The wildLIFE Project

Wendy Maruyama

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Kenya to Burn Biggest Ever Stockpile of Ivory

By Fiona Harvey via The Guardian

Tusks from more than 6,000 illegally killed elephants will be burned in Kenya on Saturday, the biggest ever destruction of an ivory stockpile and the most striking symbol yet of the plight of one of nature’s last great beasts.

The ceremonial burning in Nairobi national park at noon will be attended by Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, heads of state including Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, high-ranking United Nations and US officials, and charities. A wide network of conservation groups around the world have sent messages applauding the work.

On Friday, Kenyatta said Kenya would seek a “total ban on the trade in elephant ivory” at an international wildlife trade meeting in South Africa this September. “The future of the African elephant and rhino is far from secure so long as demand for their products continues to exist,” he said.

On Saturday about 105 tonnes of elephant ivory and 1.5 tonnes of rhino horn will burn in 11 large pyres, about seven times the amount previously burned in a single event. The bonfire, so big it will take about four hours to burn completely, highlights the continuing crisis in elephant populations. About 30,000 to 50,000 elephants a year were killed from 2008 to 2013 alone, according to the Born Free Foundation, and the rate of killing is outstripping the rate of births in Africa.

Continue reading on The Guardian

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Tiger Sanctuary in Thailand Closes Amid Accusations of Wildlife Trafficking

By Richard C. Paddock via The New York Times

The last tiger, sedated and caged, left the Tiger Temple in Thailand on Saturday in the back of a pickup truck. The abbot who founded the Buddhist-themed zoo has vanished. And five people, including three monks, have been arrested on suspicion of wildlife trafficking.

The removal of the last of 137 tigers after a weeklong operation effectively shut the tourist attraction, where visitors — many of them foreign tourists — could touch tigers and feed them by hand.

Conservationists had long believed that the zoo was a front for illegal trafficking in tiger parts, and on Thursday, the authorities said, they found their strongest evidence yet that monks and staff members were involved in that trade. A search of a truck leaving the temple compound found more than 1,600 illegal items, including two tiger pelts, tiger-skin amulets, tiger teeth and 67 tiger-skin lockets with photos of the temple’s abbot, Luangta Chan, inside.

Other grisly finds over the week included 40 dead tiger cubs stored in a freezer and 20 more preserved in jars.

The closing of the tourist attraction at the temple, Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, was a victory for conservationists in a predominantly Buddhist country where government officials often give deference to religious leaders.

The Wildlife Conservation Office has sought for months to remove the tigers and battled the temple’s lawyers in court before winning an order allowing it to start seizing the big cats on Monday. Thirty veterinarians, 60 parks department rangers and more than 250 others were involved in the operation.

Continue reading on The New York Times

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Chaos, Questions Surround Temple as Tigers Seized

By Sharon Guynup via National Geographic

Thailand's controversial Tiger Temple is losing its tigers.

The monastery and popular tourist attraction, the focus of allegations of animal abuse and trafficking for 15 years, was raided this week by authorities who planned to remove all 137 tigers held at the temple, three hours northwest of Bangkok.

The tiger attraction gained worldwide attention as a place where visitors could pet, feed, bathe, and walk the cats around on leashes, snapping selfies along the way. It has been a gold mine to the monastery, which is formally known as Wat Pa Luangta Bua Yannasampanno, bringing in an estimated three million dollars a year.

But conservation organizations and former temple workers have long accused the temple's monks of keeping the cats in jail-like enclosures, feeding them poorly, and physically abusing them. Critics also have accused the temple of trafficking endangered species in violation of Thai wildlife laws and an international treaty.

The temple's monks have rejected accusations regarding their care of the tigers, saying they have done nothing wrong.

Criticism of the temple escalated in recent months after new allegations of abuse surfaced—among them, a report by National Geographic that included a temple insider's claim that three of the temple's tigers had been killed.

