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A number of Botswana Community Trusts are unwittingly part of a huge international wildlife criminal network - Sunday Standard investigations have revealed. Documents passed to the Sunday Standard have revealed how the trusts are used as "grey" nodes (legal players who participate in illegal activities) in criminal hunting schemes by the international wildlife mafia.

A fromer police officer who was kicked out of the Namibian Police after being arrested on rhino-poaching and firearms charges has lost a Supreme Court appeal about his dismissal. Former detective inspector Wersimus Haipa’s appeal to the Supreme Court was dismissed in a judgement delivered on Friday. Haipa appealed against a High Court judgement in which an application by him to have his discharge from the police reviewed and set aside was dismissed in May this year.

The blurb for an editorial in The Namibian newspaper on 9 November read: "From Kavango to Kunene, down south across the breadth and width of Namibia, the scramble for the country’s mineral, oil and energy sources is in overdrive." The article ended: "Government officials have turned Namibia into an unsustainable El Dorado with a vicious cycle of short-term searches for riches dishing out mining exploration licences to a select few." As you read this, graders, excavators and tipper trucks are hacking a road through three conservancies famous for their conservation of endangered,…

Two Namibian community conservancies and a tourism operator have turned to the courts to block development of a tin mine. The conservancies say the environmental impact assessments for the open-pit mine are flawed and will disturb wildlife, including critically endangered southern black rhinos. In a similiar case in the //Huab Conservancy, a copper mine disturbed wildlife in the area, forcing rhino-based tourism to shut down.

The case involving four Chinese men accused of smuggling 14 rhino horns worth more than N$2 million out of Namibia has been postponed to today. Li Zhibing, Li Xiaoliang and Pu Xuexin were caught with 14 rhino horns worth N$2.3 million as well as a leopard skin worth about N$50 000 in their luggage on March 24 last year at Hosea Kutaku International Airport. Wang Hui was arrested later this year at the Windhoek Country Club and Resort. 

One of the Chinese men accused of trying to smuggle 14 rhino horns out of Namibia in March last year admitted yesterday that he knew he was carrying controlled wildlife products in two suitcases which he was planning to take to China.

One of the Chinese men arrested for trying to smuggle 14 rhino horns worth more than N$2 million out of Namibia has taken full culpability for the crime, saying his three co-accused knew nothing about it. The trial started yesterday at the Regional Court in Katutura. Li Zhibing pleaded guilty to the unlawful export or attempt to export rhino horns and a leopard skin.

A 10-month-long investigation by John Grobler uncovers the political and commercial agendas driving the world’s largest black rhino population towards extinction.

The Tourism minister has accused some traditional leaders and businesspeople of being used as middlemen by poaching syndicates.

The police have made significant progress in their investigation of the recently discovered mass killings of rhino in the Etosha National Park. The death toll is expected to rise, if information at the sites of buried carcasses prove to be correct. A large number of suspects have been arrested and the list includes employees within the park. The Oshana police regional commander, Commissioner Ndahangwapo Kashihakumwa, is heading a team of investigators permanently deployed in Etosha since June 1.