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It started with a man from Maua Town in Meru County in possession of an extremely rare item and ended a few weeks ago in the Kajiado Town jail. How he found it is a mystery, but the tiny, palm-sized keratin pyramid came from a rhino. The man thought he could make considerable cash from selling this rhino horn, but he needed a buyer. He started asking around in Malili, a town along the Mombasa Road, where he thought he’d fly under the radar. Instead, our informer network was tipped off. He needed to be caught trying to sell the rhino horn to be arrested, but there were no takers…

Police have arrested a suspected poacher in South Africa found with tens of thousands of dollars' worth of dry abalone, a coveted delicacy smuggled mainly to Asia, the environment ministry said Wednesday. The motorist, a South African man, had 27 black plastic bags containing more than 13,000 of the molluscs, the ministry said. The bags, weighing 640 kilos (more than 1,410 pounds), were worth more than one million rand ($55,000, 50,000 euros), authorities said. Poachers loot South Africa's coasts of the highly sought-after sea snail, which is protected by strict fishing quotas.…

The rampant increase in wildlife poaching has been widely acknowledged as one of the greatest threats to biodiversity conservation in Africa. The Asian demand for rhinoceros horn has seen a massive onslaught on the white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) and black rhino (Diceros bicornis) populations. Since 2008, there has been a gradual and then explosive growth in rhino poaching in South Africa and, to a lesser extent, Mozambique and Botswana.