On Monday Thailand's Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation began removing the tigers, an operation that required about 500 people. On Wednesday, after officials had tranquilized and removed six tigers that had been set loose in the temple's kitchen facilities, they investigated a tip from a temple volunteer and made a stunning discovery. Inside an industrial-size freezer they found the bodies of 40 frozen tiger cubs, all one to seven days old. They’d been dead for no more than two days, said Adisorn Nuchdumrong, the wildlife department’s deputy director.

Continue reading on National Geographic

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U.S. Bans Commercial Trade of African Elephant Ivory

By Jada F. Smith via The New York Times

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service announced a near-total ban on the commercial trade of African elephant ivory on Thursday.

Under current guidelines, ivory can be sold if it was brought into the United States before it was listed as endangered or if the elephant died of natural causes, as long as there is documentation. The new rules will restrict those sales to genuine antiques, like ivory statues, artwork or chiseled chess pieces, that have been lawfully imported, as well as items like musical instruments that were made using less than 200 grams of ivory.

The new rules aim to curb the rampant slaughter of the elephant, an endangered species, which experts say accounts for 96 deaths a day. They also intend to severely restrict the African ivory market in the United States, the world’s second-largest consumer of illegally poached ivory.

“The people of the United States will be speaking loudly,” said Daniel M. Ashe, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, “and saying we value living elephants in the wild more than we value the creation and the trade of trinkets made from ivory.”

The new rules help fulfill President Obama’s 2013 executive order on combating wildlife trafficking in the United States, while lending resources to help stem the problem in other countries.

Continue reading on The New York Times

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Indonesia’s Orangutans Suffer as Fires Rage and Businesses Grow

By Joe Cochrane via The New York Times

Katty, a docile, orange-haired preschooler, fell from a tree with a thump. Her teacher quickly picked her up, dusted off her bottom, refastened her white disposable diaper and placed her back on a branch more than seven feet off the ground.

Katty is an orangutan, about 9 months old, whose family is believed to have been killed by the huge fires last fall in the Indonesian regions of Borneo and Sumatra. The blazes are an annual occurrence, when farmers clear land by burning it, often for palm oil plantations. But last year’s fires were the worst on record, and scientists blamed a prolonged drought and the effects of El Niño.

The blazes destroyed more than 10,000 square miles of forests, blanketing large parts of Southeast Asia in a toxic haze for weeks, sickening hundreds of thousands of people and, according to the World Bank, causing $16 billion in economic losses.

They also killed at least nine orangutans, the endangered apes native to the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra. More than 100, trapped by the loss of habitat or found wandering near villages, had to be relocated. Seven orphans, including five infants, were rescued and taken to rehabilitation centers here.

Continue reading on The New York Times

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Rare Rhino Dies Days After Her Rediscovery

By Brian Clark Howard via National Geographic

When a female Sumatran rhino was captured in a pit trap in March in the Indonesian part of Borneo, the conservation community cheered. The endangered species had not been physically encountered in the area for 40 years. But now that hopeful story has taken a sad turn, as the rhino—known as Najaq—has died.

"Our hearts are saddened by this devastating news from Kalimantan," the International Rhino Foundation wrote on its Facebook page Tuesday.

Najaq succumbed to a leg infection after her health deteriorated over the past few days, Indonesia's environment minister said. Further investigations are pending.

According to Arnold Sitompul, conservation director of WWF-Indonesia, early evidence suggest the infection was first caused by a snare from an earlier poaching attempt, before the animal was caught by conservationists.

"The sad death of this rhino reminds us of the tremendous challenges associated with protecting the Sumatran rhino population in the Indonesian part of Borneo," says Sitompul.

Najaq was thought to be four or five years old. She was captured in a pit trap in Kutai Barat in East Kalimantan on March 12. Sumatran rhinos had been thought extinct from Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, but some camera trap evidence gathered in 2013 had suggested the return of at least a few individuals in the past few years.

As a result of that evidence, conservationists had set a trap with the goal of moving any rhinos from the area to a more secure sanctuary, about 93 miles (150 kilometers) away. The region was too close to mining operations and plantations to be considered safe habitat.

