(Reuters) - South African police have arrested a Vietnamese man suspected of being in illegal possession of 10 rhino horns, one elephant tusk and cash with a total value of nearly $3 million, an official said on Wednesday.

South Africa, the country home to the most rhinos in the world, has been losing almost two of the threatened animals a day to poachers who sell the horns in China and Southeast Asia for use by the affluent as a traditional medicine ingredient. Read more

According to a new report by Greenpeace, top U.S. car companies such as Ford, General Motors, and Nissan are sourcing pig iron that has resulted in the destruction of Amazon rainforests, slave labor, and land conflict with indigenous tribes. Spending two years documenting the pig iron trade between northeastern Brazil and the U.S., Greenpeace has discovered that rainforests are cut and burned to power blast furnaces that produce pig iron, which is then shipped to the U.S. for steel production. Read more

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed endangered species protection for two plants, the Umtanum desert buckwheat and White Bluffs bladderpod, found only in Washington’s Hanford Reach National Monument.

The agency also proposed designation of just over 3,200 acres in Benton and Franklin counties as protected critical habitat for the threatened plant species. The proposals are the result of an agreement between the Center for Biological Diversity and the USFWS to speed up protection decisions for 757 species around the country. Read more

After heavy protests from gun-rights' groups, the federal government is dropping a proposed ban on target shooting at the Sonoran Desert National Monument.

The decision to continue allowing such shooting at the 487,000-acre monument northeast of Gila Bend has spurred hope in a National Rifle Association activist and concern among some environmentalists that the feds could also back off on a similar proposal for Ironwood National Monument closer to Tucson. Read more