlife trafficking.

The removal of the last of 137 tigers after a weeklong operation effectively shut the tourist attraction, where visitors — many of them foreign tourists — could touch tigers and feed them by hand.

Conservationists had long believed that the zoo was a front for illegal trafficking in tiger parts, and on Thursday, the authorities said, they found their strongest evidence yet that monks and staff members were involved in that trade. A search of a truck leaving the temple compound found more than 1,600 illegal items, including two tiger pelts, tiger-skin amulets, tiger teeth and 67 tiger-skin lockets with photos of the temple’s abbot, Luangta Chan, inside.

Other grisly finds over the week included 40 dead tiger cubs stored in a freezer and 20 more preserved in jars.

The closing of the tourist attraction at the temple, Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, was a victory for conservationists in a predominantly Buddhist country where government officials often give deference to religious leaders.

The Wildlife Conservation Office has sought for months to remove the tigers and battled the temple’s lawyers in court before winning an order allowing it to start seizing the big cats on Monday. Thirty veterinarians, 60 parks department rangers and more than 250 others were involved in the operation.

Chaos, Questions Surround Temple as Tigers Seized

By Sharon Guynup via National Geographic

Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple is losing its tigers.

The monastery and popular tourist attraction, the focus of allegations of animal abuse and trafficking for 15 years, was raided this week by authorities who planned to remove all 137 tigers held at the temple, three hours northwest of Bangkok.

The tiger attraction gained worldwide attention as a place where visitors could pet, feed, bathe, and walk the cats around on leashes, snapping selfies along the way. It has been a gold mine to the monastery, which is formally known as Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno, bringing in an estimated three million dollars a year.

But conservation organizations and former temple workers have long accused the temple's monks of keeping the cats in jail-like enclosures, feeding them poorly, and physically abusing them. Critics also have accused the temple of trafficking endangered species in violation of Thai wildlife laws and an international treaty.

The temple's monks have rejected accusations regarding their care of the tigers, saying they have done nothing wrong.

Criticism of the temple escalated in recent months after new allegations of abuse surfaced—among them, a report by National Geographic that included a temple insider's claim that three of the temple's tigers had been killed.

On Monday Thailand's Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation began removing the tigers, an operation that required about 500 people. On Wednesday, after officials had tranquilized and removed six tigers that had been set loose in the temple's kitchen facilities, they investigated a tip from a temple volunteer and made a stunning discovery. Inside an industrial-size freezer they found the bodies of 40 frozen tiger cubs, all one to seven days old. They’d been dead for no more than two days, said Adisorn Nuchdumrong, the wildlife department’s deputy director.

U.S. Bans Commercial Trade of African Elephant Ivory

By Jada F. Smith via The New York Times

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service announced a near-total ban on the commercial trade of African elephant ivory on Thursday.

Under current guidelines, ivory can be sold if it was brought into the United States before it was listed as endangered or if the elephant died of natural causes, as long as there is documentation. The new rules will restrict those sales to genuine antiques, like ivory statues, artwork or chiseled chess pieces, that have been lawfully imported, as well as items like musical instruments that were made using less than 200 grams of ivory.

The new rules aim to curb the rampant slaughter of the elephant, an endangered species, which experts say accounts for 96 deaths a day. They also intend to severely restrict the African ivory market in the United States, the world’s second-largest consumer of illegally poached ivory.

“The people of the United States will be speaking loudly,” said Daniel M. Ashe, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, “and saying we value living elephants in the wild more than we value the creation and the trade of trinkets made from ivory.”

The new rules help fulfill President Obama’s 2013 executive order on combating wildlife trafficking in the United States, while lending resources to help stem the problem in other countries.

Indonesia’s Orangutans Suffer as Fires Rage and Businesses Grow

By Joe Cochrane via The New York Times

Katty, a docile, orange-haired preschooler, fell from a tree with a thump. Her teacher quickly picked her up, dusted off her bottom, refastened her white disposable diaper and placed her back on a branch more than seven feet off the ground.

Katty is an orangutan, about 9 months old, whose family is believed to have been killed by the huge fires last fall in the Indonesian regions of Borneo and Sumatra. The blazes are an annual occurrence, when farmers clear land by burning it, often for palm oil plantations. But last year’s fires were the worst on record, and scientists blamed a prolonged drought and the effects of El Niño.

The blazes destroyed more than 10,000 square miles of forests, blanketing large parts of Southeast Asia in a toxic haze for weeks, sickening hundreds of thousands of people and, according to the World Bank, causing $16 billion in economic losses.

They also killed at least nine orangutans, the endangered apes native to the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra. More than 100, trapped by the loss of habitat or found wandering near villages, had to be relocated. Seven orphans, including five infants, were rescued and taken to rehabilitation centers here.

Rare Rhino Dies Days After Her Rediscovery

By Brian Clark Howard via National Geographic

When a female Sumatran rhino was captured in a pit trap in March in the Indonesian part of Borneo, the conservation community cheered. The endangered species had not been physically encountered in the area for 40 years. But now that hopeful story has taken a sad turn, as the rhino—known as Najaq—has died.

"Our hearts are saddened by this devastating news from Kalimantan," the International Rhino Foundation wrote on its Facebook page Tuesday.

Najaq succumbed to a leg infection after her health deteriorated over the past few days, Indonesia's environment minister said. Further investigations are pending.

According to Arnold Sitompul, conservation director of WWF-Indonesia, early evidence suggest the infection was first caused by a snare from an earlier poaching attempt, before the animal was caught by conservationists.

"The sad death of this rhino reminds us of the tremendous challenges associated with protecting the Sumatran rhino population in the Indonesian part of Borneo," says Sitompul.

Najaq was thought to be four or five years old. She was captured in a pit trap in Kutai Barat in East Kalimantan on March 12. Sumatran rhinos had been thought extinct from Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, but some camera trap evidence gathered in 2013 had suggested the return of at least a few individuals in the past few years.

As a result of that evidence, conservationists had set a trap with the goal of moving any rhinos from the area to a more secure sanctuary, about 93 miles (150 kilometers) away. The region was too close to mining operations and plantations to be considered safe habitat.

Anthropologist Jane Goodall: China is pillaging Africa like an old colonial power

via RawStory

China is exploiting Africa’s resources just like European colonisers did, with disastrous effects for the environment, acclaimed primatologist Jane Goodall has told AFP.

On the eve of her 80th birthday, the fiery British wildlife crusader is whizzing across the world giving a series of lectures on the threats to our planet.

And the rising world power’s involvement on the continent especially raises alarms when it comes to her beloved chimpanzees and wildlife habitats.

During the last decade China has been investing heavily in African natural resources, developing mines, oil wells and running related construction companies.

Activists accuse Chinese firms of paying little attention to the environmental impact of their race for resources.

“In Africa, China is merely doing what the colonialist did. They want raw materials for their economic growth, just as the colonialists were going into Africa and taking the natural resources, leaving people poorer,” she told AFP in an interview in Johannesburg.

The stakes for the environment may even be larger this time round, she warns.

“China is bigger, and the technology has improved… It is a disaster.”

Other than massive investment in Africa’s mines, China is also a big market for elephant tusks and rhino horn, which has driven poaching of these animals to alarming heights.