Earlier this month, the vast forest-grassland mosaic of the Western Ghats, Assam’s Manas National Park, and West Bengal’s Sundarbans, a mangrove where tigers swim from island to island, were all listed as being of “significant concern”. This was the assessment of the natural World Heritage sites in Asia and was released by The International Union for Conservation of Nature or IUCN. IUCN is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental organisation, that tracks the health of ecosystems and species worldwide.

And today, climate change has overtaken hunting as the greatest threat to wildlife, says IUCN’s World Heritage Outlook 4 report which was released this month.

India’s forests are turning into concrete jungles. Tourism has reached its tipping point. Highways splice through natural habitats. And illegal wildlife trade thrives. 

The most recent scandal was the ED chargesheet against Elvish Yadav, a YouTuber, for wildlife crime. The agency said he had “illegally used protected species of snakes, exotic animals, such as iguanas, in the production of commercial music videos and vlogs for the purpose of increasing followers and generating money”.

Guest: Vivek Menon, founder of the Wildlife Trust of India, who has become the first Asian to head the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission

Host: Divya Gandhi, The Hindu

Edited by Sharmada Venkatasubramanian

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