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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.

Instability, enforcement gaps and poverty combine to enable the rampant trafficking of cheetah cubs to the Middle East. Cheetah trafficking in the Horn of Africa has reached crisis levels. Research has documented at least 1 884 incidents involving around 4 000 live cheetahs and cheetah parts related to the illegal wildlife trade from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula between 2010 and 2019. A more recent study sheds light on how baby cheetahs are smuggled from the Horn of Africa to Gulf countries and sold as exotic pets.

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.

Masai giraffe calves and other juvenile African wildlife are being exported from Tanzania to the Sharjah Safari in Al Dhaid in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the pleasure of Dubai royalty and tourists. Human Rights Watch reports that the shooting and capture of animals, including the endangered Masai giraffe, and their transfer to Dubai are part of a long-running syndicate between successive Tanzanian governments and the Otterlo (sometimes Ortello) Business Corporation (OBC). This syndicate has been active since Ali Hassan Mwinyi’s presidency in the 1980s and 1990s.

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 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.

A Gokwe man has been nabbed after he was found in possession of an elephant tusk following a tip off by members of the public.