Search results

Two hundred kilogrammes of shark fin were seized at Maputo International Airport two weeks ago, but the case is still under investigation and the Director general of Mozambique’s National Administration for Conservation Areas (ANAC), Celmira da Silva said he could not provide further details on the subject. Integrity Magazine tried to question who owned the cargo as well as its origin and final destination, but without success.

Kruger National Park, the world's greatest refuge for rhinos, is losing them to poaching faster than they're being born. The park's last rhino may already be alive. It's time to declare an emergency.

A Mozambican court has sentenced a poacher to a 30-year sentence, the second such maximum term handed down this year and evidence of a crackdown by the country's judicial and conservation authorities against the illegal wildlife trade.

Rhino poachers entering Kruger National Park are increasingly being run down by packs of unleashed hunting hounds in full cry, followed by a chopper tracking their hi-tech GPS collars. As the baying pack approaches, the poacher has no idea the dogs are trained to not attack. They won't bite him (there are legal implications), but if he tries to harm the dogs, rangers will fire from the chopper. The poachers know this and no dog has yet
been lost to a poacher’s bullet.

The Kruger National Park has a major rhino-poaching crisis, but that's just one of many mounting problems - and it's extremely worrying.

Two men from Madumabisa outside Hwange town have been sentenced to nine years in jail after they were caught in a bush in Matetsi with a live pangolin.

A Victoria Falls City Council driver who hit a warthog while driving a municipal vehicle, skinned it and took the meat home for consumption has been arrested for poaching.

A 23-year-old villager from Sikabela on the outskirts of Victoria Falls town has been arrested after being found with two elephant tusks. Police and ZimParks rangers trapped Fredrick Ndlovu after getting a tip-off that he was selling the ivory at Lupinyu Business Centre near the Victoria Falls Airport.

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? 

Wild animals are back. Kangaroos bounding through the streets of Melbourne, elephant herds passing through Indian villages, jackals in Johannesburg, leopards in Mumbai, wild boar in Bergamo and Verreaux eagles catching thermals above a silent Cape Town. And of course, inevitable cartoons of humans in surgical masks staring forlornly at animals playing on the sidewalk. Is lockdown good news for creatures - or for poachers?

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.

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

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.