Mongabay.com: Leuser’s Legacy: how rescued orangutans help assure species survival

30th March 2016 / Laurel A. Neme Mongabay.com Meet two blind orangutans: Leuser and Gober, their offspring, and the people of the SOCP rescue group. Together they’re creating a future for Indonesian orangutans. Agribusiness is rapidly razing the prime forest habitat of Sumatra’s 14,600 remaining orangutans; replacing it with vast stretches of oil palm plantation. The species’…

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Huffington Post: For Pangolins, A Long Hard Road to Freedom

 03/18/2016   by Laurel Neme Freelance Journalist and Author   This pangolin was recently rehabilitated and released in Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Save Vietnam’s Wildlife. Pangolins are scaly anteaters about the size of a house cat. They’re presumed to be the world’s most trafficked mammal, with an estimated 100,000 plucked from the wild every year in Africa and…

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National Geographic: Happy Ending for Smuggled Pangolins

Wildlife Watch 16 rare scaly anteaters are back in the wild after being rescued from Vietnam’s illegal wildlife trade. By Laurel Neme PUBLISHED March 15, 2016 This story was updated to reflect that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today issued a preliminary finding to a scientific petition submitted by conservation groups, saying that Endangered Species Act…

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National Geographic: Circus Lions Rescued in Peru, Headed for New Home in Colorado

Twenty-one circus lions and ten monkeys await transfer to a Colorado sanctuary early next year. Photograph by Animal Defenders International Laurel Neme for National Geographic Published November 26, 2014 By early next year Jan Creamer, co-founder and president of Animal Defenders International (ADI), intends to see 30 lions rescued from circuses in Peru and Colombia running…

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National Geographic: Elephant Foster Mom: A Conversation with Daphne Sheldrick

  Posted by Laurel Neme in A Voice for Elephants on December 6, 2013         Orphaned elephants “can be fine one day and dead the next,” says Daphne Sheldrick, a Kenyan conservationist and expert in animal husbandry. She knows. To date, she has fostered over 250 calves, first in partnership with her husband, David Sheldrick, founding warden…

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Animal Planet: Rescued Elephant Orphan Adopted by New Herd

08/22/2012 GUEST POST ALERT:Today’s guest post comes from Wildlife expert Laurel A. Neme, Ph.D., author of Animal Investigators: How the World’s First Wildlife Forensics Lab is Solving Crimes and Saving Endangered Species and a regular contributor to Mongabay.com, where she broke the story on recent poaching of Chad’s elephants.  Learn more about Laurel at LaurelNeme.com. Toto Finds a…

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The Forgotten Bear

From JeffCorwinConnects.com: By Laurel NemeMay 25, 2011 Malayan sun bears, also known as honey bears (or Helarctos malayanus), are the least known of the world’s eight bear species. Few people know they even exist, especially compared with other types of bears, like polar bears and grizzlies. Perhaps part of that is because sun bears are so challenging to…

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Mongabay.com: Teaching orangutans to be wild – orangutan rehabilitation

By Laurel Neme, special to mongabay.com December 15, 2010     This interview aired in on April 4, 2010 and November 22, 2010). It was transcribed by Ben Kennedy. Part 2 of 2. Part 1: The problem-solving ape: what makes orangutans special and why they are threatened   Michelle Desilets, Executive Director of the Orangutan Land Trust, spoke…

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