Despite a lack of scientific basis, in Parliament on 25 June, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife dropped a bombshell, claiming that the culling of 1,220 elephants was inevitable and had been...
New research finds that overall tree cover in the Kruger National Park is on the rise, although in localised areas, elephants and other forces are reducing large-tree cover. For...
South Africa’s elephant strategy rightly celebrates heritage, culture and coexistence. But it’s proposals for adaptive management and flexibility could threaten what protection...
As South Africa wrestles with elephant management, delays and a lack of accountability could push culling from a last resort to an all-too-possible outcome. Deputy Environment...
KwaZulu-Natal’s elephant ‘overpopulation crisis’ is being presented as scientific inevitability. But official replies reveal contradictions, missing evidence and a regulatory...
A willingness to kill elephants as a management tool in North West’s Madikwe Nature Reserve suggests a shift in South Africa’s conservation approach. What was once a last resort...
The value of South Africa’s wildlife shouldn’t be in the hands of wealthy foreign hunters (commentary) Stephanie Klarmann 30 Apr 2026 Africa The latest statistics on South...
Rhino trade set to be revived as new minister signals shift in wildlife policy A new government finding that supports the hunting and export of rhinos signals a shift in South...
Mpumalanga moves to shut down captive lion breeding Just as many expected a retreat from wildlife reform, Mpumalanga has taken the opposite step – moving to shut down captive...
With surprising provincial unanimity, Parliament has advanced reforms to phase out South Africa’s captive lion industry. This is likely to set up a clash with the new environment...
What these numbers document is not conservation under pressure, but extraction at scale. They expose trophy hunting not as a people-centred conservation model, but as a...
HUNTING New wildlife quotas reopen fault lines over hunting, science and governance A change of minister has brought a sudden return to trophy export quotas for endangered black...
It’s time to set the record straight. Antagonistic narratives surrounding the commercial use of wildlife have seen a significant upswing in recent months with renewed...
As the dust settles on the latest UN climate summit in Belém, one thing is now unavoidable: the world is not on track to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels....
If you wanted a masterclass in how to turn a conservation success story into a global controversy, Botswana has just written the syllabus. The government’s draft 2026...
Cape Town — When Dr Mike Chase banks the small survey plane over northern Botswana’s mopane woodlands, he can see the country’s wildlife story written in the dust below....
When poaching amplifies the effect of higher hunting quotas, it is bad news for the future of Botswana’s elephant population and its contribution to the economy, according to...
The sacking of environment minister Dion George has been framed in these pages as a story of alleged staff abuse and underperformance, though the counter-view was well...
A protected area alongside the Kruger National Park is experiencing high elephant densities and significant tree loss. What’s to be done? The combination of rising elephant...
The move to oust the environment minister exposes a deeper hijacking – of the National Elephant Heritage Strategy, of policy integrity and of conservation itself. A...
Behind claims of escalating human-elephant conflict lies a tangle of weak data, mismanagement and a R460-million fund that seems to need a crisis more than it proves one. Are...
A quiet but highly significant policy rift is opening among southern African states as the world turns its attention to CITES CoP20, scheduled for 24 November 2025 in Samarkand,...
North West Parks seems hell-bent on hunting and culling elephants and seems prepared to thumb its nose at parliamentarians trying to find solutions. Elephants in...
As delegates at a two-day indaba reached for solutions to human-elephant conflict, there were many who were happy to reach for their guns. Culling of sentient...
A slow-burning tragedy is unfolding at Madikwe Game Reserve in North West and the grind of counter-accusations has the look of a fight between enraged rhinos. Meanwhile,...
A robust, peer-reviewed paper poses a problem for hunting apologists, since it shows that the communities they claim are helped by trophy hunting clearly do not want it. ...
The controversial debate on whether the live export trade can ever be humane – or should be banned altogether – has been reopened by the Department of Agriculture’s release of...
The findings debunk the narrative that rural communities depend on trophy hunting to survive and instead highlight a growing desire for coexistence and respect for animal...
Large-scale breeding of predators with attendant welfare abuses continues unabated in South Africa, while exports only notionally comply with regulations. A recent...
Parliament’s patience snapped this week as Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen failed to show up to a long-awaited joint committee briefing on wildlife protection – a meeting...
Reporting on his first year in office, Dion George was clear, firm, and unapologetic. Whether his promises will be backed by policy, enforcement, and legislative clarity remains...
