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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 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.

There are fewer than 5,630 black rhinos left in the wild, but the last remaining free-ranging population live in the Kunene and Erongo regions of North West Namibia. These special desert-adapted rhinos are protected by our partner Save the Rhino Trust (SRT). The past year has been especially difficult for SRT's team. They have not only had to cope with the ever-present threat of poaching and drought but also had to deal with the additional pressures brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Commercial and subsistence poaching in protected areas is on the rise. The extent of loss sustained by Namibia on account of the Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) is not reliably quantified (Anon., 2017). Wildlife populations for some of Namibia’s most iconic species - African Elephant Loxodonta africana, and Black Rhinoceros Diceros bicornis - are currently under threat due to IWT, and increased poaching in recent years is damaging their otherwise healthy populations.

To raise awareness for rhino conservation, Namibian-born international model Behati Prinsloo has joined forces with Save The Rhino Trust Namibia (SRT). As part of her alliance with the organisation, she is launching a global campaign and is visiting Namibia this month, entrenching herself in the movement to protect the critically endangered black rhino species and preserve the population.