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Two businessmen and a farmer of Lusaka have been taken to court for illegal possession of a live pangolin, one of the most tracked mammal in the world, valued at over K23, 000. Pangolin meat is considered a delicacy, while their scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine as they are believed to treat a range of ailments from asthma to rheumatism and arthritis.

China ranked as the top market for rhino horns over the past decade, but the country has taken steps to crack down on smugglers, according to a report from the Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC), a non-profit foundation based in The Hague. From 2012 to 2021, nearly 9,600 rhinos were poached from across Africa and 7.5 tonnes (8.3 tons) of illegal horns were seized globally, the WJC said, citing its analysis of more than 670 seizures. According to the report released on Thursday, "the demand for rhino horns as a criminal commodity shows no signs of abating".

Whenever there is an outbreak of a new infectious disease, such as the current Covid-19 pandemic, we are quick to identify the animal or species that hosted the virus.  However, we pay little attention to the role people who deal in illegal wildlife products play in causing the "species jump" and spreading Zoonotic diseases. Poachers illegally hunt in national parks, game management areas and private game farms. As a result, they are always fearful of being spotted by someone or being caught by village scouts or wildlife police officers.

The Subordinate Court in Mumbwa has sentenced five men to five years imprisonment with hard labour after they pled guilty to illegal possession of 88kg of bushmeat poached from Blue Lagoon national park in Kafue District.

The Livingstone Subordinate Court has sentenced a Lusaka businessman of Garden-Chilulu compound to five years imprisonment with hard labour for unlawful possession of 196 kilograms of dried elephant meat. Ministry of Tourism Sakabilo Kalembwe has told #Mwebantu in a statement, that the businessman has also been sentenced to one year-six months imprisonment to run concurrently for escaping lawful custody in 2019 after being arrested for unlawful possession of 241 kgs of elephant ivory

17 people sentenced for moving millions of dollars in tusks from West Africa as part of the biggest illicit network of its kind in China. Life terms show authorities are coming down hard on illegal trade, campaigner says.

Zambia is leading a push for African countries to obtain a CITES waiver that would allow them to legally export ivory stockpiles. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has an international ban on trade and sale of ivory and related products. Southern African countries have accrued huge stockpiles of ivory worth millions of dollars over the decades. The stockpiles mostly constitute ivory from elephants culled for conservation and ecological purposes.

Anti-poaching initiatives instituted by Zimbabwe are bearing fruits as the country recorded a 78 percent decline in rhino poaching incidents in the first six months of 2020 compared to same period last year. Statistics from the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZimParks) show that four rhinos were poached from January to June 2020. The figure for January - June 2019 was 19.

Zambia is exploring the possibility of domestically selling its US$100 million ivory stockpile.

Namibia has recorded a drastic reduction in poaching in the past three years because of improved response mechanisms. Most of the success is attributed to the Environment and Tourism Ministry's efforts to upscale law enforcement components of conservation. Environment and Tourism Minister Pohamba Shifeta said anti-poaching canine units (the Ministry of Environment and Tourism Dog Unit) had been deployed to good effect. "The Dog Unit is part of our anti-poaching initiatives.