A large percentage of black poachers from South Africa and Mozambique will visit a witchdoctor before going to poach, a South African antipoaching expert said. “Witchcraft is big among the poachers,” the antipoacher who asked not to be named said. “He’ll bless them and bless their firearm and give them some power.” Poachers pay witchdoctors […]
Profiling ups risk for Asian rhino horn mules
Rhino horn syndicates may have replaced Vietnamese couriers with white South Africans to courier the illegal horns on commercial flights from Africa to Asia because of courier profiling. Anti-wildtrade NGO TRAFFIC’s rhino and elephant specialist Tom Milliken has speculated that the syndicates may have stopped using Vietnamese students to carry contraband horns in their airplane […]
Australia’s Byron Bay first on IUCN environment management Greenlist
The world’s first ever Green List presentations was like the Oscars. As part of the IUCN 2014 World Parks Congress in Sydney, the new initiative to recognise excellence in managing protected areas was welcomed with enthusiasm and earnestness from 3600 congress attendees. The hosts presented the winners in alphabetical order so out of 23 winners […]
Shipstrikes: The irony of the Southern Right Whale’s name
The Southern Right Whale has never been called the Southern Correct Whale, but it could have been. It’s interesting how a species gets its name and I have always wondered why the Southern Right Whale was named that. I thought it had something to do with their face being the right way up, because their […]
Ozzy Eastcoast humpbacks diversify migration routes
As you read this, thousands of fat humpback whales are converging on the Australian East Coast from across the Antarctica. Fattened up and sadly parted from the krill on which they had gorged themselves all summer, a large chunk of the Australian East Coast population is still in the Southern Ocean south of NZ. […]
Better to have loved the reef and lost…
People along the Queensland coast have watched half of the Great Barrier Reef die in the last 30 years. To capture some of these people’s stories, Guardian journalist Oliver Milman and two photographers, Christian Bennet and Mike Bowers, travelled the reef from Cairns to Brisbane for a week filming and talking to experts and locals. […]