An Ecuadorean judge sentenced 20 Chinese fisherman Monday to up to four years in prison and fined them more than $5 million for illegally fishing more than 6,000 sharks in the Galápagos Marine Reserve, where fishing is strictly prohibited. The sentence was praised by Ecuadorean environmental officials, who have condemned the ongoing illegal fishing in waters near the Galapagos Islands.

When Ecuadorean authorities boarded the Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999 earlier this month off the Galápagos Islands, they had little idea what awaited them. Officials at the Galápagos National Park had called in the navy to investigate the Chinese-flagged vessel, which had been sailing through the area's marine reserve without explanation.

An auction of rhino horns from the stockpiles of the world’s biggest private breeder will go ahead after a South African court ordered that the government release permits for them. The sale of about 500 kilograms (1,102 pounds) of horns by John Hume, who has more than 1,500 rhinos, will begin on Wednesday after he successfully challenged the Department of Environmental Affairs’ refusal to hand over the permits that it had granted to him, enabling the sale...

Good news out of South Africa (home to a very large rhinoceros population) - poaching numbers seem to be decreasing and poaching related arrests are increasing. 2016 saw 1,054 rhinos poached for the horns, a drop from the 1,174 rhinos taken in South Africa in 2015. At the same time, there were approximately 680 arrests that came as a direct result of park ranger intervention, up from about 315 such arrests in 2015.

The head of an animal conservation NGO who had received numerous death threats has been shot and killed by an unknown gunman in Tanzania. Wayne Lotter, 51, was shot on Wednesday evening in the Masaki district of the city of Dar es Salaam. The wildlife conservationist was being driven from the airport to his hotel when his taxi was stopped by another vehicle. Two men, one armed with a gun opened his car door and shot him.

Good news out of South Africa (home to a very large rhinoceros population) - poaching numbers seem to be decreasing and poaching related arrests are increasing. 2016 saw 1,054 rhinos poached for the horns, a drop from the 1,174 rhinos taken in South Africa in 2015. At the same time, there were approximately 680 arrests that came as a direct result of park ranger intervention, up from about 315 such arrests in 2015.

Two lions who were rescued from circuses in Colombia and Peru last year and transported to South African wild have been killed by poachers in Emoya Big Cat Sanctuary.

South Africa’s highest court has rejected a bid by the government to keep a ban on domestic trade in rhino horn, a court document shows. The ruling by the constitutional court effectively means rhino horns may be traded locally. The department of environmental affairs had sought to retain a moratorium on domestic trade in rhino horns which was dismissed by last year by another court. In a one paragraph ruling, the court ruled that the application by government be dismissed.

One of Kenya's last great tusker elephants was reportedly shot and killed by poachers. During a routine flyover on January 4 by the conservation group Tsavo Trust in southern Kenya, the body of a famous, roughly 50-year-old African elephant known as Satao II was discovered, though news of his death was only announced Monday. While the cause of death has not been confirmed, conservationists believe he was killed by a poisoned arrow while feeding in the eastern region of the park. The area is known as a "poaching hot spot."

A rhino has been shot dead by poachers at a zoo in France in what is believed to be the first such incident in Europe. Keepers found Vince, a four-year-old white rhino, in his enclosure at Thoiry Zoo on Tuesday morning. One of his horns had been hacked off with a chainsaw, police said. The African rhino's horn commands high prices on the black market, with about 100 killed every month in the wild. However, this is thought to be the first time poachers have targeted a rhino living in a European zoo.

Liu Dongsheng, deputy head of the SFA, made the remarks at the opening ceremony of a wildlife protection campaign, without specifying detailed numbers. China will stop commercial processing and sales of ivory by the end of this year. Last year, it imposed a three-year ban on ivory imports in an escalated fight against illegal trading of wild animals and plants. The number of illegal wildlife trade cases has been on the decline since last year, said Liu.

Poachers have killed two rhinos during a vicious attack on an animal orphanage in South Africa. Rhinos Impi and Gugu had their horns taken after a gang of poachers took staff hostage at the Fundimvelo Thula Thula Rhino Orphanage in KwaZulu-Natal on Monday night. Gugu was killed instantly but Impi survived, only to have to be put down the next morning due to his injuries. Staff members are understood to have been assaulted during the attack.

A suspected poacher was trampled to death and another seriously injured in an attack by wild elephants at a forest near Thattekkad bird sanctuary where a four member gang allegedly ventured for poaching, forest officials said in Kochi on Thursday. They said the gang entered the forest, some 65 km from here at about 9 pm last night for poaching and did not notice the pachyderms standing in their path and got trapped in front of it

Every year more than 100 wildlife rangers are murdered in the line of duty. Why do they get so little support? And where is the outrage?

An increasing number of African elephants are now born tuskless because poachers have consistently targetted animals with the best ivory over decades, fundamentally altering the gene pool. In some areas 98 per cent of female elephants now have no tusks, researchers have said, compared to between two and six per cent born tuskless on average in the past. 

The elephants swim across the river in a straight line, trunks jutting out of the water like snorkels. With low, guttural bellows, they push their bodies together, forming a living raft to bolster a calf too tiny to stay afloat on its own. This pachyderm flotilla has a dangerous destination in mind: The grassy shores of Namibia, where elephants are literally free game for legal hunters. The animals will risk their lives to feed here before fording the Chobe River again, back to the safety of Botswana's Chobe National Park.

Carbon dating finds that almost all trafficked ivory comes from animals killed less than three years before their tusks hit the market. By Rachel Nuwer.

Scanning Botswana's remote Linyanti swamp from the low flying chopper, elephant ecologist Mike Chase can't hide the anxiety and dread as he sees what he has seen too many times before. "I don't think anybody in the world has seen the number of dead elephants that I've seen over the last two years," he says. From above, we spot an elephant lying on its side in the cracked river mud. From a distance it could be mistaken for a resting animal. But the acrid stench of death hits us before we even land. Up close, it is a horror.

Wildlife authorities in Zimbabwe have begun dehorning the country's 700 adult rhinos to curb rampant poaching, a conservation group said Tuesday. "Our target is to dehorn every single adult rhino and to ear-notch the young ones for record-keeping," Lisa Marabini, director for the Aware Trust Zimbabwe (ATZ) conservation group, told AFP. "Poaching is a very serious problem in this country. This (dehorning) will act as a dissuasive measure and reduce the potential reward for poachers."

In the ungoverned wilds of the Central African Republic, a group of young conservationists uses every resource it can muster—from technology to armed confrontation—to protect a vital habitat. By Elliott D. Woods.