Category Archives: Conservation

Indian states ban guns and airguns to safeguard Amur falcons

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Assam, Nagaland and Manipur officials also confiscate catapults and nets to ensure birds can recuperate

Officials in north-east India have banned the use of guns and airguns and confiscated catapults and nets in an effort to safeguard the small Amur falcons that make an autumn pit stop on their way to sunny South Africa.

Forest officers were patrolling areas of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur states to make sure no one disturbs the long-distance travelling raptors who stop briefly in India.

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Thin fish, small catches: can Japan’s sushi culture survive climate crisis?

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Global heating is warming waters, changing salmon and tuna migration – and hurting fisheries

There is little at Shiogama seafood market to suggest that Japanese consumers could one day be deprived of their favourite seafood – from giant crab’s legs simmering in a winter nabe hotpot to spheres of salmon roe resting on a bed of rice wrapped in nori seaweed.

Stalls heave with huge sides of bluefin tuna, expertly transformed into more manageable portions by knife-wielding workers, while early-morning shoppers pause to inspect boxes of squid, flounder and sea pineapples landed only hours earlier.

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Brazil election goes to the wire after ill-tempered final TV debate

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Veteran leftist Lula da Silva holds slender poll lead over Jair Bolsonaro as national divide grows before Sunday vote

The two political heavyweights vying to become Brazil’s next president have locked horns during the final television debate before a momentous election with profound implications for the Amazon rainforest, the global climate emergency and the future of one of the world’s largest democracies.

The former leftist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro faced off in Rio at the studios of Brazil’s biggest broadcaster, with eve of election polls giving Lula a slender but not unassailable lead.

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Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira remembered in Lancaster exhibition

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Exhibition at Halton Mill is part of a month of activities about the Amazon commemorating Phillips and Pereira

An exhibition in memory of the murdered Guardian journalist Dom Phillips and indigenous expert Bruno Pereira opens on Sunday ahead of an international conference on saving the Amazon rainforest which is being held next month.

The two men were killed in Brazilian Amazonia in June 2022 while researching a book Phillips was writing called How to Save the Amazon.

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Russia and China must ‘get on side with conservation’, US tells Antarctic commission meeting in Hobart

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US assistant secretary of state says two countries have stopped creation of new protected areas in Antarctica ‘for too long’

The US has urged China and Russia to “get on side with conservation” and stop blocking nearly 4m sq km in new marine protected areas around Antarctica.

Speaking at a major international meeting on Antarctic conservation in Hobart, the US assistant secretary of state, Monica Medina, said the two countries had prevented the creation of three new protected areas in Antarctic waters “for too long” and it was time to “shake up the system”.

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‘Shocking blow to Indigenous land rights’ as court dismisses Maasai herder claim

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Herders lodge appeal against ruling in their case against the Tanzanian government, which they say is violently evicting them from ancestral land

Lawyers for Maasai herders who say the Tanzanian government is trying to violently evict them from their ancestral land to make way for a luxury game reserve have lodged an appeal against a court ruling that dismissed their case.

Donald Deya, lead counsel for the herders and chief executive officer of the Pan-African Lawyers Union (Palu), said his team had, on Wednesday, appealed against the verdict of the east African court of justice, which campaigners branded “a shocking blow” to Indigenous land rights.

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Newlywed among four women chosen to run Antarctic outpost

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British women beat 6,000 applicants to spend five months counting penguins and running post office on Goudier Island

It was one of the strangest of job alerts: a call to run the world’s most remote, coldest post office – on an island with no permanent residents – and count penguins in almost continuous daylight.

But bizarre or not, it struck a chord: 6,000 people applied for the four jobs on Goudier Island in Port Lockroy, and now the winners have been announced: a newlywed, who will leave her husband behind for what she is calling a “solo honeymoon” and three other British women, who are equally thrilled by the adventure ahead.

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Prince Harry wildlife NGO under fire after elephants kill three in Malawi

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African Parks, of which the prince is president, is one of three parties accused of rushing a mass translocation of the mammals


Two wildlife organisations, including one headed by Prince Harry, have been accused of caring about animals more than people after three men died following an elephant translocation in Malawi.

In July, more than 250 elephants were moved from Liwonde national park in southern Malawi to the country’s second-largest protected area, Kasungu, in a three-way operation between Malawi’s national park service and the NGOs African Parks and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw).

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Spanish police seize smuggled baby eels worth €270,000

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Dozens arrested in operation as officials warn of resurgence in trafficking of endangered elvers

Spanish police have arrested 29 people after seizing 180kg of critically endangered young European eels with a value on the hidden market of €270,000 (£237,000).

The Guardia Civil said the operation, in collaboration with Europol, had also led to 20 arrests elsewhere in Europe.

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NSW on alert after more than a dozen cane toads found an hour north of Sydney

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Agriculture minister says size of colony in Mandalong indicates there could be many more of the toxic intruders in the area

New South Wales is on alert after more than a dozen cane toads were found on a private property an hour’s drive north of Sydney.

The state’s Department of Primary Industries (DPI) biosecurity helpline confirmed a report had been made by a member of the public on 19 September after a “number” of cane toads were found at a property in the rural town of Mandalong, west of Lake Macquarie.

