In Asia's forests, tigers are endangered due to habitat loss, poaching, illegal wildlife trade, and human-wildlife conflict, warns the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Despite these challenges, tiger populations have started to rise in five countries, including India, Bhutan, and Nepal. The Royal Government of Bhutan is hosting the Sustainable Finance for Tiger Landscapes conference to catalyze $1 billion for tiger conservation and innovative fiscal models to support investments in tiger landscapes.

This year's World Wildlife Day (3 March), under the theme “Connecting People and Planet: Exploring Digital Innovation in Wildlife Conservation”, focuses on how digital technologies can drive wildlife conservation, sustainable and legal wildlife trade, and human-wildlife coexistence. While technological advancements have significantly improved various aspects of wildlife conservation, including research, communication, tracking, and DNA analysis, challenges such as uneven internet access, environmental pollution, and unsustainable technology use impede achieving universal digital inclusion by 2030.

The first edition, State of the world’s migratory species report, underscores the urgent need for international cooperation to address the alarming population declines and extinction risks facing migratory species.

In Kyrgyzstan's Tien-Shan mountains, locals work as community rangers to protect the Baiboosun Nature Reserve. This micro-reserve conserves local flora and fauna, including the elusive snow leopard and ibex populations. Since its establishment, sustainable tourism and green businesses have emerged, offering economic opportunities to the community such as running guest houses, producing cheese and crafting felt souvenirs. The Baiboosun Nature Reserve is part of a multi-country initiative to restore ecosystems in mountain regions, coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Mountain Partnership Secretariat of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the Carpathian Convention.

This episode of the Weekly Tradecast looks at the illegal wildlife trade with David Vivas, a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) legal officer working on trade and environmental issues.

Every year, huge numbers of animals and plants are bought and sold illicitly as food, medicine, clothing, furniture and even musical instruments.

Wildlife is big business. The illegal trade is estimated to be worth at least $7 billion but it could be much larger.

Trafficking is driving some species – especially rhinos, elephants, tigers, lions and pangolins – towards extinction. Many others are at risk.

Image credit: UNCTAD

March 3 is World Wildlife Day and also marks the 50th anniversary of CITES. People everywhere rely on wildlife and biodiversity-based resources to meet all our needs, from food, to fuel, medicines, housing, and clothing. Millions of people rely on nature as the source of their livelihoods and economic opportunities. But more than our needs, nature has proven to be essential for our mental health too.

UNDP presents a new social movement – mammalwatching. First came birdwatching, then whalewatching, now there is ‘mammalwatching’ which is like birdwatching except with mammals. Like birders, ‘mammalwatchers’ have a ‘life list’ that they actively seek to fill, and every mammal counts - from the Big Five (lions, buffaloes, leopards, elephants, rhinos), to the more humbly proportioned elephant shrew. Fast-growing nature tourism has made tremendous contributions to nature conservation, prompting the creation of protected areas, contributing to research through citizen science, and with the ecotourism dollars that bring practical financial benefits to people living in rural and undisturbed environments worldwide.

Billions of people worldwide rely on wildlife to meet their needs - from food, fuel and medicines to housing and clothing. With a million species of plants and animals facing extinction, these natural resources are threatened. World Wildlife Day reminds us of the urgent need to fight against wildlife crime and human-induced reduction of species. The 2023 theme, "Partnerships for wildlife conservation,” celebrates the 50th anniversary of CITES, an agreement between governments to ensure that international trade in wildlife does not threaten their survival.

Biodiversity is the living fabric of our planet. It underpins human wellbeing, and its rapid decline threatens nature and people alike. It is vital to transform people’s roles, actions and relationships with biodiversity, to halt and reverse its decline. Safeguarding biodiversity must become one of the major priorities of our time. Find out more about UNESCO’s commitment to biodiversity.

By the early 21st century, the jaguar, South America’s largest predator was locally extinct in several countries. In Argentina, there are fewer than 300 individuals left in the country with remaining jaguars inhabiting dwindling islands of territory, increasingly isolated due to deforestation. Radical action by a team of collaborators is redefining jaguar conservation in the country. Lucero Corrales works for a UNDP-supported project focused on strengthening community and inter-institutional work to ensure the coexistence of people and big cats in the Paranaense Forest and the Gran Chaco Argentino. Lucero's role coheres around a single mission - ensure the coexistence of people and jaguars.

For Joshua, a refugee who fled gang violence, protecting the threatened tropical forests of his host country, has become both a calling and a moral imperative. Since early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Joshua has been working as a forest ranger at a natural preserve in southeastern Guatemala. Thanks to a partnership with UNHCR, FUNDAECO – the NGO that runs the preserve, prioritizes the hiring of people like Joshua, who have been forced to leave their homes due to violence, targeted threats, or persecution. Joshua, who previously described himself as a “nature beginner”, now says handling snakes is one of the highlights of a job. Find out more about Joshua’s personal transformation.

In the mountains of Uzbekistan, snow leopards, who are skillful hunters, can kill prey up to three times their weight. This has significance for farmers and shepherds as losses to snow leopards in livestock corrals can reach up to 10-20 animals in a single night. Locals occasionally retaliate by killing these threatened big cats. According to the international NGO TRAFFIC, 450 snow leopards have been killed annually since 2008 due to retaliatory killings and poaching. Through a UNDP-supported project in Uzbekistan, rural fences help protect against natural disasters, livestock raids by predators, uncontrolled grazing, livestock escape, and are a vital tool in preventing human-wildlife conflict.

From their work with landmine detection and sniffing sputum to detect tuberculosis, the Belgian NGO APOPO rats have been saving human lives for over two decades and have earned the special title - HeroRATs. The African giant pouched rat is one of the largest on earth and roughly equal in size to a small cat. These remarkable rodents are prized for their exquisitely sensitive olfactory capacity. Now with support from a UNDP-administered project, APOPO is training the rats to put their specialized skills to use by screening shipping containers for pangolin scales. The HeroRATs will provide another tool in the arsenal for the fight against the illegal wildlife trade.

Over the last century, tiger populations have declined by more than 95% due to habitat loss and wildlife trafficking. In Peninsular Malaysia, illegal poaching and wildlife trafficking are among the main factors in the decline of local tiger populations. The Malayan tiger population today is less than 200. Without extraordinary actions, Malaysia is expected to lose this species within the next five to ten years. This International Tiger Day (29 July), see how the GEF – in partnership with local communities – works to protect some of the last remaining wild populations of the endangered Malayan tiger.

It might have been the neighbor’s monkey which came downstairs to join her for piano lessons, or the wildlife club that she started in primary school in Kampala, Uganda. But from a very early age, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, this year’s Champion of the Earth for Science and Innovation, knew she wanted to work with animals. Kalema-Zikusoka would become the first-ever wildlife veterinarian for the Uganda Wildlife Authority. There, she began to apply what was a new approach to working for wildlife.