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A pygmy elephant was found dead floating in a Tawau, Sabah river on Friday (27 Sept) evening. It had a rope tied around its neck that was attached to a nearby tree.

It appeared that the elephant was ten years old and a male, according to officials, and it had wounds that suggested it had been shot numerous times. Even sadder, the elephant was likely dead for over three days when it was discovered drifting. Official untied and placed in on a seating position on the river bank after it was found.The elephant’s body is currently undergoing a post-mortem, and officials cannot confirm if its tusks have been removed or not.Pygmy elephants in Borneo are frequent victims of poaching as their tasks are highly valuable in the black market. More often than not, they are also murdered because they tend to enter palm oil plantations and might damage property.

Last June, three pygmy elephants were found dead due to poisoning, allegedly by palm oil plantation workers. In 2018, six of them suffered a similar fate in a nearby plantation.

In the past decade, over 100 pygmy elephants were deliberately killed either by poisoning or gunshot, and these numbers are only expected to rise unless authorities take action.

Salmon farming is a disaster both for the environment and for human health, and tests show farmed salmon is about five times more toxic than any other food tested

Le Quotidien de l’Economie in its edition of 24 October 2017 looked at the laxity of the Belgian authorities in the application of the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR) which led to the opening of the the European Commission.

Indeed, while large quantities of wood are placed on the Belgian market, Belgium has not managed to carry out a significant number of controls since March 2013, when the EUTR entered into force. According to Sébastien Snoeck, Forest expert at Greenpeace, the European Commission’s decision to open a case against Belgium is “a wake-up call for the Belgian authorities who must finally take this serious problem seriously and ensure that the law is respected.”

According to the denunciations, the illegal timber comes from three countries: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Brazil. These are the main suppliers of the Belgian market. The figures available in 2014 show, for example, that Belgium is the 3rd largest importer in Brazil and Cameroon.

Despite this situation, Belgium is criticized for the lack of rigor in its controls. Since 2013, the date of entry into force of the EUTR, Belgium has only carried out about 20 checks. But, no sanction is reported. And it is this lack of sanctions that has attracted the attention of experts from Greenpeace and other non-governmental organizations. “We have documented several cases of wood sourcing companies with a high risk of illegality coming from different countries,” says Greenpeace.

In criticizing the laxity of the Belgian authorities, the NGO stresses that “despite the repeated promises of the minister to reinforce her control team, only a half-time official was in charge of these controls“. A lightweight device that finally makes Belgium “a colander on the road of illegal timber traffic“, adds Sebastien Snoeck, the Forest expert of Greenpeace.

However, the behavior of the Belgian authorities intrigues with regard to the weight of illegal logging and the timber traffic on the national economy. Illegality in the global wood sector costs between $ 50 billion and $ 150 billion, according to data from Interpol and the United Nations. It is “the second largest crime market in the world behind drug trafficking“, explain the Non-Governmental Organizations. They add that this traffic generates murders.

Especially for the case of Brazil, 59 people died in 2016 in the name of the defense of the environment. Of these 59 cases, 16 were related to logging.

After the opening of the procedure by the European Commission on 19 October 2017, Belgium has two months to respond to the criticisms raised by the Commission. Otherwise the proceedings will continue and even the case could be brought before the European Court of Justice.

The state government of Sabah has managed to increase and stabilise the number of orang utan despite active oil palm cultivation due to proper and balanced management.

Minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities Mah Siew Keong said he understands that the number of orang utan in Sabah is almost 12,000. He said in his discussions with ministerial counterparts in Europe and elsewhere, the topic of orang utan conservation in Malaysia would be brought up and the palm oil industry targeted as a sector that’s driving this iconic species into extinction.

“However, what we can see now is a far cry from claims by western non-governmental organisations that the orang utan population would be extinct by 2015 due to oil palm cultivation,” Mah said.

The visit also allowed him to get a first-hand account of the work carried out by the Wildlife Rescue Unit and operated by the Sabah Wildlife Department with full funding from the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) for this purpose.

Mah said even the number of orang utan sent to SORC for rehabilitation had dropped to single digit. This was due to pro-active wildlife conservation efforts in Sabah under state Tourism, Culture and Environment minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun, he said.