Continue reading on National Geographic

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Anthropologist Jane Goodall: China is pillaging Africa like an old colonial power

via RawStory

China is exploiting Africa’s resources just like European colonisers did, with disastrous effects for the environment, acclaimed primatologist Jane Goodall has told AFP.

On the eve of her 80th birthday, the fiery British wildlife crusader is whizzing across the world giving a series of lectures on the threats to our planet.

And the rising world power’s involvement on the continent especially raises alarms when it comes to her beloved chimpanzees and wildlife habitats.

During the last decade China has been investing heavily in African natural resources, developing mines, oil wells and running related construction companies.

Activists accuse Chinese firms of paying little attention to the environmental impact of their race for resources.

“In Africa, China is merely doing what the colonialist did. They want raw materials for their economic growth, just as the colonialists were going into Africa and taking the natural resources, leaving people poorer,” she told AFP in an interview in Johannesburg.

The stakes for the environment may even be larger this time round, she warns.

“China is bigger, and the technology has improved… It is a disaster.”

Other than massive investment in Africa’s mines, China is also a big market for elephant tusks and rhino horn, which has driven poaching of these animals to alarming heights.

Continue reading on RawStory

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March 3rd is World Wildlife Day, reminding us that the future of wildlife is #InOurHands. Organized crime is impacting the world’s forests and animals. Criminal networks are generating massive illicit profits at the expense of these fauna and flora and harming the people who depend on them. 

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Wendy Maruyama: The wildLIFE Project, exhibition on view at  The Center for Art in Wood, February 5—April 23, 2016

A John Thornton film/Music by Stan Leonard

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Exclusive: Hard Numbers Reveal Scale of America’s Trophy-Hunting Habit

By Rachael Bale via National Geographic

This week sport hunters placed bids on at least 600 permits at Safari Club International’s annual convention, or, as it’s also called, “the ultimate hunter’s market.” The auction drew sharp criticism, but those 600 permits are only a sliver of American hunters’ involvement in the sport hunting industry.

Sport hunters, those who kill animals for recreation rather than out of necessity, imported more than 1.26 million trophies to the U.S. in the decade from 2005 through 2014, according to a new analysis of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s import data by Humane Society International and the Humane Society of United States. That’s an average of 126,000 trophy imports a year, or 345 a day.

“What we hope the report accomplishes is that we shed light on the scale of the role we play in killing some of the world’s vulnerable and endangered species,” said Masha Kalinina, an international trade policy specialist at Humane Society International.

Sport hunters say their activities support conservation by boosting local economies and providing incentives for the preservation of land and wildlife for high-paying hunters.

Conservationists, animal welfare advocates, and many scientists, however, say sport hunting puts pressure on vulnerable populations,disrupts social networks, and doesn’t pump up local economies as much as hunters argue. Many also argue that destroying wildlife for pleasure is unethical.

Continue reading on National Geographic

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Ring of Elephant Poachers Broken Up by Tanzanian Authorities

By Willy Lowry via The New York Times

An investigation into the death of a British helicopter pilot who was looking for poachers near Serengeti National Park has uncovered a criminal poaching ring led by a rogue intelligence officer, the Tanzanian authorities said on Monday.

After a weeklong manhunt that involved house-to-house searches in villages surrounding the reserve, at least nine people have been arrested in connection with the death of the pilot, including Iddi Mashaka, a former police officer who used his current position as an intelligence officer with a regional conservation authority to help the poachers travel undetected, said Lazaro Mambosasa, the regional police commissioner. With the arrests, the authorities said, the ring has been dismantled.

The pilot, Roger Gower, 37, was shot on Jan. 29 while conducting anti-poaching surveillance over the Maswa Game Reserve. He and a colleague, Nick Bester, came across a newly killed elephant and circled back to take a closer look, and their helicopter was shot at by poachers who were apparently still at the scene, the police have said. A bullet from a .458 hunting rifle punctured the floor of the helicopter and ripped through Mr. Gower’s leg and shoulder. He managed to land the helicopter but died from his injuries before help could arrive.

