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In 2019, Malawi dismantled the Chinese-led Lin-Zhang wildlife trafficking syndicate, a major win in its fight against the illegal wildlife trade, thanks in part to funding from the U.S. government. The Trump administration’s recent slashing of international development funds, however, threatens these gains, leaving frontline enforcers and conservation programs without critical support. NGOs across Africa and Southeast Asia, running initiatives from sniffer rat programs to antipoaching patrols, tell Mongabay they're struggling to fill the funding gap.

The draft strategy is skewed in favour of anthropocentric benefits - economic, spiritual and cultural - and cannot function in practical terms. South Africa's Draft National Elephant Heritage Strategy, which closed to public comment at the end of February, demands that South Africa's elephants must depend on human social and economic development for their future survival.

A new investigation by wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC has uncovered an "alarming" slew of online adverts offering illegal wildlife products for sale in Vietnam, despite pledges from multiple platforms to clamp down on such content. The report, based on monitoring of social media groups and e-commerce platforms in Vietnam between June 2021 and July 2023, focuses on items made from body parts of elephants, rhinos, pangolins, tigers, tortoises and freshwater turtles.

Community-led antitrafficking networks are proving pivotal in helping authorities intercept poachers targeting critically endangered and endemic tortoises in southern Madagascar’s fast-disappearing spiny forests. Illegal hunting, both for their meat and to supply the pet trade, has decimated the species’ population in recent decades. Indigenous people living in the range of the imperiled species are motivated to protect them due to long-standing traditional beliefs that value and respect the tortoises.

Namibia intends to "cull" 21 elephants in the dry north-west of the country where a small population of desert elephants roam In a statement issued on Monday, the Namibian Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) said they plan to cull 723 wild animals, including 83 elephants, across the country and to distribute the meat to local people as a drought relief program. The so-called cull will take place in national parks and communal areas where authorities believe animal numbers exceed available grazing land and water supplies amid the ongoing drought.

There has been a dramatic increase in elephant poaching in northern Botswana, with little official concern about reports of the poaching. An aerial survey in July revealed 19 poached carcasses, bringing the total to 105 since October2023. Mary Rice, Executive Director of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), warns that "the increasingnumber of elephant poaching incidents being documented inBotswana should be of real concern to the widerconservation community".

An aerial survey has revealed a dramatic increase in elephant poaching in northern Botswana, with little official concern about reports of the poaching. There has been a sharp spike in elephant poaching in northern Botswana. However, there seems to be little official concern over reports of the poaching. An aerial survey in July revealed 19 poached carcasses bringing the total to 105 since October 2023.

The recent seizure in Thailand of 48 lemurs and more than 1,200 critically endangered tortoises endemic to Madagascar underscores the global scale of wildlife trafficking networks that use Thailand as a transshipment hub. The operation was aided by intelligence from a joint transnational investigation between Thai law enforcement agencies and international antitrafficking organizations working to dismantle global wildlife trafficking networks spanning Asia, Africa and South America.

Police and wildlife authorities in Malawi have arrested two men suspected of having killed an elephant in Kasungu National Park. Residents of villages just outside the park's boundaries informed police about two men selling elephant meat, who were subsequently found in possession of 16.6 kg (36.6 lbs) of ivory.

Vigilant Mtubatuba police officers arrested two suspects in Khula Village, near St Lucia, for being in possession of elephant tusks.