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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 consequences for local ecosystems and communities are serious, [including the] deterioration of natural capital, social stability and cohesion; extinction of animal species; and erosion of sustainable economic development. South Africa is home to the world's largest rhino population and is a key source for the illicit supply chain. In the first six months of this year, 231 rhinos were killed in South African game reserves. Of these, 143 were in KwaZulu-Natal.

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.

Vietnamese court sentences 36-year-old man to 12 years in prison for drug trafficking rhino horns in Angola.

A former field ranger, tasked with protecting wildlife, has been sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment for killing a rhino in the Nwanetsi section of the Kruger National Park in 2020. Eckson Musa Matumbu was sentenced at the Skukuza Regional Court on Friday. According to the South African National Parks (SANParks), Matumbu was arrested in February 2020 for killing a rhino with an official firearm issued to him and using non-issued ammunition. He was initially granted bail, which was later cancelled; the case was remanded to October 2023 for conviction and…

Alert farmworkers at Farm Eden, one of the most remote but iconic farms in the Otjozondjupa Region, prevented rhino poaching in the area, subsequently leading to the arrest of three suspected poachers.

Joseph Nyalungu, popularly known as Big Joe, is accused of involvement in rhino poaching in Mpumalanga and Limpopo. The charges against him include possession of rhino horns, poaching, and money laundering.

Cameroon ranked seventh out of 29 African nations in terms of being a source or transit point for illegal wildlife trafficking (IWT) during the decade spanning from 2009 to 2019, according to a new report. This is despite the measures taken by the law enforcement to curb the menace as increased involvement from the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF), CITES authorities and various other stakeholders, according to the report titled Analysis of Wildlife Court Cases in Cameroon: Jan 2010-Dec 2022. The most frequently…

The High Court in Malawi has rejected Chinese wildlife trafficking convict Lin Yun Hua's appeal against his 14- year sentence which was handed to him by Lilongwe Magistrate Court. Lin appealed against the conviction and the sentence but the High Court has rejected the appeal because it was filed outside the required period. Lin received 14 years in 2021 for dealing in rhino horn, alongside 14 years for possession of rhino horn and six years for money laundering.