Protecting the environment with intelligence
I was a bit giddy by the end of last night – and for a change it wasn’t because of jetlag! The Healing Without Harm event at the annual David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation lecture saw me sharing the Royal Geographical Society stage with some of the giants of conservation. The man himself, David Shepherd, introduced [...]
The international community is finally recognising that environmental crime is not some small-scale criminal activity taking place deep in the jungles of Africa or Asia but is serious, growing, transnational and, shockingly, highly organised through the involvement of notorious criminal syndicates and terrorist groups. This week, during the ongoing 67th session of the UN General [...]
The use of rhino horn as a recreational drug or cancer treatment in Asia is based on myths, but has escalated exponentially over the last few years. As a result, rhino in Africa and Asia are brutally slaughtered in huge numbers for their horns. With prices able to fetch more than cocaine or gold, the [...]
I joined EIA at the start of the year and have been struck by the vast range of different environmental issues we have worked on during the past three decades. Since our very first investigation into the Faroe Islands’ pilot whale hunt in 1984, we have investigated and campaigned on the global ivory trade, [...]
Ivory trader to EIA: “There are only two to three big bosses. Beneath them there are smaller bosses. The big bosses won’t go out and sell the stuff themselves … generally, the ‘big bosses’ don’t show their faces”. “The media tend to focus on wildlife crimes they can see,” says Bryan Christy, journalist and author. [...]
The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) is an international agreement signed by 175 governments, including one of the world’s major markets for illegal wildlife products – China. The international trade in elephant ivory and rhino horn is forbidden under CITES and, after a brief respite from poaching during the 1980s and ’90s, [...]