He said apart from that, collaborative efforts between state authorities and his agencies, through MPOC as well as conservation funding from numerous bodies and agencies had helped.

However, he said conservation efforts must continue and it would be even more beneficial for the palm oil industry to further amplify its corporate social responsibility by making even larger contributions towards wildlife conservation in Malaysia.

More conservation efforts, funding and public awareness are necessary to further secure confidence and to demonstrate the positive roles that the palm oil industry plays, he said.

Mah said peaceful coexistence with the environment, wildlife and plantation related activities could not be overemphasised.

Critically endangered Swift Parrots are under threat from squirrel-like sugar gliders in a battle for space in Australia's ancient forests, scientists said Wednesday as they race to save the rare birds.

Swift Parrots are migratory and only breed in the southern island state of Tasmania.

But the nomadic nectar-eating birds' nesting grounds -- gum trees -- are also popular with sugar gliders, small possums believed to have been introduced to Tasmania in the early 19th century.

The marsupials, which launch themselves from tree to tree and rarely descend to the ground, eat the nesting birds as well as their eggs and chicks, the Australian National University scientists said.

This year, both species are battling for real estate on Tasmania's east coast due to abundant eucalypt flowering in the region, which contains some of the world's oldest trees.

"In some of these places, we've never had a chick survive," ANU conservation scientist Dejan Stojanovic said in a statement.

"If we don't intervene immediately, this year could be a huge blow to the conservation of this species."

Stojanovic and his team have designed nesting boxes with light-sensitive doors that open at sunrise and close at sunset, protecting the parrots from the sugar gliders in the night when the creatures are active.

The doors are powered by solar panels and have back-up batteries, with the team setting up a crowd-funding campaign to pay for them to be fitted onto 100 nest boxes already in the area.

Early tests worked well and the birds "didn't mind the machinery", Stojanovic added.

Swift Parrots usually arrive from the Australian mainland in August before flying back north in February and March after the breeding season, according to the Tasmania's Parks and Wildlife Service.

There are no recent estimates of their population, but a 2011 assessment cited by the Australian government estimated there were only about 2,000 mature birds, with the population declining.

Screen legend Brigitte Bardot has urged the government to let a wild-born Malaysian elephant kept in captivity in Langkawi to retire in the Kuala Gandah Elephant Sanctuary.

The former singer and actress expressed her concerns about the elephant, named Lasah, in a letter to Malaysian Natural Resources and Environmental Minister Wan Junaidi.

Bardot, a renown animal activist, said she was aware that Lasah lived alone and chained for several hours a day. She added that the elephant was used and abused for tourism purposes on the island.

She said, according a Malaysian NGO, media reports and several petitions, Lasah had been used in tourism and entertainment for more than 25 years, worked in a logging camp and spent many years in zoos in and outside the country.

“As you and your Ministry are aware, the only way elephants accept being ridden by tourists is by being crushed and frequently abused.

"It is also widely known that elephants must not be kept alone in captivity, males included. Depriving Lasah of the companionship of other elephants is cruel and has severe psychological impact on him, not to mention the repetitive elephant rides and the chains,” she said in the letter.

Bardot added that the abuses and exploitation of Lasah has prevented him from expressing his natural behaviors, such as foraging and interacting with other elephants thus why retiring him to the sanctuary would offer him the opportunity to do so.

“To this day, the Malaysian government has spent tens of millions of Ringgit on pandas coming from China, and I can only hope that such a financial effort translates a certain concern about wildlife.

"Therefore I believe that the Malaysian government will have no problem with welcoming and caring for Lasah, who is a Malaysian-born elephant, at the sanctuary.

The tropical island of Penang being famous for its white sand beaches and luxurious resorts is now being terrorised by the deadly box jellyfish which is now breading in the sea around Penang. Their venom causes Irukandji Syndrome, which includes severe hypertension, extreme lower back pain, nausea, vomiting, intense cramps, breathing difficulty and heart failure. While not as lethal as the Australian Box Jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri), which can kill an adult human in three minutes, they are still life-threatening to young children, the elderly and the frail.

