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Kasane - Rhino poaching in Botswana is getting worse, and the government is not helping matters in any way due to its split attitude on the crisis. On the one hand, the government of President Mokgweetsi Masisi - in power since 2018 - acknowledges the seriousness of the crisis but, when it suits it, the administration ambivalently denies any calamity and neglects taking decisive action.

The Namibian man intercepted alongside a party of suspected Zambian rhino poachers that he was attempting to guide into Botswana is a repeat offender wanted in Botswana for skipping the country when he was due for prosecution for rhino poaching and illegal possession of firearms, the Botswana Gazette can reveal.

Namibia's over-burdened criminal justice system is struggling to keep up with rhino-poaching court cases, some of them delayed by up to six years. Is a special wildlife crime court the answer? 

Zimbabwean police officer Sergeant Tawanda Kwaramba drove from Bulawayo to Victoria Falls on September 16 2019, on a mission to undermine the law he had sworn to uphold. In Victoria Falls he loaded seven Chinese nationals into a stolen car and drove more than 900km to Sango on the border with Mozambique. From Sango border post, the Chinese nationals - Zeng Dengui, Peicon Jang, Liu Cheng, Yu Xian, Yong Zhiu, Cheng Zhiang and Qui Jinchang - were driven across south-central Mozambique to Maputo and the safety of a Chinese fishing boat that was due to sail them home.

There are worrying signs that Namibia's legendary wild game numbers may be plummeting.

There are worrying signs that Namibia’s legendary wild game numbers may be plummeting. Four years ago the Namibian Professional Hunters Association raised an alarm about the lack of huntable elephant bulls in the Caprivi region, where the number of communal conservancies had grown from one in 1997 to 15 today.

Oscar Nkala talks to a jailed Zambian elephant poacher about the structure, financing and operations of cross-border smuggling gangs.

How did 13 rhino bulls from the Kruger National Park end up on a hunting farm owned by a reclusive Russian billionaire in Namibia? John Grobler and Khadija Sharife follow the trail

Who are the people driving Namibiaʼs plans to open commercial abattoirs for donkey meat and skins for Asia? Oscar Nkala tracks them down.

Xuecheng Hou, a wealthy Chinese businessman linked to wildlife contraband trafficking, has emerged as a major player in the illegal trade in rare African timber in sub-Saharan Africa. John Grobler investigates.

The Namibian authorities don’t seem to be in any hurry to shut down a rhino horn smuggling syndicate that has infiltrated security at Windhoek’s airport, writes John Grobler.

Depending on your views about legal trade in wildlife products, the past week was either a good week or a very good week for Namibian conservation, writes John Grobler.

After a two-year investigation, John Grobler exposes the totem-based networks facilitating transnational rhino horn smuggling and defeating the criminal justice system’s pursuit of suspects.

John Grobler visits Okahao, a sleepy settlement near Etosha National Park at the centre of the poaching plague threatening the world’s last viable population of critically endangered black rhinos.

The second recent court development followed the sensational arrest of a young, up-and-coming Windhoek businessman named “Mox” Namwandi. Who is he? John Grobler tracks his connections.

Court evidence reveals the typical methdology deployed by one of five organised crime syndicates believed to be active in Namibian wildlife trafficking, reports John Grobler.

A 10-month-long investigation by John Grobler uncovers the political and commercial agendas driving the world’s largest black rhino population towards extinction.

The Save the Rhino Trust (SRT) has launched an internal investigation after it was presented with a letter in mid-December outlining possible collusion between some staff members and poachers who have killed at least 18 critically endangered Kunene black rhinos since late 2012. The crisis at the SRT is however just part of a larger one in anti-poaching law enforcement and natural resource management in the so-called “Big Three” communal conservancies - Palmwag, Abenab and Sesfontein - in southern Kunene.

How did ‘Boxer’ die? Why are dead rhinos being found in the area his team patrolled? John Grobler digs up strange secrets surrounding the deaths of black rhinos in the Kunene region of Namibia.

Rhinos are known for their distinctive horn or in some cases two horns on their nose. It's a great shame how some people do not consider these animals as the treasures that they are. They are also known as part of the big five.