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Oshikoto police regional commander Commissioner Teopolina Kalompo-Nashikaku has issued a stern warning to poachers, saying they risk their lives by engaging with armed anti-poaching units. Without mincing her words, she warned that the authorities are committed to protecting the country's fauna and flora and said poachers risk their own lives if they shoot at security personnel deployed to safeguard wildlife species.

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.…

Demand for South Africa's abalone is so high it underpins an international smuggling trade estimated to be worth nearly £100m each year. The poachers who gather on the windswept beaches of South Africa's rocky Cape coast are immediately recognisable by the tools of their trade. Pick-up trucks drop them off clad in wetsuits and carrying diving cylinders, then they head out into the waves on fast rubber boats. Their work is not for the faint-hearted. The waters can be treacherous and divers must also avoid becoming prey for the area's plentiful great white sharks.

Cape Town - A 45-year-old man is expected to appear in the Goodwood magistrate's court on Wednesday after he was found in possession of abalone worth over R1.7 million in Cape Town’s northern suburb of Edgemead.

A high-speed chase by the Gqeberha flying squad and a private anti-poaching unit resulted in the arrest of six people for the illegal possession of perlemoen on Tuesday morning.

A 35-year-old Zimbabwean and a Chinese man (28) who were recently arrested by South Africa's organised crime unit, the Hawks for illegal possession of dried Abalone worth nearly R10 million are set to make a formal bail application tomorrow at the Atlantis Magistrates' Court, in Western Cape province . Lawrence Muroma and Qing Quan Feng were found in possession of 70 boxes dried abalone on May 16.