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One of Algoa Bay’s most valuable resources is being poached and plundered at an alarming rate. Nelson Mandela Bay has experienced a string of perlemoen-related incidents over the past few days, with experts in the field saying the illegal trade of this protected shellfish is now at an all-time high.

South Africa's most exclusive enclave of private nature reserves reveals their hidden security nerve centre - and shows what they've done to thwart horn poachers for nearly a record year.

The Skukuza regional court on Friday sentenced a Mozambican national Joshua Mongwe to six years' imprisonment for poaching-related offences. The accused, 29, pleaded guilty to the offence and was subsequently convicted of trespassing in the Kruger National Park, contravention of Immigration Act, possession of ammunition.

As two collectors walk down the South Korean nursery's humid aisles, they spot a magnificent specimen. Having collected South African succulents for over two decades, their greenhouse showcases many plants growing in what looks like their natural Succulent Karoo habitat. But they have never seen this species before, and judging from its size, the plant looks decades old. The nursery owner tells them the succulent is a new mother plant used for cultivation and is not for sale. But if they wanted an equally large plant, he could connect them to his broker.

Snaring has surged 200% in the Kruger National Park, also causing lion extinctions elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.

Gqeberha police arrested a 28-year-old man on Wednesday after allegedly discovering perlemoen with an estimated street value of R3m in the bakkie he was driving.

There are worrying signs that the illegal trade is becoming more organised, with professionals and government officials involved.

A void left by illegal horn income may now be driving neighbouring communities to snare and shoot species such as African buffalo in the park's southwest sector. Despite the lowveld’s searing heat, thorny canopy and tough terrain, Kruger's staff and honorary rangers say they are fighting back - on foot.

Since 2020, snaring has tripled in the crown jewels of South Africa's Big Five reserves. This suggests economic hardship, although it is not the sole factor to blame. Responding to questions by the Democratic Alliance’s Hannah Winkler on the park’s snaring trends, Environment Minister Barbara Creecy reported the removal of thousands of snares: In 2020, 2,407 snares were removed; In 2021, 4,454 snares were removed; In 2022, 7,270 snares were removed.

Joining famed conservationists Jane Goodall and Carl Jones at the 12th Oppenheimer Research Conference, a former SANParks conservation boss warns that - thanks to a lack of funds and government interference - most provincial game reserves face collapse, but suggests solutions might be found among not-forprofits, the private sector and surrounding communities.

Gauteng police have seized meat carcasses hijacked from a delivery truck, guns and ammunition, blue lights and signal jammers at a property in Alexandra, Johannesburg. An elephant tusk was also found at the 7th Avenue premises during Tuesday's operation, said police spokesperson Col Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi.

The Gqeberha-based economic protected resources team under the serious organised crime Investigation unit of the Hawks arrested a 43-year-old man on Friday for possession of perlemoen. The suspect joins his 10 co-accused, previously arrested in Algoa Park in May for allegedly being in possession of perlemoen, as well as running a yshing operation without a permit.

A new investigative report on SA's lion farming industry comes to a damning conclusion: 'This new intelligence gathered by brave sources confirms what was previously suspected - these well-established, legal operations are plugged secretly into unethical practices and an illicit international trade network.'

The head of the North West Parks and Tourism Board has told Parliament that the thieves who stole 51 rhino horns from its guarded facility in June must have had intimate knowledge of its security system.

Fifteen years after South Africa was hit by an unprecedented wave of rhino-horn poaching, the slaughter rate remains relentless - with one rhino shot almost every day in KwaZulu-Natal, the historic heartland of global rhino conservation. More than 60% of the rhinos killed in South Africa so far in 2023 drew their last breaths in KwaZulu-Natal as poachers continue to shift more of their deadly firepower and axes to the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, one of the world’s last strongholds of wild rhino conservation. Latest poaching …

South African National Parks has confirmed that lions have been targeted in a poisoning campaign in the northern Kruger Park by poachers seeking the animals’ body parts, presumably for the muti trade. The numbers are not huge, but in the wake of the rhino poaching onslaught, the targeting of another charismatic species in the iconic park will set off alarm bells among conservationists.

