Javan rhinos, California porpoises, drugs, and wild birds.

Two-thirds of Central America’s most crucial forest bird habitats are at risk of destruction due to drug-fueled deforestation. Drug traffickers are moving into the wildest parts of the forest to avoid drug enforcement crackdowns and create runways, shipping lanes, and cattle pastures to launder money and control territory. Cocaine smuggling alone accounts for 15% to 30% of annual deforestation in Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala. Since 1970, Central America’s resident and migratory bird populations have halved, with deforestation a key factor.

Indonesian authorities have arrested suspects in an international poaching ring targeting Javan rhinos, a critically endangered species. The ring used homemade firearms and has killed at least 26 rhinos since 2018. The poachers targeted the animals’ horns, which are in demand in Asia. They are mainly used there in traditional Chinese medicine and for making ornaments. The Javan rhino population numbers around 80 adults, and they are threatened by the destruction of tropical forest habitats and by poachers.

The number of critically endangered California porpoises in the Mexican waters of the Gulf of California has fallen to between six and eight this year. It is possible that some of the remaining ones – the world’s smallest porpoises and the most endangered marine mammal – may have moved to another location in the bay. This species occurs nowhere else and cannot be caught, kept, or bred in captivity.