This archive of published media articles about wildlife crime in Namibia aims to:
Public access to information is a vital component of ensuring community engagement in prevalent issues. Wildlife crime is one of the pressing environmental issues of our time.
Wildlife crime investigations are generally covert operations requiring utmost confidentiality to succeed. Investigations and prosecutions in complex cases may take months or even years to complete. For this reason, the information that can be released to the public without compromising cases is often limited. Nonetheless, the Namibian government strives to share as much information as possible with the public.
The Namibian media has welcomed this approach and regularly publishes statistics and feature articles on wildlife crime. These are entered into the database at regular intervals, creating a comprehensive archive of wildlife crime reporting in Namibia.
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Two former government officials have been sentenced for corruption and money laundering linked to the abalone trade, the Hawks confirmed on Saturday. The officials, Winston Mervin Busch and Nomvuyo Concellia Motloung, were among a group of 18 suspects arrested in a 2018 swoop on an abalone syndicate operating in the Western Cape. The group comprised several marine inspectors from the department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, as well as several members of an abalone poaching syndicate, the Hawks said. Twelve of the group have now been sentenced.
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SA_2023_09_Two government officials sentenced in landmark abalone case_Times Live.pdf | 393.11 KB |
This week, an elephant trampled a suspected poacher to death in the Kruger Park after he ran in to a breeding herd trying to escape rangers. Another three suspected poachers have been arrested in the Kruger National Park (KNP), this time in the Crocodile Bridge section at the south end of the almost 20,000km² reserve.
Increased political buy-in for law enforcement and interdiction efforts at ports in East Africa have pushed wildlife smuggling westward to Nigeria. Between 1998 and 2014, the top two countries associated with ivory seizures were Tanzania and Kenya. Since 2014, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo have overtaken them. Corruption at the ports, the involvement of influential politicians, and rural poverty make Nigeria an aractive waypoint for smugglers.