Earth Protect Blog

           ZAMBIA  By Ruth Maclean and Collins Chilumba Sampa The New York Times The hunter heard the helicopter coming. He grabbed his AK-47, he said, and jumped behind a tree. He was on an illegal elephant hunt with a group of men inside North Luangwa National P...

By Nikki Ekstein If he has his way, Paul Allen will cover 90,000 square miles of African territory with smart sensors and drones by the end of this year to bring hyper-connectivity to Africa’s most remote, wildlife-packed corners. It’s the biggest, tech-focused conservation proj...

Leonardo DiCaprio may have – finally - bagged an Oscar this year for his performance in survival film The Revenant, but his next role everyone's talking about right now is behindthe camera. If you’re one of Leo’s dedicated 11 million Instagram followers, you’ll be well aware of his involvement in c...

One of the world’s largest — and one of Kenya’s most famous — elephant bulls died recently in an attack by poachers. At about 45 years old, the elephant, named Satao, was famed for being one of the last “great tuskers” —  elephants with long, massive tusks that reach the ground. His impressive...

There are few places in the world that conjure the same kind of imagery as the Chobe National Park in Botswana. Drifting through the savannas, torrents of water wind-off into a sunlit horizon; cheetahs stalk their prey as flocks of gazelle prance through the long, parched grass; and African elephan...

China’s demand for luxury knickknacks lies beneath some spectacular carnage of late. As we highlighted in August, the illegal ivory trade funds al-Shabaab, the terrorist group behind the Westgate Mall massacre in Kenya late last month. Al-Shabaab finances as much as 40% of its operations&n...

The sweeping grasslands of the African savannah might not exist without elephants. They knock down so many trees that forests transform into plains, where other grazers and birds feed. Elephants maintain the shape of the land, and without them, everything would change. And for many, that would make ...

Anything that can be traded—legally or illegally—usually will be traded. That goes for the tusks, fins and other animals parts—and the endangered species that are attached to them. It hasn’t gotten the coverage that the issue deserves, but we’re currently in the middle of a poaching catast...

Today His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales and the UK government hosted a conference to call for action at the highest level to end the trade in illegal wildlife – a trade that presents a grave threat not only to the natural world, but also to national and regional security. WWF welcomes this...

Poachers have likely killed off the last rhinos in Mozambique's Limpopo National Park, according to a park official who spoke with Portugal News. Park director António Abacar said that no rhinos have been sighted in Limpopo National Park since January, "which means that the ones that lived in the pa...

India Monday lost its ninth rhino to poaching so far this year within the northern state of Assam. The greater-one horned, or Indian rhino, was found shot dead with its horn removed in Kaziranga National Park. Seven other rhinos have already been killed in the park during 2013, and an additiona...

The new wave of killing of elephants in Africa is in many ways far graver than the crisis of the 1970s and 80s. Firstly there are fewer elephants, and secondly the demand for ivory is far higher. Record ivory prices in the Far East are fueling poachers, organized crime, and political instability rig...

  The population of Uganda's mountain gorillas has grown to 400, up from 302 in 2006, according to a census conducted last year, bringing the total number of mountain gorillas in Africa to 880 and giving hope to conservationists trying to save the critically endangered species. Uganda is no...