Ashok Kumar has passed away at the age of 81. The first Director of TRAFFIC India, former Vice President of the Wildlife Protection Society of India as well as Founder and Emeritus of the Wildlife Trust of India, Ashok was a champion for India’s wildlife and environment
On World Elephant Day today, EIA is calling on world governments to vote YES and support the closure of legal domestic ivory markets at the 17th Conference of the Parties to CITES, which takes place next month in Johannesburg. This is the biggest international gathering on wildlife trade in the calendar, attracting thousands of delegates who will debate how to regulate international trade.
Estimates suggest that at least one million pangolins have been traded in the past decade. Although there is no population data for any pangolin species, the levels of observed trade and the patterns of exploitation strongly suggest that all pangolin species are in decline and that trade is the primary reason
The map is intended as a regularly updated resource for use by anybody working in pangolin conservation as well as for general interest and is based on a subset of poaching and seizure incidents from 2000-15, derived from publicly available records, from primarily English and Chinese language sources
EIA campaigners participated in an important meeting of the Standing Committee of the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Geneva and addressed a range of issues involving wildlife and timber trade
Wildlife and forest crimes are transnational crimes where corruption is known to play a pivotal role in their facilitation and growth. Annually, illegal wildlife trade alone is estimated to range from $7 billion to $23 billion while illegal timber trade ranges between $30 billion to $100 billion.