Worldcrunch
From elephant ivory crucifixes to rhino horn handles for Muslim ceremonial daggers, sacred wildlife products fuel an overlooked driver of the illegal trade. This unbridled demand is pushing some species toward extinction, forcing faith leaders to reconcile devotion with biodiversity conservation.
Neither conflict nor harmony, the concept of “coexistence between humans and wildlife has been a meaningful goal. But in reality, it is being misused or superficially invoked to the benefit of neither person or animal.
The public can view caged wildlife in these locally managed preserves under federal laws allowing for ecotourism ventures. But the parks do more harm than good, experts say.
Scientists are testing new tools to spot the origin of cheetahs poached from the wild and smuggled for the pet trade.
Cedar trees across Mongolia bear the wounds of an illegal market for their prized nuts.
An elephant in the street in India, otters on the beach in Cape Town, wild boars in Rome, big cats in Colombia cities, polar bears in Russian towns: a series of factors, including climate change and urbanization, is creating unlikely encounters between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom.
The Patagonian National Park is a spectacular and unique landscape that illustrates the outstanding beauty of nature. But it is at risk of becoming a victim of the climate crisis.
The Smart Green Bees project aims to tackle the bee crisis by repopulating Spain with a symbolic 47 million native bees, one per every Spaniard. The challenge will be ensuring the project is done responsibly.
June is the best time to spot a dragonfly. Here’s why it’s worth looking for one common species.
It was a sunny, Scandinavian afternoon when Even Nord Rydningen spotted something in the still waters beneath Oslo’s Gullhaug bridge. “It looked like a trout, but it also looked a bit like a shark,” he told Norwegian daily Aftenposten. Upon closer inspection, Rydningen realized it was in fact a pike, a sharp-toothed (but tasty) species […]
A new Greenpeace report warns that foreign fishing fleets, mostly from China, are gobbling up every bit of marine life they can into ‘stadium-sized’ nets.
Once part of the cocaine kingpin’s private zoo, the animals are now an invasive species impacting the local environment. But few in Colombia have the heart to kill them off.
“I (had) never seen a high-quality image of a wild black leopard come out of Africa,” British wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas wrote recently. So he sprung to attention when word arrived about a sighting at Laikipia Wilderness Camp in Kenya. Using a series of Camtraptions motion-triggered camera traps, Burrard-Lucas managed to snap this powerful shot of the ever-elusive big cat. With OneShot, this rare photograph emerges from the darkness of the night. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/-PLQuhpZakY expand=1] Black Leopard (©Will Burrard-Lucas) | OneShot OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. […]
-OpEd- WARSAW — The Narewkowska trail runs through the middle of one of Europe’s last remaining protected nature reserves, Poland“s Białowieża Forest. But now, the trail is slated to be paved over to become an automobile roadway. If plans ultimately move forward to pave the 24-mile trail, the entire forest would become vulnerable to industrial […]
MUTWANGA — At the foot of mount Rwenzori, locals erupt in joy when they see their homes lit with electric light bulbs for the first time in their lives. Meanwhile, at the nearby Pic Hotel in Mutwanga, a small village in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), tourists are finally returning. Over the past few […]
Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies varies widely in elevation, climate, and plant life, making it the perfect place to catch (from a respectable distance) an incredible diversity of wildlife in their natural habitat. That was one grouchy-looking bighorn sheep. See more slides from My Grand-Père’s World here.
The shoes were clearly too big for him to fill. Three-and-a-half years after Hugo Chávez’s death, his successor Nicolás Maduro is losing an already loose grip on the helm of his country. A disastrous economic and social crisis is turning into a political one, and the country’s long-suffering opposition feels primed to remove him from […]
It’s easy to be lulled into a sense of calm by the Canadian Rockies’ peaceful lakes and beautiful landscapes — and to forget that they’re also home to deadly grizzly and black bears. I was kindly reminded of their presence, in both English and French.
BOGOTA — The World Wildlife Fund has sounded the alarm across the planet’s sea and oceans. “In just one generation, human activity has seriously harmed the ocean by catching fish faster than they can reproduce, while destroying their feeding zones,” the director general of World Wildlife Fund International Marco Lambertini declared, as the WWF publishes […]
Vast urban areas are home to much more animal and plant life than you might think, making their natural spaces crucial in the fight against global warming.
Time for a major ecological awakening in the world’s most populous nation. The planet is at stake.
NAIROBI — The sun feels even more scorching under the cap of pollution. Through her binoculars, Patricia Heather-Hayes, nicknamed “Trish,” is scrutinizing a lioness sleeping under an acacia in Kenya“s Nairobi National Park. The energetic 60-something, who works in a legal office when she’s not out here observing wildlife, knows the name of every feline. […]
SHANGHAI — Every summer, the little town of Yulin in southeastern China celebrates the summer solstice by tasting local dishes: lychees (a Chinese fruit) in alcohol, for example, and, perhaps the favorite main course delicacy, dog meat. Dog carcasses are visibly displayed on street stalls — for now. But last year, animal rights activists began […]
Zurich-based group Zürcher Tierschutz launched a campaign earlier this year to set a quota for the country’s cats, deeming them a threat to other wildlife, including small mammals, reptiles and birds. However, since the campaign began, cat lovers have been pawsitively up in arms about it. The group estimates there to be 1.4 million cats […]
Remember the story of Pablo Escobar’s hippos running wild in Colombia a few weeks ago? Although the late King of Cocaine’s half-wild hippos may be damaging farms and the environment in this southern region, it seems some locals are growing fond of them. Officials have warned people living near the Hacienda Nápoles park to avoid […]
The late Colombian drug lord spent some of his cash on a private zoo, which the Colombian state took over after Escobar was killed. But now, deadly hippopotami have fled the reserve.
We haven’t seen much of Sub-Saharan Africa over the course of our travels, except for Zimbabwe, Swaziland and South Africa, where I took this picture, in one of the continent’s largest game reserves. This lion was feeding on giraffe remains by the side of the road. As grim as it sounds, there is something about […]
Kim Pasche set off from Switzerland to follow in the footsteps of indigenous people. That led him to the wild forests of Canada, where he spends eight months a year living as a hunter-gatherer.
Gregory Carr has an American entrepreneur’s vision for saving African wildlife.
LE TEMPS (Switzerland) Worldcrunch PUERTO BAQUERIZO MORENO – The famous giant tortoise of the Galapagos is saved! At least for now… It was thought that the ancient Galapagos tortoise endemic to these South American islands had gone extinct with last year’s death of Lonesome George, the last of the living among this type of tortoise, […]
GOMA – The stories here in eastern Congo are terrifying: large numbers of apes have begun attacking villagers. The main cause is the six-month-old war in the region, which forces the primates to leave their territory, and makes them see humans as a threat. The stories from Tongo, a village 60 kilometers (37.2 miles) north […]
LOIBOR SIRET – Laly Lichtenfeld has reason to be cautious. White outsiders have left some painful memories in this region of vast plains in the north of Tanzania. Thousands of people were expropriated to create the nearby national parks of Tarangire and Manyara, as well as the Serengeti, further north on the Kenyan border. In […]