Green Options

Two frozen tigers have been seized by environmental authorities near Hanoi.

Hanoi police made a horrifying discovery when they stopped a taxi in the central province of Thanh Hoa: The frozen carcasses of two tigers.

40 pangolins - including baby pangolins - have been rescued by Malaysian authorities.

A four-day stakeout by Malaysian special forces along the Sungai Sarang Buaya resulted in the rescue of about 40 pangolins - and the arrest of a smuggler.

Three of the four species of tapir are endangered. The threats facing tapirs include hunting for meat and skin, fragmentation of habitat, and encroachment into protected areas by farmers and illegal logging.

To help raise awareness about tapirs, here is a compilation of 15 cool facts about these special herbivores - with photos! Enjoy!

A rare litter of endangered fishing cats at the Cincinnati Zoo is delighting and educating visitors with unusual aquatic feeding behavior.

Three fishing cats (Prionailurus viverrinus) born June 30 at the Cincinnati Zoo have made their debut and are showing off their unique talent for fishing. These web-footed cats are specially adapted for catching prey in the water, and are good swimmers. Unlike most other felines, they prey mainly on fish, instead of small mammals. The litter of three males is the first at the zoo since 1993.

But wild fishing cats are in trouble.

17 dams recently built on the Mekong River in Southeast Asia are threatening fisheries, destroying a vast ecosystem, and starving millions. And 11 more dams are currently in the planning process.

The dams already in place are blocking fish from traveling upstream to spawn, and the new dams– many of which will sit nearer the river’s headwaters– could threaten the entire river ecosystem. 65 million people currently live and rely upon the Mekong for their sustenance and livelihood, and about 80 percent of their protein intake comes from the river’s fisheries.

Pangolins - scaly, toothless anteaters - are being poached incessantly from their native Southeast Asia habitats. TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, announced that the rising demand for Pangolin meat and scales, mostly from mainland China, is driving the disappearance of these shy animals.

The sheer size of recent Pangolin seizures is alarming:

They include 24 tonnes of frozen pangolins from Sumatra, Indonesia, seized in Viet Nam and 14 tonnes of frozen animals seized in Sumatra in 2008.

(Note: 1 metric ton = 2,204.6 pounds)

Earlier this year, 45 Pangolins were found in the possession of Thai smugglers.

Slash-and-burn agriculture may be bad for the environment, but in southeast Asia, the cure may be worse than the disease. Endorsed by multiple governments, at both the local and national levels, as well as numerous business interests, everyone from individual farmers to massive corporations has been replacing the traditional slash-and-burn, more technically known as swidden, method of farming with rubber plantations managed with European techniques. In the last 20 years, over 1.2 million acres of land in China, Thailand, Vietnam, [...]

In central Thailand an enormous freshwater stingray was captured, tagged and released during a National Geographic expedition.

Dr. Zeb Hogan, a biologist from the University of Nevada, Reno helped tag and release the animal. It was estimated to be somewhere between 550 and 770 lbs, but was never officially weighed.

More than two decades ago, rock star Sting, and his wife, Trudie Styler, created The Rainforest Foundation and over the last 20 years it has expanded and diversified. There is the New York-based Rainforest Foundation Fund, backed by Sting, which provides funding for three branches - Rainforest Foundation US, Rainforest Foundation Norway, Rainforest Foundation UK (together they directly support projects in more than 20 countries that protect tropical rainforests and the people that live there)…

Every year an area of rainforest the size of England and Wales is cut down. This leaves local people homeless, drives animals and plants to extinction and releases more CO2 emissions (which cause climate change), than all of the world’s planes, trains and automobiles. Tropical deforestation is an issue that affects us all. ~The Rainforest Foundation

Researchers turn to international cooperation to save Asia’s 7′th longest river.

Urbanization, growing slums, intensive farming, damming, and warring political ideologies are just a few of the hurdles that researchers from Helsinki University of Technology will need to overcome to protect the Mekong River, one of the most important water sources in Southeast Asia.

Luckily, they have a plan. To save the river, researchers have developed what they are calling the ‘3E principle’: the idea that “waters should be used to provide economic well-being to the people, without compromising social equity and environmental sustainability.”

Putting this principle into practice means working closely with each of the countries that benefits from the Mekong River (China and Tibet, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) to safeguard the river’s life-giving water.