Search results

The minister said the court enables the swift prosecution for offenses such as wildlife trafficking, illegal logging and pollution, aligning with national and international efforts to safeguard the environment.

Six years ago, on the 21st August 2018, Michele Pickover, Executive Director of the EMS Foundation and Dr Smaragda Louw, Director of Ban Animal Trading, jointly presented their findings of an eighteen month investigation and research project about South Africa’s role in the international lion bone trade at a Colloquium held in the Parliament of South Africa.

South Africa has become the world's largest exporter of big cats and their body parts, with a thriving yet poorly regulated industry enabling illegal trade, according to a new report by global animal welfare organisation Four Paws. More than 3,500 live big cats and 34,000 body parts were exported from South Africa over the past two decades, revealed the report based on data from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Regional Court Magistrate Leopoldt Hangalo yesterday struck the case of a Chinese businessman, Hou Xue Cheng and his Namibian co-accused Hamutenja Hamutenya on a count of dealing in controlled wildlife products, from the court roll. The reason was that no docket nor witnesses were before the court. The magistrate said the matter has been coming from 2014, and the State failed to get their affairs in order for it to start. He cancelled the bail of N$100 000 for Cheng and N$5 000 for Hamutenya, and ordered it to be refunded to the depositors.

A Chinese businessman who has been facing charges of dealing in controlled wildlife products over the past eight years left the Windhoek Magistrate's Court as a free man yesterday, after his case was struck from the court roll. The state alleged that the five men illegally dealt in four elephant tusks in Windhoek on 11 June 2014.

Poisons like cyanide can be a deadly weapon for poachers, allowing them to kill dozens of animals without needing access to firearms or the backing of criminal syndicates. Wildlife poisoning is on the rise across Africa, targeting elephants as well as pushing endangered vultures toward extinction. A new study says Zimbabwe, which a decade ago witnessed some of the deadliest mass poisonings of elephants, has developed a sound basis for curbing poisonings by tightening laws to criminalize intent to use poison to kill wildlife.

Strides made with hefty sentences and fines for criminals endangering game rangers and animals. When Jimmy Mashopane of Winterveld, north of Pretoria, was arrested for shooting, killing and mutilating nine white rhino in a Free State game reserve, taking 14 horns estimated at more than R500,000, veteran prosecutor Antoinette Ferreira threw the book at him. That one of the rhino was a month away from giving birth "only enhances one's sense of abomination", judge Phillip Loubser said.

A court in Uganda has sentenced two men to 17 years each in prison for poisoning to death six lions in Queen Elizabeth National Park. Last year, the bodies of six tree-climbing lions were discovered at the park in southwestern Uganda, making headlines around the world. All of them had been poisoned, their heads and paws cut off and their carcasses left to attract vultures, which were then also killed by the poachers for their body parts.