The International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimates that trophy-hunting tourists legally kill some 600 lions each year. Given that there are only about 30,000 lions left in Africa, this represents an annual loss of roughly 2 percent of the total lion population to legal hunting.
The group is asking for volunteers to help patrol beaches against poachers in southeastern Florida, Honduras and Costa Rica. For the first time, the group will patrol Moín Beach in Costa Rica's Limón province, the beach where Mora was brutally killed in 2013.
Supreme Court President Zarela Villanueva criticized President Luis Guillermo Solís for not keeping his ministers in order following the acquittal of the suspects in the Jairo Mora murder trial on Jan. 26.
LIMÓN – Attorneys presented their opening arguments to a packed Limón courtroom on Monday in the murder trial against seven defendants accused of killing 26-year-old Costa Rican sea turtle conservationist Jairo Mora and kidnapping four foreign volunteers last year.
Police arrested four men Thursday for killing two green sea turtles on Costa Rica's Caribbean Coast. Two of the suspects had rap sheets for drug charges.
Costa Rica's National Police have seized what is likely the biggest illegal stash of poached sea turtle eggs this year, just outside of Nicoya, Guanacaste.
Thousands of parrots, monkeys, iguanas, toucans, turtles and other rain forest animals are kept as exotic pets in Costa Rica, a practice putting some species at risk, according to experts.
Police arrested two men suspected of killing an endangered green sea turtle in Parismina, a fishing village on the northern Caribbean coast, on Tuesday. Law enforcement officials found the two men in a boat with a gutted mother turtle who appears to have been in the process of laying her eggs.
Police arrested a man with the last names Calvo Alvarado on Monday for selling turtle eggs outside of the Río Blanco stadium in Limón, on the country's Caribbean coast. He faces up to two years in jail.
