Australian Custom Officials announced that criminal gangs are trading in illegally stuffed animals. From the Courier Mail: UNDERWORLD figures and outlaw bikie gang members are the most likely to illegally trade in questionable collectables such as stuffed lions, bears, orang-utans and moose heads, it has emerged. Customs officials this week unveiled some of the rare, unusual and dead [...]

Several celebrities came out in support of a new World Bank initiative to preserve wild tigers. From CNN: Citing tiger population counts that have dwindled to a few thousand, several Hollywood stars have come out in support of a preservation campaign announced Monday by the World Bank. The head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, told those gathered [...]

Iraq lawmakers passed a new law that aims to crack down on oil smugglers in Iraq.  From Reuters (via the Guardian): “According to official reports handed to parliament, Iraq is losing roughly 105,000 oil barrels a day from the southern fields in smuggling operations,” Balu said. “Smuggling is a flourishing industry in the south, and parliament is taking [...]

Palestinians are forced to shop on the black market to meet their fuel requirements.  From AFP:  The Islamist movement Hamas, which seized control of the territory last June, set up a fuel rationing system last month in a bid to cope with the shortages and, some say, to fill its own coffers. In order to get fuel legally, [...]

Slate Magazine explains why the Mafia is involved in trash smuggling. It’s Mob Economics 101: Find a business that’s easy to enter and lucrative to control. Criminal organizations make lots of money from drugs, human trafficking, and counterfeit goods, but creating a monopoly on garbage collection is attractive because the business itself is legal, and public [...]

The Amazon Forest in Brazil is expected to see an increase in illegal logging after years of declines.  From the AP (via Yahoo News): Destruction of the Amazon is again on the upswing despite a recent crackdown on illegal logging, Brazil’s new environment minister said Wednesday. Carlos Minc said official calculations of how much rain forest has been [...]

Venezuela is attempting to curb losses from its citizens smuggling oil out of the country.  From Reuters:  Oil-producer Venezuela is awash in revenues from record high prices but is struggling to contain the lucrative business of smuggling subsidized fuel — the cheapest in the world. The OPEC nation says it loses 27,000 barrels per day and $1 billion [...]

From AFP: Nigeria has become the world piracy ‘hotspot’, with its prized oil industry a particular target, and the raiders have exposed flaws in the country’s security. Despite the massive revenues earned from oil, officials concede Nigeria is ill equipped to combat pirates who ply the seas with speed boats, modern machine guns and radios and target [...]

Greenpeace is accusing a Japanese fishing company of smuggling whalemeat onto the black the market. From the Guardian: Anti-whaling campaigners said today that they had uncovered an embezzlement ring at the heart of the Japanese whaling fleet, accusing crew members of stealing choice cuts of whale meat worth millions of yen for sale on the black market. Greenpeace’s [...]

From the AP (via IHT): Hundreds of reptiles including some endangered species were rescued from traffickers and released into their natural habitat in Cambodia, a conservation group said Thursday. Twelve endangered yellow-headed temple turtles were among the nearly 300 reptiles — weighing a total of 925 pounds — that authorities confiscated this week in Cambodia’s northwestern Battambang [...]