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Poaching in the Kruger National Park has seen a massive decrease in recent years attributed to the introduction of free-running hounds. The dogs were introduced almost eight years ago to arguably South Africa's number one visited national park to curb mostly the poaching of rhinos for their horns.

A 52-year-old man has been arrested after he was found with 446 units of dried abalone in Brackenfell.

A 42-year-old man has been sentenced to a decade behind bars at the Kuruman Regional Court after being nabbed with 2 850 endangered and protected plants worth more than R9 million. 

Durban - South African conservation NGO, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), has introduced a novel project that seeks to test the use of restorative justice approaches to wildlife crimes - a first for the country. In South Africa, it is an offence to undertake any prohibited or unauthorised activity in respect of any legally protected species.

These crimes, ranging from illegal wildlife trade to unregulated fishing and the trafficking of rare timber and precious stones, are estimated to be worth between $110 billion and $281 billion annually, positioning them among the most profitable illicit economies worldwide. The report, titled Hidden in Plain Site, is written by Kristina Amerhauser and Robin Cartwright and looks at illicit financial flows (IFFs) related to three specific illicit environmental flows: timber trafficking from Myanmar to China; gemstone trafficking from Mozambique to Thailand; and abalone…

The west coastal waters of South Africa are under siege, not from the waves of the Atlantic, but from an insidious tide of environmental crime that is sweeping away one of its most precious marine resources. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime has sounded the alarm on the rampant illicit trade of South African abalone, with the country's Haliotis midae species, locally known as perlemoen (abalone), facing potential extinction due to soaring demand from East Asia. So rampant is this environmental crime that the Global…

Durban - A 45-year-old man convicted of rhino poaching was sentenced to 28 years in prison by the Empangeni Regional Court.

The 41-year-old man was arrested by members of the South African Police Service while trying to board a flight to Singapore. A security official at the airport alerted police to suspicious-looking items in the suspect’s hand luggage. Upon further investigation and interrogation of the suspect, police found that the suspect was carrying rhino horn weighing 26kg in his carry-on bag.

Durban - with the number of rhinos killed for their horns in KwaZulu-Natal Ezemvelo Wildlife reserves this year set to surpass poaching deaths for the past two years, a report has been released on what should be done to protect the endangered species. The report was compiled six years ago by a task team that investigated the scourge of rhino poaching and recommended that Ezemvelo beef up its intelligence capacity to combat the crime. It said such an investigation unit could help police and prosecutors secure convictions against those implicated in poaching.

The contraband represents 80 to 100 slaughtered elephants. Officers discovered the smuggled tusks aboard trucks in the city of Lubumbashi on Saturday, according to a legal official who declined to be named due involvement in an ongoing investigation into the affair. Police arrested five people but two fled after questioning, the official said. He added that the haul amounted to 1.5 tonnes. Both the origin and intended final destination of the ivory remain unclear.

Durban: Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife has expressed disappointment after a man caught with a rhino horn without a permit, received a suspended sentence in court this week.

Durban - Since the beginning of the year, 106 rhinos have already been poached according to KwaZulu-Natal Economic Development, Tourism, and Environmental Affairs (Edtea) MEC Ravi Pillay. In a statement on Saturday, Pillay said this comes after a total of 93 rhinos were poached in KZN parks in 2020 and 102 were poached last year.

Last year, 97 rhinos were poached in Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife reserves in 2021. Between January 1 and March 25 this year, 61 have been killed. According to some reports, the tally for the year so far is at least 75.