Latest Poaching Stories

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Howard William Ledford of Hayesville, N.C., was sentenced today in federal court in the Western District of North Carolina to serve one year in prison for illegally selling and transporting wild American ginseng into Georgia, the Justice Department announced. Ledford pleaded guilty on Nov. 9, 2009, to two counts charging him with selling and transporting wild American ginseng in violation of the Lacey Act. Ledford admitted that in 2004 and...

On the eve of a an international conference aiming to protect the world's endangered species, a number of African nations are struggling to reach a consensus on whether they should allow new stockpiles of ivory to be dumped on the markets.As elephant populations have rebounded over most of the continent in recent years and poachers are making higher-than-ever profits on illicit ivory sales, a number of officials have begun arguing that troves of confiscated ivory should be sold legally by the...

READING, Pa., Dec. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Game Commission today announced that three York County men pled guilty to unlawfully killing a white-tailed deer at night with the use of an artificial light on Nov. 29, the night before the opening day of the regular antlered and antlerless deer season. The men shot the deer from their vehicle while spotlighting the deer. Fred Daniel Miller, 58, of Glen Rock, pled guilty to unlawful use of lights while hunting, loaded...

Rhino poaching worldwide is on the rise, according to a new report by TRAFFIC and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).The trade is being driven by Asian demand for horns and is made worse by increasingly sophisticated poachers, who now are using veterinary drugs, poison, cross bows and high caliber weapons to kill rhinos, the report states.Since 2006 the majority (95 percent) of the poaching in Africa has occurred in Zimbabwe and South Africa, according to new...

Sierra Leone's wildlife managers said on Thursday police arrested 10 poachers for killing off the park's entire elephant herd. Ibrahim Bangura, senior superintendent of the agriculture ministry's Conservation and Wildlife Management Unit, says, "It is likely that the elephant population is wiped out."Bangura said the six elephants were shot and crudely butchered, their bodies slashed with sword marks and their tusks virtually wrenched from their skins.The elephant carcasses and four...

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today a report revealing that the last remaining population of Siberian tigers has likely declined significantly due to the rising tide of poaching and habitat loss.WCS says the report will help inform Russian officials of what needs to be done to protect remaining populations of the world's biggest cat.The report was released by the Siberian Tiger Monitoring Program, which is coordinated by WCS in association with Russian governmental and...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) today called upon the United States and the world community to renew its commitment to the global ivory ban, which has been systematically undermined to the point where elephants could soon disappear from the face of the earth. Established by the U.S. and the other signatories to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) 20 years ago today, the ivory trade ban...

A shocking decline in the Russian Federation's wild tiger population highlights the importance of eliminating trade in and demand for tiger parts, the International Tiger Coalition (ITC) said Oct. 17. The alliance of 40 organizations worldwide issued the statement upon news that Siberian tigers may have suffered a serious drop in numbers over the past four years.New census figures indicate that tiger populations in the Russian Far East, which in 2005 numbered nearly 500, have declined...

Officials said on Monday that Malaysian wildlife authorities rescued a five-year old Malayan tiger, badly injured in a snare set up by poachers near the country's jungle border with Thailand, AFP reported.Northern Perak state wildlife and National Parks director Sabrina Shariff told AFP they received a tip-off on Saturday and a joint patrol with the World Wildlife Fund for Nature-Malaysia's wildlife protection unit found the injured animal.She said the tiger's paw was very badly damaged as...

The first ever overall nation-wide estimate of the tiger population brought a positive ray of hope among conservationists. The figures announced by the Nepal Government's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) shows the presence of 121 (100 "“ 194) breeding tigers in the wild within the four protected areas of Nepal. The 2008 tiger population estimate was jointly implemented by the DNPWC, Department of Forests (DOF), WWF, National Trust for Nature Conservation...