Etsy HQ makes tentative first steps to review sale of endangered animal products

Earlier this month, we discovered hundreds of illegal listings for products made with parts of endangered animals on the trend-setting online marketplace Etsy.com. After several attempts to be heard by Etsy HQ, we launched a petition asking Etsy headquarters to adopt a policy that would prohibit such items from the site – and you’ve stepped …

Q&A: Why Etsy HQ needs to ban endangered animal products

What do we want Etsy headquarters to do? As revealed by a few simple searches on the Etsy marketplace for terms such as “pre-ban”, “real leopard”, “real ivory” or “rhino horn”, there are currently several hundred products made with parts of endangered animals listed on the site – the vast majority of them labeled as “vintage”, “pre-ban” …

Pakistan: Comprehensive Report on Snow Leopard Distribution in the Works

In 2013, Snow Leopard Trust researchers in Pakistan hope to complete camera trap studies and conflict surveys that will help them paint the most complete picture of snow leopard distribution and conservation status across the country to date. Fast facts: The Snow Leopard Trust’s local partner organization in Pakistan is finalizing the country’s first comprehensive …

Face to Face with Snow Leopards: A Close Encounter in China

A research team from our Chinese partner organization, Shan Shui, was taking a break from exhausting field work in the mountainous Sanjiangyuan region, when Edward, a young Chinese-American volunteer, dropped his binoculars. He climbed back down the steep slope they had just come up to recover them – only to suddenly find himself face to …

Protecting Prey to Protect the Predators

As livestock numbers in northern India grow, some of the snow leopard’s main prey species populations are shrinking fast. The cats – and other predators such as wolves – are increasingly forced to predate on domestic animals instead.  In the remote, high altitude valleys of Jammu and Kashmir, where the estimated average annual family income …