it's been an a absolute plplease haviving you her you are welcome anytimime. thank k you. bye. anchor: and now in "global ideas," we meet people dedicated to t the protectioion of our planetet's wildle.e. this week,k, we head to o colom. many of f the countrtry's rainforests are under r threat f dedestruction. whwhile the illelegal plantingnf coca crops was once the main culprit, it's now cattle farming. the legendary curassow birds live in the magdalena region, in the el paujil bird reserve. colombian n conservationonists e bought up one of the few remaining lowland rainforests, hoping to protect the animals' last remaining place of refuge. narrator: this is one of the last of the unspoiled forests in the magdalena medio region of central colombia. rangers regularly patrol the area by boat, because the river is often used by smugglers to move illegally harvested tropical wood. the protected area is 4500 hectares in size. it's an important sanctuary for endangered spepecies, likeke ths own spiderer monkey. in just a few decacades, their populalation has droropped by 8. that's m

theyey have a long time experience in evading law enfoement, movoving goods, haviving key facilitatorsof money and transport. vira: they know where they need to go, they have buyers in place, and they're able to poach at r really an industrial scale. peters: that's a highly organized, highly efficient organized crime networork that s puttining that type of operation together. narrrrator: bebetween 2009 and , organized criminal networks moved an estimated 170 tons of ivory, the yield from a quarter of a million dead elephants. vira: we estimate that there probably are less than, you know, 25 of these networks operating globally that account for a veryry large proportion of the trade.. narrator: one of them is the xaysavang network, reported to be one of the largest transnational criminal networks to traffic wildlife. the u.s. department of state offered a $1 million reward, the first bounty ever placed by the agency for information leading to the dismantling of the network. vira: xaysavang is based out of laos and is widely suspected that they have the complicity of senior laotian gover

on the other extreme, and we finally do get rain, often it is a question of haviving floods.amibia, the climate change issue is very real indeed. amy: gwen lister, thank you for joining us. she is the first woman newspaper editor in southern africa. when we come back, the first woman president off finland. this is democracy now! we will be back with her in a moment. ♪ [music break] amy: a malian singer who now lives here in france. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. from unescocasting headquarters in paris, france, and ending today show with the former president of finland, tarja halonen. she was elected in 2000, becoming finland's first female president. she served until 2012. the most that a president can serve there. her election can 100 years after finland became the first european country to be given the right to vote to women. named her amongs the 100 most powerful women in the world. since leaving office, she is become a prominent advocate for gender equality as well as transparency. earlier today, she spoke here at une