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More than 1,000 starving elephants may have to be culled. Parliamentarians demand answers by tomorrow (Friday). In a scathing parliamentary session on Tuesday, 10 June members of the Portfolio Committee on Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment accused North West officials of gross mismanagement and evasion of responsibility for the ongoing elephant crisis in the Madikwe Game Reserve. The crisis, years in the making, has led to mass starvation and death among elephants, extensive environmental degradation and a controversial proposal to cull as many as 1,200 of them.

Emaciated lions, open wounds, pens covered in faeces, no shelter in blazing sun, cubs on rubbish dumps, lacerated paws  - the images displayed on the screen were shocking. But Douglas Wolhuter of the National Council of SPCAs (NSPCA) was on a mission to make parliamentarians understand the cruelty involved in captive breeding. It was both an impassioned plea to shut down lion breeding facilities and harsh criticism of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) for failing to implement its own recommendations.

Yet another mass poisoning of vultures has occurred in Mpumalanga. More than 100 critically endangered raptors have been found dead, their carcasses strewn around a poisoned warthog in Lionspruit Game Reserve near Kruger Park. The poisoning is the latest in a string of deliberate killings and has triggered alarm among conservationists, who now believe these attacks are part of a coordinated effort by criminal poaching syndicates to wipe out vultures - nature's watchmen - before launching a wave of poaching activity.

An elephant carcass, laced with poison and surrounded by more than 100 dead vultures, marked one of the most devastating wildlife poisoning events yet seen in the Kruger National Park. Remote sensing triggered a scramble to save birds that were still alive. In a coordinated emergency operation spanning helicopters, ambulances and nearly 24 hours of intensive care, 84 poisoned vultures were pulled back from the brink.

The sale of lion bones is heading back to court with a 235-page application by lion breeders demanding that the Environment Department set a CITES export quota for 2025. The subtext is a clash between free trade and animal wellbeing. In 2019, a Gauteng Division of the High Court judge found an application by breeders to renew the lion bone export quota to be "unlawful and constitutionally invalid". He said it failed to consider the welfare of captive lions raised and killed for their bones. Lion breeders have been simmering with anger ever since.

The blurb for an editorial in The Namibian newspaper on 9 November read: "From Kavango to Kunene, down south across the breadth and width of Namibia, the scramble for the country’s mineral, oil and energy sources is in overdrive." The article ended: "Government officials have turned Namibia into an unsustainable El Dorado with a vicious cycle of short-term searches for riches dishing out mining exploration licences to a select few." As you read this, graders, excavators and tipper trucks are hacking a road through three conservancies famous for their conservation of endangered,…

Three conservancies in Namibia and their joint venture partner are trying to fight off a mine thatthreatens wildlife and community welfare because it will ruin tourism.

Botswana's wildlife authorities say four rhinoceroses were shot, and two of them died, in a heavily guarded sanctuary, although their horns were not removed. The shootings at the sanctuary in central Botswana came after the government de-horned and relocated most of the rhinos further inland to discourage poachers.

Kruger National Park, the world's greatest refuge for rhinos, is losing them to poaching faster than they're being born. The park's last rhino may already be alive. It's time to declare an emergency.

Rhino poachers entering Kruger National Park are increasingly being run down by packs of unleashed hunting hounds in full cry, followed by a chopper tracking their hi-tech GPS collars. As the baying pack approaches, the poacher has no idea the dogs are trained to not attack. They won't bite him (there are legal implications), but if he tries to harm the dogs, rangers will fire from the chopper. The poachers know this and no dog has yet
been lost to a poacher’s bullet.

Botswana said it's seen a dramatic drop in rhinoceros poaching this year after taking greater steps to protect its shrinking rhino population. The significant decline was revealed in a report presented this week at a conference on CITES - the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. After losing 126 animals between 2018 and 2021, only six rhinoceroses have been poached in Botswana in 2022.
The report says poaching incidents peaked in 2020 when the country lost 62 rhinos. The following year, at least 33 were reported killed by poachers.

The Kruger National Park has a major rhino-poaching crisis, but that's just one of many mounting problems - and it's extremely worrying.

A court in Mozambique has sentenced the leader of a poaching gang to 30 years in prison on Wednesday. The man was convicted of the crimes of poaching, illegal possession of weapons and association to commit offences, the ministry said in a statement, noting that he had also been sentenced to pay a fine of 1 percent of minimum wage for 28 years, news website Club of Mozambique wrote. The accused was arrested on May 3, 2021, "when he was returning from an attempt to hunt rhinoceros for the second time illegally", authorities said.

Botswana wildlife authorities have refuted reports the country's rhinoceros population is on the verge of extinction due to poaching. The southern African country has battled a rise in poaching, with more than 60 animals killed in the last two years.

Botswana, confronting an unprecedented rise in poaching, has refuted reports by former President Ian Khama that at least 120 rhinoceroses have been killed in the last 18 months. Instead, the government says, wildlife crimes have dropped by 70 percent since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Botswana's National Assembly has rejected a call to rearm its game rangers that was driven by a surge in rhinoceros poaching in recent years. Guns were taken away from the rangers in 201, but an opposition party lawmaker had moved a motion to rearm the wildlife officers.

Botswana has decided to re-arm its wildlife rangers as the southern African country battles increased cases of poaching. In the last six months, at least 17 poachers have been killed in gunfire exchanges with the army. The government had disarmed wildlife rangers in 2018, saying that under the law, only the military was allowed the use of firearms during anti-poaching patrols. With the country losing 56 rhinoceros to poachers in the last two years, the government is reconsidering that approach. Wildlife and Tourism …

Wild animals are back. Kangaroos bounding through the streets of Melbourne, elephant herds passing through Indian villages, jackals in Johannesburg, leopards in Mumbai, wild boar in Bergamo and Verreaux eagles catching thermals above a silent Cape Town. And of course, inevitable cartoons of humans in surgical masks staring forlornly at animals playing on the sidewalk. Is lockdown good news for creatures - or for poachers?

We kill many kinds of creatures and eat them. In South Africa each year around a billion are produced and killed for food. We also shoot them and call it sport. From the point of view of the creatures involved, this is an extreme violation of their most fundamental interests - to continue living, to be free from arbitrary suffering and to have agency to pursue normal behaviours. However, like lions, leopards or hyenas, we're carnivores and that will not change anytime soon. What has increasingly become a major global issue, however, is the lives they lead up to the point of death…

A new investigative report has laid bare the scale and complexity of wildlife trafficking across southern Africa, exposing a tangled web of corruption, organised crime and systemic failures that are eroding conservation efforts and fuelling illicit markets. Disruption and Disarray: An analysis of pangolin scale and ivory trafficking, 2015-2024 by the Wildlife Justice Commission is one of the most comprehensive examinations to date of how legal loopholes, political interference and institutional weakness have allowed the illegal trade in endangered species to flourish.