Amazing apes are part of our natural heritage

During the Miocene Epoch (5.3-23.8 million years ago), a relative of the orangutan lived in the dense jungles in what is now north and northeast Thailand. Scientists digging in coalmines and sandpits have discovered some very amazing fossils.

White-handed gibbon.

Other primates like a 13-million year old tarsier and an early Adaptiform primate have also been found in the Kingdom. The oldest anthropoid from the fossil record is Siamopithecus eocaenus, also known as 'Siam Ape' found in 40 million year old strata in the southern province of Krabi. This legacy is just another part of Thailand's remarkable natural heritage.

Indonesia’s vanishing natural forests and wildlife species are testament to deforestation out of control. Government inaction, corruption, illegal logging and the complicity of high profile companies have made for a toxic mix that not even a moratorium on logging can effectively address, writes Susannah Waters.

World records are often a source of pride and admiration, but one specific listing in the Guinness Book of Records, attributed to Indonesia, had a distinctly reprehensible quality. So prolific was the record-breaking exploit that it was inked onto the world-famous book’s pages in both 2008 and 2009.

How a notorious Malaysian wildlife smuggler was brought to justice -- and what it tells us about stopping the world's most profitable black market.

It began almost innocently. A broken lock on a suitcase moving through Kuala Lumpur International Airport this summer led to an odd discovery: nearly 100 baby boa constrictors, two vipers, and a South American turtle, all hidden inside. It was a fairly modest cache for a wildlife smuggler, but the man who claimed the suitcase was no ordinary criminal. He was Anson Wong Keng Liang, the world's most notorious wildlife trafficker. And instead of a slap on the wrist, which he might reasonably have expected, Wong was about to receive a surprising punishment.

Rising demand for pangolins, mostly from mainland China, compounded by lax laws is wiping out the unique toothless anteaters from their native habitats in Southeast Asia, TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, said today.

Undercover photo courtesy TRAFFIC

“Illegal trade in Asian pangolin meat and scales has caused the scaly anteaters to disappear from large swathes of Cambodia, Vietnam and Lao PDR,” TRAFFIC said a panel of experts had concluded.

The investigation was funded in part by Sea World & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund and the National Geographic Society’s Conservation Trust. (A description of the research grant can be read at the bottom of this page.)