Special Reports

A crew of seven Russians and a Ukrainian has been taken hostage off the coast of Nigeria after their ship was attacked, diplomats in Moscow and Kiev said yesterday. “According to the information of the Russian embassy in Abuja, there has been an armed attack on the cargo ship BBC Caribbean which belongs to German company Briese Schiffahrt,” a Russian foreign ministry statement said. “Seven Russian citizens who are members of the crew have been taken hostage,” it said, adding

Elephant poaching levels of twenty to thirty thousand per year are threatening to bring the animal to extinction in the wild in 20 years. Other species such as Rhinos, Lions, Tigers, Sharks, and recently Walruses are threaten for animal parts that are smuggled into the US illegally. Pressure is being put on the US Congress from a number of organizations to address the issue. One organization is US Fish & Wildlife, which crushed 6 tons of Ivory in 2013 in Denver and anothe

About a fifth of Mali’s rare desert elephants have been killed this year as ivory poachers exploit a security vacuum in the country’s north, the United Nations said on Thursday. At least 57 elephants died between January and June among the West African country’s only herd of around 300 animals, the U.N. peacekeeping mission MINUSMA said in a statement. “(The poached elephants) represent about 20 percent of the remaining (Malian) population and were killed in areas where insec

Commercial imports of elephant ivory have been banned by federal and international law for decades. But now wildlife activists are pressing West Coast states to pass their own laws to deter the poaching of elephants and rhinos. Initiative 1401, bankrolled by billionaire Paul Allen, will be considered by Washington state voters next month. A ballot measure in Oregon that would criminalize trafficking in endangered wildlife is also in the works. And a new law in California bans

Fourteen elephants were poisoned by cyanide in Zimbabwe in three separate incidents, two years after poachers killed more than 200 elephants by poisoning, Zimbabwe’s National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority said Tuesday. Three elephants were killed in Matusadona National Park in the Kariba area in northern Zimbabwe and 11 more pachyderms were found dead in two different spots in Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe over the past two weeks. In all cases the elephan

Last week Chinese President Xi Jinping travelled to Washington to meet with President Barack Obama. As with all meetings of two heads of State, only each country’s top priorities were on the agenda–issues like cyber security, climate change, and the continued instability in Afganistan–so conservationists around the world took note when wildlife trafficking (and, specifically, the elephant ivory trade) made the list. In fact, ivory trade was included in a joint statement from

Rhinos Without Borders is celebrating the birth of a rhino calf following the relocation of its mother to Botswana. The organisation, which is in a partnership with the Great Plains Conservation and andBeyond, is seeking to translocate certain rhinos from high-risk areas to protect them from poachers. Botswana has been chosen as the safe haven for the rhinos due to its anti-poaching record. "One of the aims of the Rhinos Without Borders project is to create a new breeding pop

​The 70th meeting of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) opened on September 15 amid an ongoing humanitarian crisis of refugees and migrants escaping various conflicts. The world’s heads of state are expected to discuss not only their fate but also what exacerbates the violence they flee. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), during the past 15 years “at least 18 violent conflicts have been fuelled by the exploitation of natural resources, wheth

As elephant poaching in Africa by organised crime gangs using high-tech equipment rises, those working to stop their extinction in the wild have turned to technology too. In the remote wilds of northern Kenya's Samburu reserve, the latest technology from US internet giant Google creates three-dimensional maps using data from satellite tracking elephant collars, providing security for the animals in the short term, and helping protect their habitat in the long term. "It is a

These poignant pictures of Africa's biggest beasts in the wild show how fragile their lives are in the face of poachers, human encroachment and trophy hunters. In the haunting selection captured by British photographer Gary Roberts, he highlights the dangers faced by the anti-poaching patrol as they try desperately to protect elephants, zebras, lions and cheetahs from the money-hungry poachers. The photographer's extensive work in Tanzania and Kenya brought him into contact w