Latest Conservation reliant species Stories
Researchers from the Environmental Investigation Agency reported that Illegal "tiger bone wine" is still being made and sold by some animal parks in China.Campaigners say staff at two parks offered to sell them the drink"”made from tiger carcasses soaked in rice wine.The tigers are an endangered species and trading of their parts has been subject to an international ban since 1987 and has been outlawed in China since 1989.The tiger's numbers are dwindling despite global...
The World Bank is getting a boost from Hollywood for its new global initiative to save the world's tigers from extinction. Celebrities, including long-time environmental activist Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall and Bo Derek, have all thrown their support behind the new campaign, which brings together scientists, wildlife experts and governments to stop the illegal trading of tiger skins, meat and body parts used in traditional Asian medicines.Although the agency's main mission is to fight...
In an effort to save endangered tigers, India announced on Friday that it intends to spend $13 million to "raise, arm and deploy" a Tiger Protection Force.Finance Minister P. Chidambaram's announcement comes just weeks after a $153 million program was proposed to create new tiger reserves.India's Tiger Project said that recent calculations found that the wild tiger population has dropped from 3,600 five years ago to about 1,411."The number 1,411 should ring the alarm bells,"...
Laws protecting the critically endangered Sumatran Tiger have failed to prevent tiger body parts being offered on open sale in Indonesia, according to a report issued today by TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring organization.Tiger body parts, including 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. Outlets included goldsmiths, souvenir and traditional Chinese medicine shops,...
LUCKNOW, India -- Police broke up a major tiger poaching ring in northern India, arresting an alleged kingpin and 15 others, police and wildlife officials said Thursday.In a rare success for India's embattled conservationists, police in the city of Allahabad raided a meeting Tuesday of suspected poachers, traders and couriers who were negotiating over three tiger pelts and skeletons, senior police official Arvind Chaturvedi said.Conservationists say the killing of tigers for their pelts and...
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ NEW DELHI - A bill to restore land rights to millions of poor tribal people in India could mean the end for India's endangered wild tigers, eliminating much of their protected habitat, conservationists warned Friday. The struggle over the Tribal Rights Bill highlights India's dilemma as it tries to include hundreds of millions of impoverished people in its recent economic growth and at the same time preserve the environment. "Our biggest problem is not from poachers...
By Deborah ZabarenkoWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tigers have 40 percent less habitat than they did a decade ago, due to intense poaching and the rise of an Asian middle class that puts pressure on the big cats and their environment, wildlife experts said on Thursday."Wild tigers and their habitats are in danger because they're suffering from international crime, economic exploitation and environmental depredation," said John Seidensticker, a scientist at the U.S. National Zoo and chair of...
By Bappa MajumdarCANNING, India -- Authorities in eastern India have arrested 30 poachers in the world's largest tiger reserve this year against 40 caught in 2004 and 2005, officials said on Monday.They said the sharp jump in arrests in the first nine weeks of 2006 were largely the result of border troops joining wildlife personnel in tackling poachers in the Sunderbans, a vast mangrove forest home to scores of Royal Bengal tigers."Joint patrolling and vigilance between us and the Border...
PALAMAU TIGER RESERVE, India -- Crouching in a dry stream bed, the tracker traces the faint footprint of a tiger in the ochre soil with his finger."This is from two nights ago. She came up from the water hole and went on that way," Ramcharithar Uraon says, pointing into a dense forest of bamboo thickets and tapered sal trees in this park in eastern India.The paw print, or pug mark, is the latest sign that park rangers have had of Rani, "the tigress of Betla," named for the...
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science CorrespondentFRONT ROYAL, Virginia (Reuters) - Zoe purrs and grunts when she hears women talking. Just like any house cat wanting her ears scratched, she rubs against the chain-link fence invitingly.But Zoe, who lives at the Smithsonian National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia, is no kitty cat; she's a rare clouded leopard. And the specialists at the center are among the few animal experts in the world who have been able to get...