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Weak controls failing to stop illegal seafood landing on EU plates, investigation shows

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EU financial watchdog blames small fines and feeble controls in some states for amount of illegal seafood


Illegally fished seafood continues to end up on the plates of EU citizens due to weak controls and insignificant fines in some member states, auditors have found.

The European Union, the world’s largest importer of fishery products, requires member states to take action against fishing vessels and EU nationals engaged in illegal fishing activities anywhere in the world.

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Sudden die-off of endangered sturgeon alarms Canadian biologists

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The deaths within days of 11 sturgeon, a species unchanged for thousands of years, have puzzled scientists

When the first spindly, armour-clad carcass was spotted in the fast-flowing Nechako River in early September, Nikolaus Gantner and two colleagues scrambled out on a jet boat, braving strong currents to investigate the grim discovery.

Days later, the remains of 10 others were spotted floating along a 100km stretch of the river in western Canada.

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Turtle concern: Australian businessman denies threatening to sell Conflict Islands to China

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Ian Gowrie-Smith says he was frustrated the Australian government did not respond to urgent funding request for turtle conservation

The owner of 21 tropical islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea says he never threatened to sell them to China and his main aim is to save the turtles that nest there.

Ian Gowrie-Smith, an Australian businessman and investor, bought the Conflict Islands, which lie less than 1,000km from the Australian coast, almost two decades ago.

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Buzz stops: bus shelter roofs turned into gardens for bees and butterflies

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Bee bus stops first appeared in the Dutch city of Utrecht. Now the UK is planning for more than 1,000 and there is growing interest across Europe and in Canada and Australia

Butterflies and bees are getting their own transport network as “bee bus stops” start to pop up around UK cities and across Europe. Humble bus shelter roofs are being turned into riots of colour, with the number of miniature gardens – full of pollinator-friendly flora such as wild strawberries, poppies and pansies – set to increase by 50% in the UK by the end of this year.

Leicester is leading the charge with 30 bee bus stops installed since 2021. Derby has 18, and there are others in Southhampton, Newcastle, Sunderland, Derby, Oxford, Cardiff and Glasgow. Brighton council installed one last year after a petition was signed by almost 50,000 people.

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ACT urges Tanya Plibersek to quash defence housing plan that would destroy critically endangered grasslands

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Defence Housing Australia wants to clear nearly 16 hectares of natural temperate grassland in Canberra’s north-west

The ACT government has urged the federal environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, to reject a defence housing development that would destroy critically endangered grasslands in Canberra’s north-west.

Defence Housing Australia (DHA) has proposed building hundreds of houses on an old naval transmission site in the suburb of Lawson.

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‘This land belonged to us’: Nestlé supply chain linked to disputed Indigenous territory

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Investigation reveals cattle raised on Mỹky territory ended up in global supply chain including food giant

On one side of the fence, in dense forest, the Mỹky people grow their crops: cassava, pequi and cabriteiro fruit. On the other side, ranchers raise cattle on devastated land. That land is the Mỹky’s, they say.

Xinuxi Mỹky, the village elder, says this region used to be a forest where different villages thrived. Only one now remains and the farms have cut into that land as well. “This pasture, where the whites live, was also our village, but now they are raising cattle. The land belonged to us: Indigenous peoples.”

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Libyan militia detains hundreds of Chadians after poachers arrested

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At least 400 Chadian workers rounded up in east Libyan town of Ajdabiya after security forces in Chad arrest four Libyan poachers

Hundreds of Chadians are being rounded up and detained on the streets of a Libyan town for a ninth day in retaliation for the Chad government’s arrest of four Libyan men on suspicion of poaching endangered animals.

At least 400 people have now been arrested in the city of Ajdabiya by a militia linked to the warlord Khalifa Haftar, commander of the self-styled Libyan National Army.

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EU slammed over failure to protect marine life from ‘destructive’ fishing

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Strict no-take policies urged by scientists, who note there is less protection in 59% of marine protected areas than outside MPAs

The waters of the EU are in a “dismal” state, with only a third of fish populations studied in the north-east Atlantic considered to be in good condition, according to more than 200 scientists and conservationists.

The analysis, issued on Monday, follows a scathing report from the European court of auditors two years ago, which warned that the EU had failed to halt marine biodiversity loss in Europe’s waters and to restore fishing to sustainable levels.

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Fears for platypus populations after flooding in Queensland and NSW

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Ecologists urge people to monitor for platypuses in their area after indications of a ‘severe decline’ in Ipswich

There are fears that platypus populations might have been wiped out by recent floods in greater Brisbane, sparking new calls for the species to be nationally recognised as a threatened.

While the platypus is endangered in South Australia and was listed as vulnerable in Victoria last year, the iconic monotreme is not officially considered threatened in Queensland and New South Wales.

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Brazilian forest guardian killed weeks after joining Amazon summit

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Janildo Oliveira Guajajara had recently taken part in an Amazon assembly organised by murdered Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira

A rainforest activist from one of Brazil’s leading Indigenous protection groups has been killed just weeks after participating in an Amazon assembly organised by the murdered Indigenous specialist Bruno Pereira.

Janildo Oliveira Guajajara, a member of the Guardiões da Floresta (Forest Guardians) collective, was reportedly shot dead in the early hours of Saturday near the Araribóia Indigenous territory where he lived.

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