Two local SPCA societies are taking the national body to court with a list of serious allegations. The NSPCA says it’s about personal grievances and not animal welfare. ...
More than 1,000 starving elephants may have to be culled. Parliamentarians demand answers by tomorrow (Friday). At lease 70 elephants have died of starvation in Madikwe....
Parliamentarians were this week shown horrendous images of captive lion breeding in South Africa. Captive lions found in shocking condition. (Photo: NSPCA) Emaciated...
Wildlife relocation projects that fail to acknowledge environmental and social issues highlight an urgent need for conservationists to engage in scientifically grounded and...
The sale of lion bones is heading back to court with a 235-page application by lion breeders demanding that the Environment Department set a CITES export quota for 2025. The...
Imagine a world where elephants roam freely across vast, interconnected landscapes, their ancient wisdom anchoring the health of the African savanna. This is the future...
Tens of thousands of wild animals, from spring hares to rhinos, died in the name of sport and entertainment in 2023. These are some of the numbers. You pay a mere $100 to...
The new field of conservation psychology offers valuable lessons for protecting the world’s wildlife — as well as ourselves. In recent weeks and months, Donald Trump and...
A sustainable future for elephants has to work alongside human social development if they’re to survive in South Africa’s rapidly changing landscape. That’s the core message of a...
The struggle to ensure kindness and fair treatment of animals – or deny it – will take centre stage this year as hunters, conservationists and government lawmakers face off on...
Stephanie Klarmann says lack of scientific rigor in statements used to justify exploitation of wild animals cannot go without challenge Significant progress has been made towards...
Arguments abound on the benefits and dangers of trophy hunting. We need a careful, measured approach to analyzing how it’s justified and promoted. Trophy hunting remains a...
South Africa is the world's largest exporter of live tigers and their parts despite not having any captive-breeding facilities registered in terms of the Convention on...
South Africa is the biggest exporter of tigers in the world and, as pressure increases on captive lion breeding, tiger numbers are expected to rise. A tiger in captivity....
It’s been a long and winding road to ending captive lion breeding — and it begins with bones. 'Nobody believes [the practice of captive lion breeding] is...
Momentum seems to be growing for re-opening an international trade in rhino horn, congruent with what seems an insatiable desire to monetise our remaining biodiversity. This is...
Our relationship with the wild animals on our planet, whose numbers are rapidly declining, is deeply problematic. With the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP16) in session in...
Among the top three suppliers to the global wildlife market, South African breeders and exporters exploit loopholes and a lack of enforcement to bypass conservation rules....
The decisions made by the Namibian and Zimbabwean governments to slaughter hundreds of elephants amid a widespread drought will do very little to address the effects of human...
Demand reduction campaigns can reduce prices, resulting in a decrease in elephant poaching Between 2010 and 2012, we lost 100,000 elephants across central and eastern Africa....
Questions have been raised over why nine elephants including a pregnant cow and calves, were shot from a helicopter by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife authorities on Mawana Game Reserve...
A disturbing challenge has been launched by trophy hunters in the Constitutional Court objecting to the definition of animal wellbeing included in the latest set of amendments to...
Namibia intends to "cull" 21 elephants in the dry north-west of the country where a small population of desert elephants roam In a statement issued on Monday, the Namibian...
There has been a dramatic increase in elephant poaching in northern Botswana, with little official concern about reports of the poaching. An aerial survey in July revealed 19...
Given how few big tuskers are left in the world (some estimates suggest fewer than 50), the agreement between Kenya and Tanzania to not hunt the Amboseli population couldn’t be...
If you’ve had a conversation with anyone recently returned from the Kruger National Park (KNP), you’re likely to hear: “It was lekker, but there are too many elephants! The...
Legalising trade will remove the stigma that rhino horn is illegal and could entice many more consumers into the market. The demand will then outstrip the legal supply and...
Botswana has threatened to send 10,000 elephants to the UK and another 20,000 to Germany as UK and European countries move toward banning the import of hunting trophies....
Southern African nations are at it again. Nyasha Chingono reported in late May that those “hosting the largest elephant populations in the world made a fresh pitch…to be allowed...
Photographer and artist Roger Ballen’s latest exhibition The End of the Game is an immensely disturbing and provocative examination of the subjugation and commodification of wild...
