The illegal ivory trade recently intensified to the highest levels ever reported. Policing this trafficking has been hampered by the inability to reliably determine geographic origin of contraband ivory. Ivory can be smuggled across multiple international borders and along numerous trade routes, making poaching hotspots and potential trade routes difficult to identify. This fluidity also makes ...

trade may be preferable to free trade, and the optimal level of regulation " stringency " (a trade ban, sale of ivory stockpiles, or regulated sale of ivory harvested from wild populations) depends on factors that are as yet poorly researched or understood. Furthermore, net revenues from ivory sales often are only part of the income generated from elephants. Such income may also include photo t...

This paper examines the development of sacred structures in rural Czechia (former Czechoslovakia). Sacred structures could be associated with the creation of important symbols and distinctive rural regional identities in Czechia. Rural Czechia is not uniform: it represents several different rural landscapes. This paper considers whether sacred structures support the idea of multiple and fundame...

Two African states, Tanzania and Zambia, are seeking to change the ban on trade in ivory at the meeting next month of the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in Qatar. But the countries face a battle, because other states, such as Kenya and Mali, are strongly opposed to any change and have been lobbying the EU in Brussels this month to support a block to any chan...

Local belief systems such as indigenous religions and social taboos have been credited with helping to conserve animal and plant species and particular sites worldwide. Certain species and sites are protected because they are considered sacred. Although the meaning of sacred varies across cultures, religions, and languages, in general sacred entities are distinguished from the everyday world an...