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A total of 55 rhinos have been poached to date this year, the Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism (MEFT) said Wednesday, adding that the current statistics are deeply concerning. This is compared to a figure of 44 rhinos in 2021, however, 36 people have been arrested for rhino-related cases this year, compared to 80 in 2021, the MEFT Minister Pohamba Shifeta highlighted on the occasion of the handover of 10 vehicles, park management and law enforcement equipment funded by the Integrated National Park Management II (NamParks V and Covid-19 Fund) and Integrated…

Singapore authorities have made their biggest ever seizure of rhino horn with a $830 000 (almost R15 million) haul confiscated from a smuggler arriving from South Africa, officials said Wednesday. The city-state's National Parks Board said 20 pieces of horn weighing a total of 34 kilograms were discovered Tuesday in two bags at Singapore Changi Airport. The contraband was detected by sniffer dogs and belonged to a passenger travelling onward to Laos, the board said, adding that the suspect had been arrested.

A police officer working at Otjiwarongo police station is due to appear in the Otjiwarongo Magistrate's Court on Tuesday after one of six rhino horns left in his care went missing.

South Africa: Six Zimbabwean nationals have been found guilty in the Makhanda High Court of conspiracy to commit rhino poaching and illegal possession of firearms. They’ll be back in court on the 4th of November for the start of sentencing proceedings. The court heard previously that information uncovered relating to the crimes of the accused dates back to before their arrest in 2018. It included the tracking of their cellphones which was later linked to rhino poaching incidents at Kragga Kamma and Shamwari Game Reserves.

The Chinese national who was arrested last month at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg after being caught with 18 rhino horns in his luggage has been denied bail. Ye Zhiwei, 28, appeared in the Kempton Park Magistrate''s Court in South Africa on Tuesday on a charge of dealing in rhino horn under the Endangered Spices Act. South African Hawks spokesperson Captain Ndivhuwo Mulamu confirmed to Namibian Sun that Ye was denied bail and that his case was postponed to 17 January for disclosure of evidence and for further investigation.

South African police raided an illegal Vietnamese lion and tiger bone syndicate operating in the North West at the weekend, after at least 40 lions were reportedly killed at a lion farm near Klerksdorp. According to Hawks spokesperson captain Tlangelani Rikhotso, six foreigners and two South African men were nabbed in the multi-disciplinary operation conducted by members of the Potchefstroom Crime Intelligence unit, the Hawks and the Potchefstroom and Klerksdorp flying squads units.

FOUR Chinese nationals serving a 14-year jail term have approached the high court this week to appeal the sentence as it was "too severe", according to their lawyers. Wang Hui, 43, Li Zhibing, 57, Pu Xuexin, 53 and Li Xiaoliang, 34 tried to smuggle 14 rhino horns and a leopard skin out of Namibia in 2014. How they managed to get through security detection machines at the Hosea Kutako International Airport is to date a mystery.

A new project was launched last week that will assist Namibia in its efforts to fight wildlife crime. The International Consortium on Combatting Wildlife Crime (ICCWC) Wildlife and Forest Crime Analytic Toolkit was launched by environment minister Pohamba Shifeta last week at a workshop organised by the Anti-Corruption Commission. The project provides the technical resources to assist governments in conducting a comprehensive analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of a country's response to wildlife crime.

If rhino owners are not allowed to harvest and legally sell horns, poachers will kill every last rhino in Namibia. This is according to environment minister Pohamba Shifeta, who was speaking last week at a meeting where the poaching situation in the country was discussed. Shifeta said the price of a rhino horn has skyrocketed and is currently about N$900 000 per kilogram. "It is going up every day." He said if rhino range countries could sell rhino horns, the price will go down because the demand would still be there.