Free Republic

Wildlife trafficking is an ongoing problem in Spain and throughout Europe. In a recent crackdown, authorities in Guadalajara have made a significant arrest and seized 170 kilos of live elvers. On a routine inspection, Guardia Civil officers apprehended an individual on Tuesday, December 12, near Cifuentes, Guadalajara. During a Citizen Security patrol, officers identified a rental van which was parked at a service station. Upon questioning the driver of the vehicle appeared nervous. The officer’s suspicions were well-founded as the van, which seemingly carried clothing, hid a more sinister cargo. Elver Smuggling Exposed In what appeared to be an ordinary...

Dehorning of a young female black rhinoceros By cutting off its horns, wildlife managers hope to dissuade poachers from killing this black rhino.VANESSA DUTHÉ When rhino poaching reached a crisis level in 2014, wildlife managers in southern Africa turned to a last-ditch defense. They started sawing off horns, which doesn’t hurt rhinos, but may dissuade poachers from killing the endangered animals. Now, researchers have for the first time shown that this conservation practice changes the behavior of black rhinoceros (Diceros bicornis), making the animals roam far less widely and presumably interact less with other rhinos. The discovery, reported today in...

Immense challenges face law enforcement authorities amid continued demand for rhino horns, says WWF-Singapore’s Uma Sachidhanandam.It was sobering when I first heard of Singapore’s largest seizure of rhino horns last month - weighing in at about 34kg with an estimated price tag of S$1.2 million. The rhino horns were found in the transit baggage of a passenger travelling from South Africa to the Lao People's Democratic Republic through Singapore. It was also a reminder of another case two years earlier, where a South African man was sentenced to 17 months’ jail for trying to smuggle about 22kg of white rhino...

Deforestation, Poaching, and White People Created the Man-Eater of Champawat In the first decade of the 20th century, the most prolific serial killer of human life the world has ever seen stalked the foothills of the Himalayas. A serial killer that was not merely content to kidnap victims at night and dismember their bodies, but also insisted on eating their flesh. A serial killer that, for the better part of ten years, eluded police, bounty hunters, assassins, and even an entire regiment of Nepalese Gurkhas. A serial killer that happened to be a Royal Bengal tiger. Specifically, a tiger known...

In Ivory Coast a group of conservationists and veterinarians are moving this increasingly endangered forest elephant to an area where the animal is less likely to be targeted by poachers. Scientists have been using DNA testing to track how ivory traffickers are operating. As few as three major criminal groups are responsible for smuggling the vast majority of elephant ivory tusks out of Africa, according to a new study. They’ve develop a combined genetic and statistical method to determine the origin of poached ivory and they are collaborating with the Interpol Working Group on Wildlife Crime to investigate the origins...

POACHERS have killed a black rhino in Matobo district in Matabeleland South, police said. A carcass of a black rhino with its horns missing was found in the Makhothama Resettlement area which borders the Matopo National Park on February 7. “The carcass was scanned with a metal detector leading to the recovery of two wildlife sensors and a bullet in the animal’s forehead,” national police spokesman assistant commissioner Paul Nyathi said. The rhino horn is one of the most expensive commodities in the world by weight, fetching tens of thousands of dollars per kilogramme. Demand is mainly from Asia where...

The streamer is unsuccessful in getting a California appeals court to lift an injunction.Netflix may see fixed-term contracts for entertainment executives as a form of involuntary servitude, but on Thursday, the streamer experienced a tough legal loss when a California appeals court refused to accept that perspective and overturn an injunction that prevented Netflix from poaching executives at Disney’s Fox unit. Fox sued back in September 2016 upon the defection of production executive Tara Flynn and marketing executive Marcos Waltenberg. Netflix responded with a countersuit alleging that the executives’ respective Fox employment contracts were unenforceable as an illegal non-compete. Netflix...

About 25 feet beneath the sea off Southern California’s Catalina Island, David Hornbaker had his eye on some blue-banded gobies. The mesmerizing fish have bright orange bodies with thin, electric-blue stripes, and are highly sought after by marine aquaria collectors like Hornbaker for their high resale value. Grasping a squirt bottle, Hornbaker squeezed to release an opaque, cloudy substance over some rocks where several gobies were hiding. One darted from behind a rock and into the open, where it became incapacitated and ceased to swim. Hornbaker then gathered it into a small net and placed it in a container strapped...

Fresh snow had just melted and the scent trail was more than a day old when a yellow Labrador Retriever named Buck went in search of evidence linked to an elk that had been poached on March 19, near Cottage Grove. Time- and snow- work against tracking dogs. Still, Buck was hot on the scent of gunpowder and shell casings. He found casings, also known as brass, among grass and twigs, invisible to the human eye. Three times Buck signaled his handler, Oregon State Police Fish and Wildlife Senior Trooper Josh Wolcott. Finding three casings confirmed the story OSP...

The Kenya Wildlife Service was called to the reserve after it was reported the giraffes hadn’t been seen in quite a while. Upon finding the bones, wildlife officials estimated they had been there for at least four months. “This is a very sad day for the community of Ijara and Kenya as a whole. We are the only community in the world who are custodians of the white giraffes,” said Mohammed Ahmednoor, manager of the reserve in Garissa County, Kenya, in a news release. The animals got their unique coloring from a condition known as leucism, which is a genetic...