The wave of elephant poaching over the past two decades appears to have substantially subsided while prices of ivory have collapsed, but there remain serious threats to some...
If Barbara Creecy loses her position as the minister of forestry, fisheries and the environment after the elections, commercial wildlife breeders will cheer. But many...
In the first case of its kind, NGOs are taking legal action against the government for failing to adequately protect an endangered species. The endearing African penguins,...
The captive predator industry threatens the welfare of thousands of big cats kept for entertainment, hunting, and commercial trade of live animals and their body parts. In...
Botswana and Zimbabwe have long claimed that their elephant populations are exploding, making hunting a necessity to curtail ‘unsustainable’ growth, but a recent survey...
Will government’s new strategy really benefit people and nature, or simply lead to massive over-consumption of natural resources, creating unrealistic expectations in an attempt...
The environment ministry this week tabled a roadmap to end the captive lion breeding industry, but it will take a few years for the wheels to stop turning. Lions in a...
By Friday, 22 March, the public is expected to have commented on a detailed plan by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment to massively exploit and...
South Africa has more than 75 tonnes of rhino horn stockpiled from animals that have died naturally, horns seized in anti-smuggling operations, and horns sawn off from...
Trophy hunting is officially touted as an integral part of South Africa’s policy of sustainable use of natural resources. So why is there a veil of secrecy over the hunting...
Leading environmental organisations, including the WWF, Environmental Investigation Agency, Panthera, Wildlife Justice Commission and Four Paws, have produced a roadmap to...
Rhinos are not the only wildlife threatened by poaching: elephant poaching in the Kruger National Park has seen a dramatic increase in the past year, with 32 elephants killed,...
On September 3, an incident within the Greater Kruger reignited the debate around the co-occurrence of tourism and trophy hunting in this iconic wildlife region, with Balule...
It was a land claim that could have become a Big Five game reserve in KZN. But greed, incompetence and guns have ensured that the community has ended up with empty hands and a...
This is a story about an apparently illegal kill licence, a botched trophy hunt, the gratuitous pain and suffering of an elephant and the right to shoot iconic wild animals....
As the United Kingdom proposes to ban trophy imports, hunting proponents ramp up their efforts to dismiss their critics. The United Kingdom’s House of Lords is...
Carnivores are programmed to stalk and attack creatures and eat their flesh. They don’t change that instinct when in captivity, so it’s not surprising that they kill people –...
Organisations opposed a UK bill seeking to bar trophy imports are shooting into the dark, according to a new study As the UK’s House of Lords considers a bill proposing to ban...
Protected areas critical to the country’s biodiversity and conservation efforts are being badly mismanaged, says the Endangered Wildlife Trust For a long time there has been...
Campaign Against Canned Hunting activists march in Johannesburg against canned lion hunting on 15 March 2014. (Photo: Gallo Images / Foto24 / Mary-ann Palmer) ...
With Onderstepoort Biological Products unable to supply vaccines, horses are dying of deadly African Horse Sickness and bluetongue is threatening the red meat industry....
The latest moves by Environment Minister Barbara Creecy may signal the beginning of the end of captive lion breeding. On 13 April, a general notice was issued by Barbara Creecy,...
Vital legislation for the protection of wildlife has been stopped in its tracks by a mysterious settlement between game breeders/hunters and the Department of Environment. The...
Widespread corruption at Kruger National Park linked to criminal syndicates in Mpumalanga and the murder of honest rangers are its greatest threat. At least 40% of Kruger Park’s...
South Africa’s oversight failure in the export of primates and body parts is leaving them to a horrible fate, but nobody seems to care. One of the problems is that primates are...
Elephants created Africa’s first highways and still remember them. It’s when we block them that trouble with humans begins. Elephants are long-distance hikers, moving...
Twelve formerly wild cheetahs, which have been in holding pens for over seven months, are scheduled to be crated and flown to India on Friday, 17 February. But a conservation...
For a professional hunter, an elephant’s value is what he can ask a client who wants to shoot it. For the owner of a game reserve, it’s the increase in tourist revenue from...
Parliamentarians were horrified by the cruelty NSPCA inspectors have to witness on lion breeding farms. Warning: this report contains graphic images. It was a briefing to...
By Don Pinnock - Daily Maverick - 18.01.2023 Parliamentarians were horrified by the cruelty NSPCA inspectors have to witness on lion breeding farms. Warning: this report...
