Tag archives for Vietnam
Escape From Vietnam
Posted by Cathy Hunter on April 30, 2013 
On April 30, 1975, the Vietnam War officially ended with the fall of Saigon to Communist forces. Many Vietnamese fled their country, including one Special Forces officer who painstakingly planned his escape and paid $200 on the black market for a copy of a March 1971 National Geographic map to guide him.
Posted by Wildlife conservationist Paula Kahumbu writes that Kenya stands at the crossroads of turning things around for elephants. The authorities need to recognize that poaching and ivory trafficking are serious crimes and immediately elevate penalties for wildlife crimes.
Vietnam PM Grants Bear Sanctuary a Reprieve
Posted by Guest Blogger on April 2, 2013 
By Leanne Younes Moon bears ‘Mara’ and ‘Angus’ – two of the rescued bears at the Animals Asia sanctuary in North Vietnam – are free to enjoy their freedom a while longer, following a last-minute reprieve (see our previous post on this sanctuary). In an 11th hour decision in January, the Prime Minister of Vietnam,…
Endangered Moon Bears Harvested for Bile in Vietnam
Posted by Guest Blogger on December 21, 2012 
Video by Brendan McCarthy. Text by Leanne Younes Note: This story was first published on February 9, 2012, and it was updated on December 21, 2012 with new information In a blistering tin shed on the outskirts of Hanoi, rows of caged Asiatic Black bears pant with thirst and gaze despairingly through the bars. The bears…
Posted by This article is based on a field visit I made to Guangxi, China in June 2012 as part of a broader research project on sustainability in the pearl farming sector supported by the Tiffany & Co. Foundation. Special thanks to the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences (particularly Xiaoqing Huang and Hongsheng Chen) for facilitating my…
Record 443 Rhinos Killed by Poachers in South Africa in 2011
Posted by Leon Marshall of Environmental Journalist, News Watch South African Contributor on December 14, 2011 It has been a bad year for rhinos in South Africa. Many more got killed than in 2010, the 333 toll of which was described with words like “shocking” and “outrageous”. Most thought it couldn’t get worse.
It’s got much worse. The tally for 2011 is at least 433. It could end up being higher, for even as the year drew to a close, reports kept coming in of more dead rhinos found with gruesome wounds or just stumps left where their horns had been.
South African Court Jails Rhino Horn Smugglers
Posted by Leon Marshall of Environmental Journalist, News Watch South African Contributor on August 8, 2011 A South African court effectively threw away the key when it jailed two smugglers convicted of trying to smuggle rhino horns out of the country. But the slaughter of the country’s pachyderms for the spurious healing power of their horns continues unchecked. A new scheme allegedly involves sex workers posing as trophy hunters seeking to harvest rhino horns through a legal loophole.
South Africa’s Rhino Slaughter Rages on
Posted by Leon Marshall of Environmental Journalist, News Watch South African Contributor on July 23, 2011 
The shadow of rhino poaching keeps darkening the magnificent landscape that places South Africa among the most biodiverse countries in the world. Already the figure for the year so far stands at about 200 rhinos killed. This has conservationists fearing that the toll for the year could end up exceeding the shocking 333 killed last year.
A serious poaching upsurge in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya, prompted Africa’s top rhino experts to meet to assess the status of the horned pachyderms across the continent and to identify strategies to combat the crisis.
“World’s Largest Cave” Photographer Carsten Peter Answers Your Questions
Posted by Andrew Howley of NG Staff on January 14, 2011 The January issue of National Geographic Magazine features a story about the world’s largest known cave passage, in Vietnam. The gallery of spectacular photos took off online and has been enjoyed by more than a million people. View this photo and more in the complete “Conquering an Infinite Cave” gallery. (Above photo by Carsten Peter) We…
With only 3,500 tigers hanging on in isolated patches of wilderness scattered across 13 Asian countries, the prospects for the survival of the species outside zoos is grim. The Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is convening a summit in St. Petersburg this weekend to discuss and endorse a plan that would double the population…
News of another wild tiger killing has come on the eve of the international summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, to discuss an urgent strategy to save the last tigers in the wild. A rare Siberian tiger was killed yesterday by poachers near Vladivostok, Russia, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), said in a news…
NGS stock photo by Michael Nichols For four days starting this weekend, government leaders from the 13 tiger range countries will be meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, to confirm a plan to restore and conserve one of the world’s most iconic big cats to its wild habitat. Teams from Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia,…
Tiger range countries meeting next week in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the International Tiger Conservation Forum hosted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, have been urged by conservation activists to “act decisively now or face a future in which the wild tiger is extinct.” The UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said: “It as an opportunity to…
Parts of at least 1,069 tigers have been seized in tiger range countries over the past decade, according to an analysis of tiger seizures released today by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network. Wild tiger numbers are in steep decline, caused by a combination of poaching and illegal trade in the animals themselves, coupled with…
From Leon Marshall in Johannesburg Faced with mounting outrage at the rhino-killing spree that has hit South Africa this year, the country’s government has finally come up with plans aimed at tackling the scourge on a wider front and in a more coordinated way. The two-pronged scheme includes the establishment of a National Wildlife Crime…
For the first time in more than ten years, there has been a confirmed sighting of one of the rarest and most enigmatic animals in the world, the saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis) from the Annamite Mountains of Laos and Vietnam, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) said today. “The Government of the Lao People’s…
An association of 1,500 private landowners with an interest in wildlife in South Africa today called for controlled legal trade in rhino horns as a way to help address the country’s rhino poaching crisis. The notion of legalizing trade in rhino horn is likely to be as controversial as calls to legalize and control the…
The war on South Africa’s rhinos continued yesterday when an armed gang held up farm workers before proceeding to shoot two rhinos for their horns. The brazen daylight attack was unusual, in that most reports of the 300 rhinos believed to have been poached in South Africa since the beginning of last year suggest the attacks were more like…
By David Braun Circulating on Facebook today is a news report that purports to come from the “Bangkok Star,” a newspaper that doesn’t seem to have a website. “A woman mourns over the body of her deceased husband after he had purchased apparently purposely contaminated Rhino horn on the open market in Bangkok,” says the…
The slaughter of South Africa’s rhinos continues unchecked. At least two more white rhinos fell under poachers’ guns this week and their horns were removed. As many as 300 rhinos may have been felled in South Africa over the past 20 months. The following account about the latest atrocities is compiled from reports from the…
No one knows more about the giant freshwater fish of the Mekong and the world’s other big rivers than Zen Hogan, an aquatic ecologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer. Hogan has been featured in dozens of National Geographic stories on the web and on television as a champion of megafishes. In this blog post Hogan comments on…
The alarming escalation of rhino poaching in South Africa has placed authorities on high alert, says the chief executive of South African National Parks (SANPArks), David Mabunda. “Perhaps it is no longer appropriate to refer to this spate of illegal killing of rhinos as poaching given the levels of sophistication, violence, precision and the money…
This post is part of a special National Geographic news series on global water issues. Wild populations of the iconic Mekong giant catfish will be driven to extinction if hydropower dams planned for the Mekong River go ahead, says a report released by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) today. Mekong giant catfish photo (c) Suthep…
The majority of the leading South Africans behind the current wave of poaching and smuggling rhino horns were respected local figures with conservationist profiles, the Sunday Independent reported yesterday. According to the South African newspaper’s De Wet Potgieter, detectives believe the individuals are part of an extensive syndicate behind as much as 70 percent of…
