The African elephant-and its tusks of “white gold”-is again trumpeting up some international attention. In July, the Commission on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) allowed a once-off sale of 108 tons of ivory stockpile from South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Zambia to China. Though the sale-the first in 20 years-was legal, China’s seemingly insatiable […]
Rwanda and Burundi, two countries that have suffered concurrent ethnic strife and civil war, signed an agreement last month to establish a transnational conservation area. The newly demarcated area encompasses the largest swath of mountain forest remaining in East Africa. The agreement covers Rwanda’s Nyungwe National Park and Burundi’s Kibira National Park, together representing 1,400 […]
Chile’s recent decision to make its Pacific Ocean territorial waters a whale sanctuary is another step in the right direction to protect the world’s declining populations of marine mammals. In September, the Chilean Congress unanimously passed a bill put forward by President Michelle Bachelet that bans whale hunting for commercial and scientific purposes off Chile’s […]
Recent initiatives show signs of hope for reviving long-dormant tourist sectors in war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq. The Swiss-based Aga Khan Foundation is contributing $1 million over the next three years to the Bamiyan Ecotourism Project in central Afghanistan. According to Sanjeev Gupta, a regional program coordinator for Aga Khan, the project’s goal is to develop […]
Part of the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States, long a tourist attraction, has just become a National Historic Landmark. Between 1943 and 1963, the U.S. government built nine nuclear reactors near the Columbia River at a site named Hanford, in Washington state. Hanford’s B reactor supplied the plutonium for the bomb used […]
After the recent discovery of a large number of previously uncounted gorillas in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), environmentalists and scientists breathed a collective sigh of relief. However, they warn that complacency must take a back seat to continued conservation, since gorillas are still considered critically endangered, and close to half of the world’s […]
In Chiang Mai, a province of northern Thailand, jungle excursions to see Karen hill tribe villages are a popular tourist attraction. However, these excursions fail to provide a full and accurate picture of the Karen people, whose struggle to survive has been called a “forgotten story” by CNN. There are 148,000 refugees living in the […]
With Colombia’s most popular theme park dedicated to the coffee bean, it was only a matter of time before a park opened in recognition of the country’s other lucrative cash crop. “Here begins a truly wild adventure,” reads the sign above the door to Hacienda Napoles, the former grounds of cocaine-trafficker Pablo Escobar’s 3,700-acre compound […]
In early July, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) considered placing Machu Picchu, one of the top tourist destinations in South America, on its list of endangered World Heritage sites. The addition of Machu Picchu to the list has been lobbied by conservation and environmental groups in hopes that international attention would […]