The Malaysian state of Sabah has been faced with the threat of wildlife poaching, especially of its endangered elephants which numbers around 2,000 in forests in eastern Sabah. Six pygmy elephants, including the unique sabre tusk jumbo, have been reported killed over the last six months.

Of the three subspecies of Indonesian tigers, two — the Bali tiger and the Javan tiger — have been declared extinct. The Sumatran tiger still exists on Sumatra, but it is considered critically endangered, the result of hunting and rapid deforestation. Rangers at Ujung Kulon National Park in West Java last month photographed a big cat unlike any previously seen in the preserve. They claim it’s the Javan tiger, a subspecie declared extinct more than 40 years ago.

The pictures, released this week, set off a flurry of speculation that one of Indonesia’s legendary species was still alive, and offered a rare bit of positive environmental news to a country in which natural places are being destroyed at an alarming rate.

“This used to be Javan tiger habitat,” Mamat Rahmat, the head of conservation at the park, told the local news media. “We hope that they’re still there.”

The photograph, which circulated across social media, prompted the World Wildlife Fund to support an expedition in search of the supposed tiger.

Despite the rangers’ excitement, some conservationists were skeptical that the cat really was a Javan tiger. “When the video is frozen the effect is that it looks like a tiger,” said Wulan Pusparini, a tiger expert at the Wildlife Conservation Society, who viewed video footage of the animal. However, when the animal was seen moving, she said, it more closely resembled a leopard. Javan leopards are an endangered species, and are rarely seen.

“Javan tigers have been extinct for three generations,” Ms. Wulan said. She said she wished the Indonesian public would get as excited about saving endangered animals as they have been this week about the potential for discovering an extinct species.

1. Stuttgart, Germany 2. Luxembourg 3. Hanover, Germany 4. Bern, Switzerland 5. Munich, Germany 6. Bordeaux, France 7. Edinburgh, UK 8. Sydney, Australia 9. Hamburg, Germany 10. Graz, Austria

For the ranking of the "Most and Least Stressful Cities 2017," analysts studied everything from a city's density, unemployment rate, public transport and security to air pollution, traffic, social services, race relations, purchasing power, and number of sunshine days a year before assigning a score. In total, authors considered 17 factors for each city. The list ranks 150 destinations. At the top of the heap is Stuttgart in southwest Germany, which scored particularly well in areas like green spaces, security, family purchasing power and mental health. To measure a city's well-being and mental health, authors looked at the average suicide rate and the number of psychologists per capita. Along with its green spaces, the city is also characterized as a major hub for luxury car manufacturers as Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) and Porsche are headquartered in Stuttgart. Other German cities to crack the top 10 list include Hanover, Munich, and Hamburg. Rounding out the top five spots are Luxembourg; Hanover; Bern, Switzerland; and Munich. The study was released by Zipjet, a London-based door-to-door dry cleaning service powered by an app. The pitch? That they develop technology to reduce stress in everyday life. Overall, European cities dominate the top 10 list, with the exception of Sydney, Australia. The top-ranked US city is Seattle (No. 12), while the first time Canada makes an appearance is at No. 24, via Montreal. The biggest common denominator that seems to thread the top-performing cities together is their size: Most are smaller, but no less cosmopolitan cities with lower population densities. Not surprisingly, Baghdad ranks last on the list, while next to last is Kabul, Afghanistan.

Fifteen Chinese fishing boats have been caught with thousands of sharks in Timor-Leste waters in a joint raid by local police and activist group Sea Shepherd.

Sea Shepherd's Timor-Leste campaign leader Gary Stokes said the group's Ocean Warrior helped armed Timor-Leste National Police (PNTL) officers conduct a raid on Saturday morning.

"We found thousands and thousands of sharks on every single vessel," he said."They were setting bottom gill nets that were basically weighted to the sea bed.

Timor-Leste authorities inspected the 15 boats in February, after a video from Portuguese news agency Lusa showed shark hauls on board. The inspections revealed more than 40 tonnes of shark, which the Government said could contravene Timor-Leste law and the fishing licence conditions.