Ivory destruction Despite efforts to destroy ivory, criminals are becoming more organised, ingenious and dangerous. "We have seen more and more organised crime networks moving into the wildlife trade," says Davyth Stewart from Interpol, the international intelligence agency. "Groups who have been traditionally involved in drug trafficking, fire arms and human trafficking are now moving onto wildlife." It's clearly not a fair match: conservationists pitted against criminal gangs. But the wildlife experts say it's a fight they have to take on. They have gathered at the Zoological Society of London to tackle how to halt the rapidly growing trade in animals. The backdrop to these crisis talks is bleak. Thousands of rhinos, elephants, tigers and others have been slaughtered, becoming part of an illegal market that's worth an estimated $19bn a year. Many criminals see it as low risk, high profit, says Mr Stewart. "There is a lower risk of apprehension, it's unfortunate but law enforcement has not invested the resources in attacking wildlife crime as it has in other crimes," he explains. "Even in courts the penalties are much lower. Just last year in Ireland, we saw two people arrested for smuggling rhino horns worth half a million euros. They received a 500-euro fine." Demand and supply John Sellar, the former chief of enforcement at Cites (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), says the focus of the battle should be shifted away from conservation towards the issue of criminality. "It's about locking up the bad guys," he tells the conference.

Brazil says Amazon deforestation rose 28% in a year

Brazil says the rate of deforestation in the Amazon increased by 28% between August 2012 and last July, after years of decline. The government is working to reverse this "crime", Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira said. Activists have blamed the increase in destruction on a controversial reform to Brazil's forest protection law. Last year Brazil reported the lowest rate of deforestation in the Amazon since monitoring began. The provisional statistics from August 2012 to last July suggest that the area suffering deforestation was 5,843 sq km (2,255 sq miles), compared to 4,571 sq km (1,765 sq miles) in the previous 12 months. The 28% rise interrupts a period of declining deforestation which began in 2009. However, it still remains the second lowest annual figure for forest loss in absolute terms. The worst year on record was 2004, when 27,000 sq km of forest was destroyed. Monthly data from several scientific institutions had suggested the deforestation rate might be on the rise.

The world is spending half a trillion dollars on fossil fuel subsidies every year, according to a new report. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) says rich countries are spending seven times more supporting coal, oil and gas than they are on helping poorer nations fight climate change. Fuel subsidies to US farmers amounted to $1bn in 2011 says the ODI. Some countries including Egypt, Morocco and Pakistan, have subsidies bigger than the national fiscal deficit. The new report calls on the G20 to phase out the payments by 2020. While there is no globally agreed definition of what a fossil fuel subsidy actually is, the report draws on a range of sources from the International Monetary Fund to the International Energy Agency. It details the range of financial help given to oil, coal and gas producers and consumers from national governments and through international development. What emerges is a complicated web of different types of payments in different countries. In the United States, for example, the government in 2011 gave a $1bn fuel tax exemption to farmers, $1bn for the strategic petroleum reserve and $0.5bn for oil, coal and gas research and development. Germany gave financial assistance totalling 1.9bn euro to the hard coal sector in the same year. And the UK gave tax concessions worth £280m in 2011 for oil and gas production. Pakistan is a country with the second highest number of children out of school in the world. It has some of the worst nutrition, maternal mortality and child health indicators.

Just 227 tree species dominate Amazon

Researchers were surprised to find that such a small proportion of species dominated the Amazon . Despite being home to about 16,000 tree species, just 227 "hyperdominant" species account for half of Amazonia's total trees, a study suggests. An international team of researchers found that the region was, in total, home to an estimated 390 billion trees. Writing in Science, they added that the rarest 11,000 species made up only 0.12% of tree cover. However, they added that the new data could help unlock ecological secrets held by the biodiversity hotspot.

The results were based on a survey of 1,170 plots and half-a-million trees across the six-million-square-kilometre area, often described as the lungs of the world. The authors said that the underlying cause of the hyper dominance of the 227 species, which accounted for 1.4% of the estimated number of species in the region, remained unknown. "We knew that, normally, a few species dominate ecosystems, but if you have a system that has 16,000 tree species but just 227 make up half of the trees, that was pretty surprising even for us," said lead author Dr Hans ter Steege from the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands. He told the Science podcast: "We don't really know why these species are so incredibly dominant because they do not have any particular ecological feature that stands out."

Corals are likely to suffer as a result of the changes to our oceans The health of the world’s oceans is deteriorating even faster than had previously been thought, a report says. A review from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), warns that the oceans are facing multiple threats. They are being heated by climate change, turned slowly less alkaline by absorbing CO2, and suffering from overfishing and pollution. The report warns that dead zones formed by fertiliser run-off are a problem. It says conditions are ripe for the sort of mass extinction event that has afflicted the oceans in the past. It says: “We have been taking the ocean for granted. It has been shielding us from the worst effects of accelerating climate change by absorbing excess CO2 from the atmosphere. “Whilst terrestrial temperature increases may be experiencing a pause, the ocean continues to warm regardless. For the most part, however, the public and policymakers are failing to recognise - or choosing to ignore - the severity of the situation.” It says the cocktail of threats facing the ocean is more powerful than the individual problems themselves. Coral reefs, for instance, are suffering from the higher temperatures and the effects of acidification whilst also being weakened by bad fishing practices, pollution, siltation and toxic algal blooms. IPSO, funded by charitable foundations, is publishing a set of five papers based on workshops in 2011 and 2012 in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN’s) World Commission on Protected Areas.