entanglements

Article by Barbara Taylor and Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho   Given the 45% annual decline estimated in 2018, most people expected Mexico’s vaquita porpoise to already be extinct.  Scientists have just seen (May 2023) about the same number of vaquitas they saw in 2019 and 2021 in a small...

By Barbara Taylor, Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho and Kristin Nowell On 27 March 2023 the Secretariat of the Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) notified signatory countries to stop all commercial trade in CITES-listed (in Appendix I or II) species from Mexico.  This decision stems...

News item prepared by Randall Reeves (CSG Chair) and Louisa Ponnampalam and Brian Smith (CSG Asia Coordinators)   On 13 February 2022, an article appeared on this website concerning the existential threat of net entanglement to Taiwan’s endemic humpback dolphin subspecies (Sousa chinensis taiwanensis; known locally as...

  A new report reveals evidence that many pangas have continued to use the ZTA (mostly for gillnetting). Observations of this illegal activity were made both from the sea by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and from land by ZTA Watch.  Pangas were present inside the...

[caption id="attachment_375681" align="alignright" width="300"] Mother and calf vaquita surface near San Felipe, Mexico. Credit: Paula Olson[/caption] New research shows that the endangered vaquita in the Gulf of California in Mexico remains genetically healthy enough for the species to recover if illegal gillnetting stops killing them.  The paper, “The...

The most recent of the seven news items on this website concerning the Critically Endangered population of Irrawaddy dolphins (Orcaella brevirostris) in the Mekong River was posted almost exactly four years ago. Since that time, the information on this population in the Focal Taxa section...

News Item Prepared by Megan Kuo and Amy Tian of Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, Taiwan   [caption id="attachment_375489" align="alignright" width="339"] Photograph of Joker with his distinctive lip gash as well as an unpigmented (white) healed line scar on the front edge of the flipper. Photograph...