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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.

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.

The Minister of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism, Pohamba Shifeta, provided a detailed overview of ongoing efforts in wildlife protection and law enforcement at the 2024 Annual National Stakeholder Forum held this week. According to Shifeta, Namibia has long been recognized for its successful conservation strategies, which have significantly reduced poaching rates since the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly targeting iconic species such as rhinos and elephants.

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.

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.

Chief of the Namibian Police, Lieutenant General Joseph Shikongo confirmed a deadly encounter between poachers and members of the anti-poaching operation in Etosha National Park. According to Shikongo, the incident occurred on 1 May between 12:00 and 13:00 at Scorpionbelt – Western Zone within the confines of the park. While conducting patrols alongside the park's fence, members of the poaching unit spotted shoeprints indicating the illegal entry of individuals into the park.

In less than eight years, white sharks in South Africa have all but disappeared from their historical hotspots in False Bay and Gansbaai, on the Western Cape coast. These areas were once known as the "white shark capital of the world" and were home to a flourishing ecotourism industry. One possible explanation for this change would be a declining white shark population. We are part of an international research team with expertise in shark ecology, genetics, fisheries and conservation, researching sharks for more than 20 years.

A furious row has blown up in the UK's leading succulent society over the practice of taking desirable specimens from the wild, with the chair resigning in protest over the behaviour of his fellow enthusiasts. Succulents have risen in popularity in recent years: they are attractive and hardy. A succulent won the Royal Horticultural Society plant of the year award in the UK in 2022, while the plants have also become wildly popular in Asian countries, leading to a massive boom in demand. However, the drought-tolerant plants are often sourced from the wild.

The government is equally on a manhunt for the killers of two booted eagles that migrated all the way from Europe but met their deaths in both Kebbi and Sokoto States. Addressing a press conference on Friday in Abuja, the Minister of State for Environment, Dr.

The Namibian Chamber of Environment has launched an outreach programme to educate Namibians about the precarious status of the pangolin. The initiative, which involves producing large posters and thousands of business card-sized mini-posters for distribution countrywide, is to raise awareness and appeal to every Namibian to help stop the illegal trade in the animal.

The Namibian Chamber of Environment has launched an outreach programme to educate Namibians about the precarious status of the pangolin. The initiative, which involves producing large posters and thousands of business card-sized mini-posters for distribution countrywide, is to raise awareness and appeal to every Namibian to help stop the illegal trade in the animal.