The Wildlife Justice Commission has published details of a rhino horn trafficking case that includes the use of frozen seafood and 'mishandled baggage', as well as the failure of authorities not to publicly report their seizure of the horn. 

The Hawks have arrested a second suspect allegedly linked to the stockpile hit at the North West Parks Board headquarters in Mafikeng last week. According to a Daily Maverick source, the suspect was apprehended in a planned operation near Brits at about 9pm on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning the arrest was confirmed by a senior SAPS officer who did not want to be identified.

Conservationists are raising serious questions about crime scene protocols - and the sense in stockpiling rhino horn - after a report claimed the police took eight hours to respond to a burglary at the North West Parks Board on Monday. In what is being described as a well-planned heist executed with military precision, thieves broke into the Heritage House headquarters of the North West Parks Board in the early hours of Monday and stole 51 rhino horns worth millions of rands on the Asian black market.

The recent sentencing of six Zimbabweans - members of the so-called Chitiyo Rhino Poaching Gang - to prison terms ranging from 16 to 20 years suggests that authorities are slowly but steadily making inroads in tackling the poaching scourge.

Ten suspects arrested for allegedly running an illegal perlemoen operation appeared in the Gqeberha magistrate’s court on Monday. Acting on a tip-off, the Hawks' Economic Protected Resources team in Gqeberha followed up on information about perlemoen activities at a residential premises in Algoa Park. Surveillance was conducted and law enforcement was granted a warrant to execute a search on Thursday last week, leading to the discovery of an alleged illegal operation.

The Wilderness Foundation has offered a reward in an effort to put the brakes on the recent spate of rhino poaching in the Eastern Cape.

Vietnamese authorities on Monday seized seven tonnes of ivory smuggled from Angola, the largest seizure of wildlife products in years, the government said.

For decades the area surrounding the serene and picturesque Jozini Dam and Pongola Nature Reserve has been a tourist mecca, drawing well-heeled local and international visitors keen on seeing nature at its best, including cruises to watch elephants grazing and to spot rare species. Luxury lodges and hundreds of workers depend on the viability of the local tourist attractions and a constant stream of high-spending visitors.

The Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife conservation agency has, up till now, opted to not dehorn its rhinos to protect them from poachers. But that could change soon, following another year of relentless killings in which the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park emerged as the current rhino poaching hotspot, globally. The latest poaching figures released by national Environment Minister Barbara Creecy show that 244 rhinos were killed by horn poachers in KwaZulu-Natal in 2022 - the vast majority of them in the HIP.

Two rhinos that survived a poaching attack at Schotia Safaris Private Game Reserve, near Nanaga, nearly 10 years ago were killed by poachers on Thursday. After disabling the pair of male and female white rhinos in the attack, the poachers hacked off their horns with pangas before making their escape.

An appeal court has increased the prison sentence of a rhino poacher from 11 to 15 years.

The Skukuza regional court on Thursday convicted and sentenced a man who had been arrested in the Kruger National Park on three separate occasions to an effective 32 years' imprisonment for poaching-related offences. Forster Lubisi, 43, was convicted of three counts of trespassing, two counts of possession of a prohibited firearm with a serial number obliterated, possession of ammunition, possession of a dangerous weapon, killing of a rhino and possession of an unlicensed firearm. He pleaded guilty to the crimes.

Private and communal lands now conserve at least 50% of Africa's rhinos, according to a newly published paper in journal 'Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment', highlighting the need for 'adaptive policies' to build on this success. These trends have policy implications as debates rage about rhino-horn trade and trophy hunting.

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.

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.

Two men were arrested for the possession of stolen firearms, ivory and other property on Friday in Cape St Francis.

A Ugandan court has handed a life sentence to a man caught with nearly 10 kg of elephant ivory, the country's highest punishment ever for wildlife violations, authorities said on Friday.

Rhino conservation has received a major boost with the recent Gqeberha sentencing of a gang convicted of conspiring to poach rhino. The September 22 sentencing of the Chitlongo Three in the Gqeberha Regional Court, the first achieved under National Environmental Management Act "conspiracy to poach" legislation, gives SA lawmakers a lethal new weapon to pursue suspects who have often escaped prosecution in the past because of a lack of evidence.

