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A Hong Kong woman sentenced to community service for trapping her cat in a washing machine has won an appeal against her conviction on the grounds the trial magistrate misapplied the law in disregarding her exculpatory evidence.
But the High Court’s ruling may not mean insurance agent Yuki Wong Yee-ting is in the clear, with prosecutors highlighting the prospect of a retrial.
Read MoreThe Supreme Court stayed the Bombay High Court's observation about those interested in the protection and welfare of stray dogs, including feeding them, in Nagpur must adopt or put them up in dog shelter homes and bear expenses for their maintenance.
The top court directed the Nagpur Municipal Corporation to take steps for the general public to feed stray dogs at appropriate locations, demarcated and identified by them.
Read MoreA man who illegally caught 1,000 protected birds and killed them in inhumane ways to eat in a hotpot has been arrested in eastern China.
The 39-year-old man, surnamed Wu, was arrested in Zhejiang province earlier this month after local police received tip-offs, the City Express reported.
Wu told the police he caught and killed the birds to cook in his hotpot. He said he had caught 948 sparrows and 13 other birds believed to be babbling thrushes, also known as babbler.
Read MoreMore than 50 species of sharks are to be given protection from over-exploitation in what's being seen as a milestone for shark conservation. Nearly 200 countries have voted to add a raft of sharks to the list of species protected under global trade rules.
The measures apply to the requiem shark family which includes tiger sharks, as well as to six small hammerhead sharks. The sharks are being pushed to the edge of extinction by the trade in fins to make shark fin soup.
Read MoreHong Kong’s first new dairy farm in two decades will be a teaching and learning facility for local veterinary students and expects to produce its own milk and ice cream next year after opening on Wednesday.
The Tai Po farm is operated by City University (CityU) and houses 24 Jersey cows, a British Channel Islands breed of small dairy cattle flown in from Australia in September.
Undergraduate veterinary students will attend compulsory courses involving the farm during their six years of studies where they will learn basic animal handling, conducting clinical examinations, disease diagnosis and treatments for cattle, as well as animal welfare, farm management and food production and safety.
Read More"Pet carriages" have not been spotted in Hong Kong for many years, but with the increased number of "fur babies", some dog owners have criticised the policy for being backwards.
Certain animal rights organisations suggests that "pet carriages" could be implemented on a trial basis during off-peak hours.
Courtesy of Chloe Ip
Read MoreHong Kong Authorities have said that a planned territory-wide ban on feeding wild animals is to come into effect on December 31.
Currently, the Wild Animals Protection Ordinance only outlaws feeding animals at Lion Rock Country Park, Kam Shan Country Park, Shing Mun Country Park and parts of Tai Mo Shan Country Park and Tai Po Kau Nature Reserve.
But concerns about wild boars roaming around urban areas have prompted officials to expand the ban to the whole of Hong Kong.
China ranked as the top market for rhino horns over the past decade, but the country has taken steps to crack down on smugglers, according to a report from the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC), a non-profit foundation based in The Hague.
From 2012 to 2021, nearly 9,600 rhinos were poached from across Africa and 7.5 tonnes (8.3 tons) of illegal horns were seized globally, the WJC said, citing its analysis of more than 670 seizures.
Around 27,000 rhinos remain in the wild, according to the WWF.
Read MoreThe emperor penguin, the tallest and bulkiest of all the world’s penguins, has been officially declared a threatened species by the US government due to the existential risk posed to the birds by the climate crisis.
The penguins, which are endemic to Antarctica, face almost complete annihilation from the loss of sea ice over the course of this century, a situation that has prompted the US Fish and Wildlife Service to place it on the endangered species list.
Read MoreAnimal rights organisations around the world are celebrating a court ruling in Argentina that has granted a formerly captive cougar rights as a “sentient being.”
Lola Limon, a six-month-old cougar found tied in front of a house in 2019, was initially seized by Buenos Aires police. It is illegal to owner cougars in that country.
Judge Carla Cavaliere acknowledged the 1977 Universal Declaration of Animal Rights, which states, “All animals are born with an equal claim on life and the same rights to existence” and the stipulation that all animals are entitled to the right to respect, attention, care, and protection from humankind.