Kruger National Park, the world’s greatest refuge for rhinos, is losing them to poaching faster than they’re being born. The park’s last rhino may already be alive. It’s time to...
Parliament’s environment committee has accused the departments of environment and agriculture of dragging their feet over the ending of captive lion breeding and canned hunting....
The protection of critically endangered wild animals is being undermined as Asian zoos force them to perform for profit in violation of CITES regulations. By the transposition of...
The avian flu outbreak that killed thousands of cormorants on the Cape West Coast and devastated chicken farms has spread to the penguin colony in Simon’s Town. The public has...
Lion breeders began sharpening their claws and preparing to pounce when the Department of Environmental Affairs’ High-Level Panel proposed the phasing out of captive-bred lions....
Trophy hunters run loud, expensive campaigns to convince the public they kill for conservation and the good of poor communities. Two recent authoritative surveys revealed that...
As the slaughter rate of KwaZulu-Natal’s rhinos soars to record levels, a buried government report has brought to light some major weaknesses in anti-poaching measures by the...
Investigation shows that trophy hunting in Botswana continues to impoverish local communities, causes the decline in species and heightens human-elephant conflict...
Because of their size and visible effects on vegetation, Kruger Park’s elephants are a highly emotive subject, fueling acrimonious debates, cries of ‘too many elephants’ and...
As the world’s biodiversity slips ever deeper into crisis, a ground-breaking South African White Paper demands a paradigm shift to put care of the creatures with whom we share...
Zimbabwe has failed to drum up Africa-wide support to sell live elephants and ivory. Here are some reasons why their trade would be disastrous for elephants. In a...
While hunters celebrate and conservationists mourn the killing of two of Botswana’s largest-tusked elephants, a biodiversity tragedy is waiting in the wings. For millions of...
They were named Kasper and Kitso and charmed thousands of visitors to the Hazyview Elephant Sanctuary in Mpumalanga. The two animals were sedated before a move to the Western...
A myth-busting exercise on hunting questions the claim that bagging wildlife trophies is sustainable. When you strip trophy hunting to its essentials, it’s about the desire...
As numbers decline and persecution continues, South Africa has issued a quota for the trophy hunting of 10 leopards. But it may be illegal and is being challenged in the high...
If you want to kill animals for fun, South Africa is the place. Topping the list of favourites by trophy hunters are lions, baboons, southern lechwes, caracals and vervet...
Parliamentarians slam Departments of Agriculture and Environment for lack of answers on animal welfare. The future welfare of wild animals in human care was in good hands, the...
The welfare of wild animals in South Africa is being thrown under a bus by dithering departments and inappropriate legislators. Giving the job of drafting wild animal welfare...
Last month, with little publicity, the Department of Environmental Affairs gave the public 30 days to object to or comment on its proposed hunting and export quotas for elephant,...
Namibia and Zimbabwe are likely to exploit the loopholes created by the UN wildlife trade organisation’s conflicting advisories on the export of elephants. Elephants, like...
The title of the book I compiled with Colin Bell, ‘The Last Elephants’, was less predictive than a warning — elephants on the continent were in big trouble, with populations...
A new policy paper signals a more humane approach to the treatment of wild animals and an end to cruelty to lions in South Africa. Following an extensive forensic report on five...
Environment Minister Barbara Creecy’s report on the use and protection of SA’s iconic wildlife was groundbreaking. But is there the political will to turn its recommendations...
The Department of Agriculture is about to introduce a new Animal Welfare Act, but all non-agricultural stakeholders have been excluded from the working group drafting it,...
Two government approaches to our relationship with wild animals, two opposing views. One could chart the path to South Africa’s global leadership in wildlife conservation the...
In a seismic shift that will send shock waves through many areas of SA’s wildlife industry, the Cabinet has endorsed a report calling for the end of lion farming, captive lion...
The values of Zimbabwe’s and Namibia’s ivory stockpiles have been grossly overstated, and their proposed sale would lead to another poaching epidemic. Last year the world reacted...
The Auditor-General’s annual review of the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries’ finances has uncovered irregular, wasteful and unaccounted for expenditure and has...
Wildlife and weaponised disinformation: the path of least disclosure There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny - they should...
Conservationists have demonstrated that legalised trade and commercial breeding of wild animals stimulates demand, encourages poachers and smugglers and ultimately pushes species...
