Report clears WWF of complicity in violent abuses by conservation rangers

But independent review criticises wildlife fund's inconsistent approach to human rights

A long-awaited report into allegations that conservation rangers supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) committed violent abuses in several countries, including murder, has cleared the organisation's staff of complicity but criticised it for serious shortcomings in oversight.

But even as the report was released, campaigners for tribal rights - including Survival International, which has long been a critic of WWF - suggested the report had failed to investigate some of the most serious issues and that it had been released two days before the US Thanksgiving holiday in an attempt to bury the news.