Among those arrested was the gunman, Njile Gonga, 28, who led the police to the rifle, hidden on his roof, and to tusks he had taken from the elephant, Mr. Mambosasa said.

Continue reading on The New York Times

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Endangered black rhino found dead, horns missing in Maasai Mara

By Lisa Kamau via Citizen Digital

An endangered black rhino was found dead and its horns missing at the Maasai Mara National Park in Narok County on Sunday.

The Rhino, identified as Temple by the Maasai Mara management, is said to have been coming from Serengeti National Park in Tanzania before it met its fate.

In a statement to newsrooms on Sunday, the Kenya Wildlife Service said Temple was aged between 15-20 years and according to the state of the carcass, it may have been killed on Friday.

The carcass was found near Sand River barely 300 metres away from the Kenya-Tanzania border by a Kenya Wildlife Service veterinary team conducting a rhino ear-notching exercise.

“The ear-notching exercise is done to monitor rhino movements and is being carried out jointly by KWS, Narok County and Tanzania National Parks (Tanapa),” read the statement.

Following the unfortunate incident, a joint Kenyan and Tanzanian security operation to track down the killers was launched.

This is the first reported case of rhino poaching in the country this year, last year Kenya lost 11 rhinos to poachers.

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The WildLIFE Project at The Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

On view: February 5 - April 23, 2016

Photographs by John Carlano 

Learn more about the exhibition here.

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The Fight to Save Pangolins from WildAid on Vimeo.

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Today is World Pangolin Day! Learn more about this incredible creature at WWF 

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After Poaching Deaths, Elephants Rearrange Families

By Sindya N. Bhanoo via The New York Times

Poachers target older elephants for ivory because their tusks are larger. Elephants live in groups led by older females, and their loss may drastically affect the social structures of these communities.

Yet elephant societies managed to survive the loss of their matriarchs, a new study has found.

“We were expecting some sort of social collapse, especially knowing how important matriarchs are to a society,” said Shifra Goldenberg, a wildlife ecologist doctoral candidate at Colorado State University and an author of the new report, which was published in Current Biology.

Instead, the researchers found that after the loss of a matriarch, female offspring often stepped in and leveraged their mother’s contacts to rebuild social networks. (The study did not track adult males.)

Typically, elephants live in core, bond and clan groups. Core groups comprise close relatives, and bond and clan groups include more distant ones.

After poaching incidents, the researchers watched as different core groups fused. “Families that dissolve because of poaching group up,” Ms. Goldenberg said. “Sometimes, it is genetically based, but we also saw unrelated groupings.”

The researchers studied the behavior of adult female elephants in northern Kenya’s Samburu and Buffalo Springs national reserves over a 16-year period starting in 1997. A major drought in 2009 also affected the population.

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After Cecil Furor, U.S. Aims to Protect Lions Through Endangered Species Act

By Erica Goode via The New York Times

Five months after a lion named Cecil was shot and killed in Zimbabwe by a Minnesota dentist, the Obama administration has decided to place lions in Africa under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, an action that will set a higher bar for hunters who want to bring lion trophies into the United States.

Lions in central and West Africa will be listed as endangered, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service, which announced the change on Monday. Lions in southern and East Africa will be classified as threatened, with a special rule that prods countries to regulate sport hunting of lions in ways that promote conservation.

Both designations, the agency said, will result in stricter criteria for the import of live lions and lion parts, like heads, paws or skins.

Trophies from countries where lions are endangered will be “generally prohibited,” except in very limited circumstances, the agency said.

Trophies could still be imported from nations where lions are listed as threatened — like Tanzania, Zimbabwe and South Africa, all popular countries for American hunters — as long as they met the standards set under the special rule and the animals were killed legally.

Daniel M. Ashe, the director of the wildlife service, called the lion “one of the planet’s most beloved species.” The agency said its decision was a response to the drastic decline of lion populations in the wild.

The government is acting almost five years after conservation groups petitioned to have the African lion listed as endangered, and the final ruling offers stronger protections than a 2014 proposal by the administration, under which lions in all African countries would have been classified as threatened.

Continue Reading via The New York Times