This archive of published media articles about wildlife crime in Namibia aims to:
Public access to information is a vital component of ensuring community engagement in prevalent issues. Wildlife crime is one of the pressing environmental issues of our time.
Wildlife crime investigations are generally covert operations requiring utmost confidentiality to succeed. Investigations and prosecutions in complex cases may take months or even years to complete. For this reason, the information that can be released to the public without compromising cases is often limited. Nonetheless, the Namibian government strives to share as much information as possible with the public.
The Namibian media has welcomed this approach and regularly publishes statistics and feature articles on wildlife crime. These are entered into the database at regular intervals, creating a comprehensive archive of wildlife crime reporting in Namibia.
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In recent years, traders in west Africa have used social media to advertise wild meat directly and connect with customers. Platforms like TikTok and Facebook act as online storefronts linked to physical markets, enabling sellers to reach much larger audiences than they would have by selling at traditional stalls. This change is bringing new, often urban, buyers into the market and altering how wild meat is sold and the overall scale of the trade. A screenshot of a wild meat TikTok channel. Supplied We are wildlife researchers studying the trade in wild animals in west Africa.
At a nature reserve in central Kenya, the last two northern white rhinos in existence live under the 24/7 protection of armed guards. The subspecies has been driven to near extinction by decades of poaching and civil war in its range of central Africa. A new documentary, "The Last Rhinos: A New Hope," which premiered on National Geographic on August 24, and is now streaming on Disney and and Hulu, chronicles the fight to save the northern white.
Many times a week, CapeNature compliance officers and SAPS units chase down plant poachers - some driven by economic hardship, others by profit - supplying a market for ornamental conversation pieces in homes around the world. Whether buyers realise it or not, the trade has cascading ecological impacts and undermines tourism livelihoods. Between April and June 2025, CapeNature - the public institution responsible for biodiversity conservation in the Western Cape - registered 12 biodiversity crime cases. Eight involved flora (plant life), while four related to fauna (animal life…
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.'