Fan Peng-Fei of China’s Dali University was worried the first time he entered the forest habitat of the critically endangered cao vit gibbon (Nomascus nasutus). The isolated forest, skirting the China–Vietnam border, had been heavily degraded by years of agricultural development, firewood collection and charcoal production. What little forest remained provided poor habitat for the [...]

Asia’s turtles and tortoises are in an extinction crisis. Few species embody that more than the critically endangered golden coin turtle (Cuora trifasciata), which is so valued in the illegal pet trade and for its use in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) that a single specimen can fetch $25,000 or more on the black market. The [...]

The body of the last wild Siamese crocodile (Crocodylus siamensis) in Vietnam was found floating in Ea Lam Lake on September 29. The 3.2-meter-long, 100-kilogram female had been strangled by two steel wires, possibly by hunters. She was estimated to be nearly 100 years old. Once present throughout Southeast Asia, critically endangered Siamese crocodiles have [...]

In May 2011 Indonesian customs officials inspecting a shipment of fish and turtle meat bound for Vietnam came across a gruesome discovery: 5.9 metric tons of pangolin meat and another 790 kilograms of pangolin scales hidden within the cargo. It was just one of the nearly four dozen illegal pangolin shipments seized in Indonesia, Vietnam, [...]

Sad news coming out of Vietnam today: the Javan rhinoceros subspecies (Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus), once endemic to Southeast Asia, has been confirmed as extinct, according to WWF International. There are now officially no rhinos left in Vietnam. This is the second of the three Javan rhino subspecies to be hunted into extinction. The first, the [...]

Are we looking at Asia’s first pheasant extinction? The endangered Edwards’s pheasant (Lophura edwardsi) has not been observed in the wild since 2000, and now surveys conducted by the World Pheasant Association (WPA) in the bird’s two most likely habitats in Vietnam have failed to turn up any sign of the species. Edwards’s pheasant was [...]

The sale of bear bile for use in traditional medicine is rampant throughout 12 Asian countries, despite national and international laws banning or limiting the practice, according to a new report from TRAFFIC International, the wildlife trade monitoring network. Bile, also known as gall, is a fluid produced in the liver and stored in the [...]

A giant softshell turtle known as Cu Rua that has been living in Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi, Vietnam, for more than a century is one of the last four members of its critically endangered species, Rafetus swinhoei. The freshwater animal weighs about 200 kilograms and is worshiped as a deity that protects the city, [...]

One of the world’s last Javan rhinos (Rhinoceros sondaicus annamiticus) has been shot and killed by poachers in Vietnam, the World Wildlife Fund said Monday. The animal was shot and its horn, valued in traditional Asian medicine, was cut off. No one knows exactly how many Javan rhinos remain in the world, but estimates for [...]

One of the world’s rarest and least-known mammals risks extinction in the next few years if steps are not immediately taken to preserve it, according to experts speaking at an emergency meeting of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. The saola (Pseudoryx nghetinhensis), a kind of ox or cattle that looks more like an antelope, was [...]