Early in September, international news was awash with the claim that 87 elephants had been “killed by poachers” in Botswana. The story originated from the NGO Elephants Without Borders, which received massive publicity – and presumably donations – as a result. Even the beleaguered UK Prime Minister tweeted the story, while a petition calling for wildlife guards to be re-armed surpassed 150,000 signatures. I know a little of Botswana. A few years ago, I was declared “public enemy number one”, threatened by a government spokesman on television, and banned from the country. This was because Survival International was instrumental in...

At least three suspected rhino poachers have been killed by a pride of lions after they broke into a game reserve in South Africa. Rangers discovered human remains around 4:30 p.m. local time on July 3 in the immediate vicinity of the lions’ territory at the Sibuya Game Reserve in Kenton-on-Sea in the Eastern Cape, more than 24 hours after an anti-poaching dog alerted her handler that something was amiss. The ranger however did not examine the disturbance further because it was not unusual to hear the lions at night. When members of the anti-poaching unit investigated, they recovered human...

At least three suspected rhino poachers have been killed by a pride of lions after they broke into a game reserve in South Africa. Rangers discovered human remains around 4:30 p.m. local time on July 3 in the immediate vicinity of the lions’ territory at the Sibuya Game Reserve in Kenton-on-Sea in the Eastern Cape, more than 24 hours after an anti-poaching dog alerted her handler that something was amiss. *snip* The ranger however did not examine the disturbance further because it was not unusual to hear the lions at night. When members of the anti-poaching unit investigated, they recovered...

Kenya will fast-track laws to make wildlife poaching a capital offense as part of the country's bid to conserve flora and fauna, a senior government official said late Thursday. Najib Balala, the Minister for Tourism and Wildlife, said that once the laws are enacted, the offenders of the wildlife crimes will face the death penalty in accordance with the laws of the land. "We have in place the Wildlife Conservation Act that was enacted in 2013 and which fetches offenders a life sentence or a fine of 200,000 U.S. dollars. However, this has not been deterrence enough to curb poaching,...

The investigation into what could be the largest raptor poaching case in the state of California continues, according to a California Department of Fish and Wildlife officer in Sacramento. Standish rancher Richard Parker, 67, was booked into the Lassen County Jail on Monday, March 12, on multiple charges including take of birds of prey, take of migratory non-game birds as designated by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, take of other non-game birds and possession of wildlife unlawfully taken. Additional charges may be added as the investigation proceeds. Lassen County Sheriff Dean Growdon said after Parker’s arrest, CDFW officers booked...

The damage from the actions of citizens of PRC in Primorye amounted to more than 50 million rubles. They face a lengthy imprisonment if convicted. Citizens of China are jailed before trial in Primorye for attempting to illegally export a large batch of wild animal parts, including the endangered Amur tiger, as well as firearms, ammunition and amber to the PRC, PRIMPRESS reports citing the press service of the Amur Tiger Protection Center. According to the experts, the main part of the contraband are the derivatives of at least five individuals of the Amur tiger (clad skins, 18 claws, bones...

San Jose residents are being asked to keep an eye out for people setting illegal fish traps in local waterways after city workers and South Bay Clean Creeks Coalition volunteers recently broke up several found in the Guadalupe River. The traps were discovered about two weeks ago under the Julian Street bridge and farther south near Virginia and Willow streets. The fish traps are built out of large items like river rock, which block the stream so fish become penned into a shallow pool of water away from their migratory path. That makes it easy for poachers to nab the...

In the 1970s, Kenya had about six times as many elephants as Zimbabwe, and today Zimbabwe has three times more elephants than Kenya (see chart).  What happened that caused the dramatic reversal in elephant populations in the two African countries?  Terry Anderson and Shawn Regan of the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) explain in their excellent article "Shoot an Elephant, Save a Community": "Anti-hunting groups succeeded in getting Kenya to ban all hunting in 1977. Since then, its population of large wild animals has declined between 60 and 70 percent. The country’s elephant population declined from 167,000 in...

As outrage grows over the killing of Cecil the lion, Zimbabwe has called on the United States to extradite the American dentist who shot the prized big cat. Zimbabwe has started extradition proceedings and hopes the United States will cooperate, said Oppah Muchinguri, the African nation's environment minister. Walter Palmer "had a well-orchestrated agenda which would tarnish the image of Zimbabwe and further strain the relationship between Zimbabwe and the USA," Muchinguri said. Palmer, his professional hunter guide, and the owner of the land where the hunt took place are accused of an illegal hunt under the country's Parks and...

TIBURON — A resident of an exclusive San Francisco Bay neighborhood is the target of online outrage and may face criminal charges for shooting to death a doe and its fawn that were eating newly installed landscaping. Tiburon police arrested Mark Dickinson, 54, shortly after 5 a.m. on Sept. 2. Officers were responding to a report of a suspicious person when they found two severely injured deer in the street near Dickinson's bay-view home. The animals died a short time later. Officers arrested Dickinson after they determined he shot the deer several times with a high-powered pellet gun with scope,...