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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Rhino poachers are heartless and kill every rhino they see - young or old, with of without a horn - just to get rid of them from the reserve and to "try and make their job easier", should they come back. This is according to Ezemvelo Wildlife spokesperson Musa Mntambo. This week, Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment Barbara Creecy said that KwaZulu-Natal recorded a loss of 133 rhinos in the first half of the year - which is more than triple the 33 rhino killed in the first six months of 2021.
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SA_2022_08_KZNs rhino population is being decimated by highly organised poachers_Witness.pdf | 528.01 KB |
Rhino populations are being hammered by poachers, steeping Africa in blood and pushing the species ever-closer to extinction to satisfy the demand for rhino horn in Vietnam and other countries - a demand largely based on the myth of the non-existent medicinal properties of rhino horn. For the record, rhino horn is entirely composed of keratin, also the chief component in hair, nails and animal hooves; you’ve as much chance of curing cancer by biting your nails as you have by drinking powdered rhino horn.
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EIA_2021_02_History repeating The illegal trade in rhino horn_EIA.pdf | 242.53 KB |
The most comprehensive data on poaching of African elephants comes from the Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE) program, which reports numbers of illegally killed carcasses encountered by rangers. Recent studies utilizing MIKE data have reported that poaching of African elephants peaked in 2011 and has been decreasing through 2018. Closer examination of these studies, however, raises questions about the conclusion that poaching is decreasing throughout the continent.
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State_space models reveal a continuing elephant poaching problem in most of Africa.pdf | 382.92 KB |