The expanding trade in hongmu (rare and valuable “red wood” used primarily for antique-style furniture in China) has driven successive boom and bust cycles all over the world, marked by unsustainable harvest, multiple legal violations (theft, smuggling, corruption) and violence in source countries
The vaquita’s plight as the world’s most endangered cetacean species is not due to direct threats such as hunting. Instead, its plummeting numbers are due to indiscriminate killing in illegal gillnets used to poach critically endangered totoaba fish
Criminality and corruption have swept a flood of endangered rosewood exports from Laos and Cambodia which fundamentally violate trade protections imposed by the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES)
A briefing for the 66th meeting of the CITES Standing Committee, January 2016. Hongmu is the Chinese term for high-end reproduction furniture made from richly hued durable tropical hardwoods, a sector posting a significant threat to the timber species targeted.
A new report to the 66th Standing Committee of CITES calling for an urgent crackdown on the illegal trade in endangered totoaba fish swim bladders which is driving the critically endangered vaquita porpoise to extinction as collateral damage
Between 2010-15, nearly 30 per cent of tigers seized in illegal trade were suspected to be sourced from captive operations. Tiger farming and trade in captive tiger parts and products poses a serious challenge to enforcement and demand-reduction efforts