Simon Denyer

TOKYO — China banned the trade of wild animals on Sunday until the coronavirus epidemic has been eliminated across the country, after evidence emerged that the disease was transmitted to humans through a market in the city of Wuhan that traded in…

BEIJING — The Chinese government struggled Sunday to cope with a worsening coronavirus epidemic as its official number of infections soared and the death toll rose to 80, while additional cases appeared in the United States. The government in Beijing…

TOKYO — China failed to learn one of the most important lessons of the SARS outbreak 17 years ago, that wild animal markets are a potent breeding ground for disease with the possibility of ailments jumping to humans, health experts say. SARS, or…

TOKYO — China's leader Xi Jinping warned Saturday of an "accelerating spread" of the coronavirus, adding to worries about the scope of a health crisis that has claimed at least 56 lives and triggered emergency health measures in cities across…

TOKYO — Japan’s biggest e-commerce platform said Wednesday that it would ban the sale of ivory, joining its competitors and putting renewed pressure on the government to ban the trade in what is the world’s largest legal ivory market. Yahoo Japan…

CIVILIAN CONTROL ZONE, South Korea — Where once the air was filled with the thud of artillery shells, now there’s birdsong and the rustling of animals in the undergrowth. A landscape once denuded by napalm and later Agent Orange is carpeted in green,…

YOKOHAMA, Japan — My bagels come individually wrapped in sealed plastic bags. At the counter, if I’m not paying attention, they’re carefully packed together in another plastic bag, before being placed inside a third plastic with the rest of my…

KARIUZAWA, Japan — Environment ministers from the Group of 20 on Sunday recognized an urgent need to tackle the marine plastic litter that’s choking the world’s oceans, but failed to agree on concrete measures or targets to phase out single-use…

TOKYO — It’s grossly unfair for rich countries to send their plastic waste to poor countries that are already struggling to cope with their own waste problems, and the practice needs to stop, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said…

TOKYO — The best ivory for carving a hanko, or a personal seal, comes from the center of the tusk. That is where the ivory is firm and flawless, says Hideki Arami, a third-generation hanko carver who has a small shop in Tokyo’s busy Shibuya…

TOKYO — Japan announced Wednesday that it is withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission and will resume commercial whale hunting next year, sparking swift condemnation from other governments and conservation groups. Tokyo argues that the…

Sei whales are the ninth-largest living animal on the planet, usually growing to between 45 and 60 feet in length and weighing 20 tons. They also are among the fastest whales, possessing the ability to swim up to 35 mph. They are found in almost…

TOKYO — Japan will open a new bid to resume commercial whaling operations, as well as demand major reforms to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), at a global conference in Brazil next week. Tokyo claims that the IWC has become dysfunctional…

In a rescue center, the pangolin slowly wakes and uncurls, sniffing out a nighttime feast of ants’ eggs, then lapping it up with its implausibly long tongue. One of 74 pangolins rescued from the back of a truck in Vietnam in April, its survival has…

PHUNG THUONG, Vietnam — Inside a row of rusting cages, 15 adult moon bears are imprisoned in varying degrees of apathy and distress. Some lie on their backs in the tiny enclosures, unable even to stretch out; others loll their heads or chew…

BEIJING — The battle to save the world’s sharks from extinction has not yet been won, despite one of the most significant wildlife success stories of recent years. Consumption of shark fin soup in China has fallen by about 80 percent since 2011,…

Li Chunke began carving ivory after leaving school as a 15-year-old boy. Today, at 68, this master craftsman is working until the early hours of every morning, trying to finish a 20-inch statuette of Buddha on an unforgiving deadline — before China…

At China’s annual parliamentary session, lawmakers from Hong Kong have submitted a formal proposal to ban the commercial farming of bears for the extraction of their bile and urged stronger efforts to combat the illegal trade in rhino horn, officials…

BEIJING — Air China has become the first airline in mainland China to ban shark fin cargo, marking a dramatic shift in attitudes toward trade in endangered wildlife here and throwing a lifeline to shark populations threatened with imminent…

BEIJING — China promised Friday to halt its domestic ivory trade completely by the end of 2017, a decision greeted by environmentalists as offering real hope for an end to a poaching crisis that is wiping out tens of thousands of elephants across…