Hong Kong seizes 1.5 tonnes of smuggled elephant ivory

Stumped by a ban designed to save elephants from extinction, Hong Kong's master carvers turned to a long dead species that left thousands of tonnes of frozen ivory in Siberian mass graves.

(AP) -- A proposal by Tanzania to weaken the 21-year ban on ivory sales was rejected by a U.N. conservation meeting over fears the African country has been failing to crack down on rising incidents of poaching.

Urgent law enforcement action by governments in Central and West Africa and South-east Asia is crucial to addressing the illicit ivory trade, according to a new analysis of elephant trade data released today.

An international convention will meet next week to decide whether to grant requests from Tanzania and Zambia to lower the protection status of their elephants, allowing them to conduct one-time sales of stockpiled ivory.

Legal loopholes and insufficient law enforcement mean that Thailand continues to harbour the largest illegal ivory market in Asia, says a new report from the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.

African elephants are being slaughtered for their ivory at a pace unseen since an international ban on the ivory trade took effect in 1989. But the public outcry that resulted in that ban is absent today, ...

Large-river specialist fishes—from giant species like paddlefish and blue catfish, to tiny crystal darters and silver chub—are in danger, but researchers say there is greater hope to save them if major ...

Tropical plants flower at supra-annual irregular intervals. In addition, mass flowering is typical for the tropical forests in Borneo and elsewhere, where hundreds of different plant timber species from the ...

Ocean acidification is damaging some marine species while others thrive, say scientists. An international team studied the effect of ocean acidification on plankton in the North Sea over the past forty years, ...

British wildlife is under serious threat, according to a major new study out Wednesday, which found that 60 percent of species assessed have declined in numbers over the past 50 years.

A controversial cull of up to 10,000 wild horses in Australia's harsh Outback reportedly began Wednesday in a bid to control the feral animals which officials say are destroying the land.

Declines in the biodiversity of pollinating insects and wild plants have slowed in recent years, according to a new study. Researchers led by the University of Leeds and the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the Netherlands ...