Lola Limon, the judge ruled, has a right to freedom even though non-human animals are still considered “moveable goods” in Argentina.
Read MoreHong Kong police and customs officers confiscated 75 pedigree kittens and puppies with a market value of up to HK$30,000 (US$3,800) each while they were being smuggled into mainland China in the early hours of Thursday.
A source said he believed the 62 kittens and 13 puppies, estimated to be worth about HK$1.2 million in total, were intended for Shekou for breeding.
Read MoreConfiscated ivory from elephants killed more than 30 years ago has turned up in recent raids, say scientists. The tusks were once part of a stockpile seized from poachers and held in sealed containers by the government of Burundi.
In this study, researchers used DNA and carbon dating techniques to show that some of that stored material is now in the hands of smugglers. The authors say seizures should be destroyed and not stored.
Between 2007 and 2016 some 100,000 elephants were killed for their tusks in different parts of Africa.
Read MoreEnough commercial fishing line is left in the ocean each year to stretch to the moon and back, according to the most comprehensive study ever completed of lost fishing equipment.
The staggering amounts of lost gear, which includes 25 million pots and traps and 14 billion hooks, was likely having deadly consequences for marine life, one of the study’s authors said.
Enough nets were lost or discarded each year to cover Scotland. If all types of lost line was tied together, it would be able to stretch round the Earth 18 times.
Read MoreThere are fears that platypus populations might have been wiped out by recent floods in greater Brisbane, sparking new calls for the species to be nationally recognised as threatened.
While the platypus is endangered in South Australia and was listed as vulnerable in Victoria last year, the iconic monotreme is not officially considered threatened in Queensland and New South Wales.
Read MoreA Federal High Court sitting in Lagos has sentenced a Vietnamese, Nguyen Huy, to three months in a custodial centre for trafficking in Pangolin scale.
This judgement was delivered after Huy pleaded guilty to two charges brought against him by the Nigeria Customs Service.
He was alleged to have been involved in the trafficking of about 200 kilograms of pangolin scales.
Read MoreUniquely coloured songbirds are at high risk of extinction, because they are in demand as pets, research has shown.The pet songbird trade in Asia has already driven several species close to extinction, with birds targeted primarily for their beautiful voices.
Now a study has revealed that particular colours of plumage put birds at greater risk of being taken from the wild and sold. Researchers say breeding birds in captivity for the trade could help.
Read MoreEight Namibian cheetahs have been airlifted to India, part of an ambitious project to reintroduce the big cats after they were driven to extinction there decades ago, officials and vets said.
The wild cheetahs were moved by road from a game park north of the Namibian capital of Windhoek on Friday to board a chartered Boeing 747 dubbed “Cat plane” for an 11-hour flight.
They were welcomed by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, on his 72nd birthday.
Read MoreA Chinese woman in Beijing pushed a Labrador out of a window from a fourth-floor apartment during a quarrel with her husband, injuring the animal and sparking a national outrage on the mainland.
While China has a law to protect wild animals, which went into effect in 1988, there is no nationwide law to prohibit the mistreatment of animals including pets.
Read MoreScientists at the University of Hong Kong are developing a rapid test capable of distinguishing between elephant and mammoth ivory that could help fight the illegal trade in elephant ivory.
The new method, which measures isotopes in a one gram sample, could return results within a day, much faster than sending samples overseas for age dating or a weeks-long DNA analysis, said associate professor David Baker, from the university’s school of biological sciences.
About 20,000 elephants are killed every year for their tusks, which are in high demand in some parts of Asia, according to WWF. Mammoths are long-extinct, but their tusks, preserved in the tundra in places such as Siberia, are dug up from the permafrost.
Read MoreThree bottlenose dolphins — endearingly named Johnny, Rocky and Rambo — were released earlier this month into the open seas of Indonesia. The aquatic mammals spent years in captivity entertaining tourists prior to their celebrated liberation.
The dolphins had been rescued in 2019 from a small pool at a resort hotel, which purchased the animals after they had already spent years in a traveling circus. The Umah Lumba Rehabilitation, Release and Retirement Center in Bali then nurtured them back to health before setting them free.
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