Quick Key Facts Wildlife trafficking is the second biggest direct threat to species, following habitat destruction. It’s a huge business with smuggled goods valued at $10 billion a year, and involves tens of thousands of species and millions of wild plants and animals. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that 958 species […]
A new report has found traders illegally selling donkey skins on social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. According to the investigation, donkey skins are in high demand for ejiao, a traditional Chinese remedy. Traders are ignoring bans on sales of donkey skins, including in Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, even […]
In December of last year, YouTuber Niko Omilana shot a video called Behind the Bucket, appearing to show happy birds at a farm that sells chickens to KFC. The video, shared on Twitter by media site Joe, shows the chickens wandering freely in a well-heated shed filled with straw and enrichment activities including a swing.
The highest court in Ecuador has ruled in favor of wild animals. A case for Estrellita, a woolly monkey taken from the wild and kept as a pet, is the first case to apply the country’s “rights of nature” law to animals. Ana Beatriz Burbano Proaño, a librarian, kept Estrellita as a pet for 18 […]
Over the course of 2021, Wildlife Services, an agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), killed over 1.75 million animals. The program noted it kills animals to protect agriculture, human health and vulnerable species, but conservationists are protesting the killings, which equate to about 200 deaths per hour throughout the year. According to Wildlife […]
The Sonoran Desert toad excretes a chemical that can induce a psychedelic experience so memorable that some people call it the “God molecule.” But, unfortunately, the largest native toad in the U.S. is not immortal. Conservationists are now warning that demand for the toad’s psychedelic toxin could put the species at risk.
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent. This is a period of fasting and reflection, when believers often start a new discipline or give up something that is distracting them from their spiritual life. That makes it a perfect time to start a vegan practice, according to In Defense of […]
In two years, Iceland will officially hang up its harpoon. The country, one of only three in the world that allows commercial whaling, will end the controversial practice when current quotas expire.
I woke up this morning to see two news articles, both involving animals but very different in tone. One article highlighted how a man was convicted of animal cruelty in Australia for shooting an arrow through a cat’s head. The other hailed the capture of a nearly 1,000-pound mako shark off the coast of New Jersey as an “incredible feat” and called the fishermen “winners.”