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    One-Third of World’s Trees Face Extinction Risk, Report at COP16 Says

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    They play an essential role in supporting life on Earth, but many species are in decline, researchers found.More than a third of the world’s tree species are threatened with extinction, according to the first comprehensive assessment of trees by the world’s leading scientific authority on the status of species.The findings, announced on Monday by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, are especially sobering given the amount of life that trees sustain. Countless species of other plants, animals and fungi rely on forest ecosystems. Trees are also fundamental to regulating water, nutrients and planet-warming carbon.“Trees are essential to support life on Earth through their vital role in ecosystems, and millions of people depend on them for their lives and livelihoods,” Grethel Aguilar, director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said in a statement.The tree assessment is considered comprehensive because it includes more than 80 percent of known tree species. In all, 38 percent were found to be at risk of extinction. More than a thousand experts from around the world contributed.Island biodiversity is particularly vulnerable, in part because those species often have small populations that exist nowhere else, and island trees accounted for the highest proportion of trees threatened with extinction. In Madagascar, for example, numerous species of rosewoods and ebonies are threatened. In Borneo, 99 species in the family of trees called Dipterocarpaceae are imperiled. In Cuba, fewer than 75 mature individuals of the red-flowered Harpalyce macrocarpa, known in Spanish as maiden’s blood, remain.Around the world, the biggest threats to trees are agriculture and logging, followed by urbanization, said Emily Beech, head of conservation prioritization at Botanic Gardens Conservation International, a nonprofit group that led the research now included in the Red List.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Handbag Designer Nancy Gonzalez Sentenced to 18 Months for Smuggling Exotic Skins

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      Nancy Gonzalez, whose clients included Britney Spears and Sofia Vergara, smuggled purses from her native Colombia to the United States using couriers. She will serve 18 months.The handbag designer Nancy Gonzalez built a cult following among celebrities and the South American superrich thanks to her use of brilliantly dyed precious skins. Once one of the largest purveyors of crocodile skin accessories in the world, her namesake brand sold totes and clutches in lime green alligator and lavender python skin for thousands of dollars, often through big-name retailers like Saks and Bergdorf Goodman.Now Ms. Gonzalez, 71, is facing considerable time in bright orange coveralls.On Monday, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in a Miami federal court to charges of smuggling hundreds of handbags made from the skins of protected wildlife into the United States from her native Colombia.Ms. Gonzalez, whose full name is Nancy Tereza Gonzalez de Barberi and whose business was incorporated into a luxury handbag company called Gzuniga Limited, was arrested in 2022 in Cali, Colombia, and then extradited to the United States last August. She admitted to recruiting as many as 40 couriers to carry up to four products at a time on commercial flights to be used at New York Fashion Week and industry events or to be sold in the Gzuniga showroom between February 2016 and April 2019.Prosecutors said that the handbags and purses, made from the hides of caiman alligators and pythons bred in captivity, were worth as much as $2 million. The designer’s lawyers said that the pieces were mostly samples and cost about $140 each, with only about 1 percent lacking the proper authorization to be brought into the United States.The trade in caimans and pythons is not banned but is strictly regulated under the rules of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, of which both the United States and Colombia are signatories. According to prosecutors, Ms. Gonzalez never secured the necessary import permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service required by regulators.“It’s all driven by the money,” Thomas Watts-Fitzgerald of the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, said on Monday. “If you want to deter the conduct, you want the cocaine kingpin not the person in the field.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More