Liberian Moazu Kromah - known as "Kampala Man" - led one of the most active wildlife-trafficking syndicates on the African continent before his arrest in the Ugandan capital in February 2017. Just more than five years later, in March 2022, more than 11,000km away from the city in which he based his operation and from which his alias derives, Kromah quietly entered into a plea bargain with the Southern District of New York (SDNY), which is known for tackling high-profile organised crime and corruption cases.

As several stories have revealed across different platforms of late, most pertinently in the long delayed release of the Rhino Report in Daily Maverick of 31 May, poaching in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park has boomed. There is little argument among conservation bodies about the numbers - some 95 rhinos have been poached in the park so far this year. It drew to mind an interview I recorded with former Environmental Affairs Minister, Edna Molewa, in about 2013 for a multimedia eBook I was producing called, iRhino.

While forensic science has proven highly successful in helping catch perpetrators of human crimes - with a single cell now being enough for forensic sleuths to form a DNA profile - its potential in animal-related crimes remains largely untapped. The Wildlife Forensic Academy (WFA) is a first-of-its-kind forensic training facility. It was launched on 13 May at Buffelsfontein Nature Reserve on the West Coast and will be another weapon in the fight against wildlife crime.

Two of South Africa's most notorious rhino poachers, the Van Deventer brothers, have been convicted and sentenced in a Limpopo court after pleading guilty to a long list of charges that link them to a trail of poached rhino carcasses discovered over the 2016/17 New Year weekend.

Poverty around protected parks is not the main reason rhino poaching thrives, argues researcher Ian Glenn. 

Just as the barbarity of war in Ukraine or the global climate crisis gradually lose their shock value, the unrelenting massacre of South Africa’s rhino has all but drifted from public view. Behind the scenes, however, at least 75 rhinos have been butchered for their horns in KwaZulu-Natal in the opening months of 2022.

It has taken suspected succulent smugglers just a few years to yank out of the ground more than 1.5 million rare plants with a cumulative age of more than 44,000 years. And illegal trade in wild flora and fauna continues to rocket, authorities say.

The Year of the Tiger is not a good one for the creatures themselves, a global animal welfare report states. It also finds South Africa to be at the heart of the big cat crisis.

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

Anti-poaching groups have blamed socio-economic problems for the rise in poaching and snaring in various protected areas such as game reserves. Speaking after a recent sweep of snares at Tala Collection Game Reserve, located between Easton and Camperdown in KwaZulu-Natal, Lawrence Reed, founder of Rave Rhino and Wildlife Project on Sunday, 16 January, said they had seen an increase in the number of snares being discovered at the game reserve.

Cycads, an ancient group of plants dating from the time of the dinosaurs, are threatened globally by extinction. The plants are also coveted by collectors, especially rarer specimens. In South Africa, a hotspot of cycad diversity, this demand has given rise to a harmful illicit market that has placed dozens of species at risk. Thousands of cycads have been dug up from the wild, with poachers using a legal cycad market to launder their harvests.

Police who arrested two men carrying a rhino horn on a highway near Witbank allegedly demanded a R30,000 bribe to release them.

In a Daily Maverick webinar on Wednesday, Dr Luthando Dziba, the new CEO of South African National Parks, said there may be fewer than 3,000 rhinos in the Kruger Park for the first time - despite the park authority spending millions on rhino protection.

Eleven years ago today, Dawie Groenewald, a little-known ex-policeman turned hunting safari operator, was arrested on charges of masterminding a lucrative rhino horn trafficking network involving professional hunters, vets and a pilot. A police spokesperson described the case at the time as "a huge stride in our undying efforts to thwart rhino poaching". The charges brought against Groenewald involved illegal hunting and the alleged killing of more than 50 of his own rhinos, dealing in rhino horns, money laundering, racketeering and fraud.

To the rangers who tracked him, he was known as Big Foot, the rhino poacher whose large barefoot prints were often spotted leading in and out of the Kruger National Park.