Namibia's precious wildlife is under threat from criminals, as illegal wildlife trade has become the world's fourth-largest form of transnational crime. This was said by Ana Beatriz Martins, the European Union's ambassador to Namibia, at a press debriefing for 'Operation Saving Wildlife through Multilateral Cooperation in Africa' (Sama) in Windhoek yesterday. She said dozens of wildlife species have been pushed ever closer to extinction by habitat loss and illegal trade. "The African continent is particularly impacted by unprecedented levels of wildlife and forest crime, which as a consequence are impacting the climate, degrading vulnerable ecosystems, threatening the livelihoods of local communities, and adversely affecting the tourism sector," Martins said. The ambassador said where criminal networks exploit every loophole in the flow of information, legislation, customs and law enforcement, authorities are called to scale up cross-border and multilateral collaboration cooperation, with harmonised responses to wildlife trafficking and illegal logging.