Specialists from around the world have petitioned Environment Minister Barbara Creecy to release into a sanctuary a Pretoria Zoo elephant bereaved by the loss of partners and...
The Namibian government will put 170 wild elephants up for sale on 29 January, justified by false population statistics and disputed claims of human-elephant conflict. More than...
For a distance of some 150km, Canadian company ReconAfrica’s oil and gas prospecting concessions border the Kavango River, a crucial source of water in a semi-arid area and the...
Two women thought they were helping by hand-rearing cubs, until they learnt some sinister truths. Now their Panthera Africa is a sanctuary for big cats born victim to an...
Ever since the film ‘Jaws’, with its creepy music, sharks have had bad press as nightmarish super-predators. But sharks are important for the health of the sea. And we’re wiping...
The light sentence handed out to the vet who mutilated a monkey is a travesty of justice says the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA). In what...
In November 2010, two men in Lenasia attempted to kill two camels as part of an Islamic ritual. They were inept, caused immense suffering and the animals had to be shot by an...
Plans by the Namibian Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) to capture and sell off 170 of the last free-roaming elephants among the communal farming areas of...
The majority of South Africa’s snakes that are exported are wild-sourced and, along with most indigenous lizards, are not CITES-listed, meaning they can be moved out of the...
Despite overwhelming worldwide opposition, including a parliamentary resolution to close down the captive lion breeding industry, SA’s government is ignoring red flags that the...
A vet has been found guilty of extreme cruelty to a vervet monkey and awaits sentencing in the Nigel Magistrate’s Court. It took eight years of battling by the NSPCA to get the...
Will the government and its high-level panel finally accept the overwhelming evidence that captive lion breeding should be stopped? A small number of people breeding lions in...
While government, wildlife farmers and NGOs remain locked in discussion about the future of lions, elephants, rhinos and leopards, the British conservation organisation, Born...
Wild lions can kill you, but farmed lions pose a far greater threat in terms of more than 80 zoonotic diseases that could be passed on to humans. A joint scientific...
One of the world’s worst wildlife scams is being permitted by the United Nations organisation formed to protect wild animals from over-exploitation and regulate trade. It all...
As Department of Agriculture officials file into a meeting with Parliament’s Environmental Portfolio Committee on Friday (August 28) to explain the animal welfare laws they...
It’s World Elephant Day, but clearly not in Zimbabwe, where more than 140 young elephants have been ‘harvested’ by running them to exhaustion and then sold to China for human...
Chimpanzees are our nearest genetic relatives on the tree of life. At this rate, eaten or forced to entertain zoo visitors or wealthy sheikhs, they’re heading for extinction....
Panel overseeing hunting is loaded with industry representatives. A Parliamentary colloquium passed a resolution in August 2018 to implement legislation with a view to ending...
World Elephant Day: Africa is home to around 415,000 African elephants – a sobering 30% drop in the last decade and down from 10 million a century ago. The continent’s pachyderms...
World Lion Day (10 August) celebrates one of South Africa’s most iconic species, yet despite dwindling wild lion numbers, they are also threatened by a burgeoning trade...
Earlier this month, Niger and Burkino Faso presented CITES with a new report that detailed Zimbabwe’s gross violation of a COP18 resolution, by its capture and sale of 32 very...
Today (Wednesday 29 July) is International Tiger Day, an event designed to raise awareness to the dire circumstances facing the world’s largest cat. There are fewer than 4000...
Three people have declined to serve on a government panel. That’s not exactly news. But, given who they are and the panel on to which they were invited, their refusal has exposed...
The carcasses of more than 400 elephants have been discovered north of the Okavango Delta and nobody yet knows what’s killing them. The government appears to be dragging its...
Almost without exception, every single captive-bred lion in South Africa faces a miserable fate – petted and played with as a cub, then becoming the target in a canned hunt or...
Supported by wealthy and powerful organisations like Safari Club International, the Dallas Safari Club and the National Rifle Association and egged on by countless awards and...
Much is being written about the trade of live wildlife for human consumption at wet markets around the world, such as the one in Wuhan where the Covid-19 pandemic...
It’s time to rethink the role of CITES, says its former head, John Scanlon. It has no teeth to enforce wildlife trade laws and could cause the next pandemic. The pandemic...
Where neoliberalism subjugates the natural world and people to the commercial whims of markets and globalisation, sustainable use has ensured the international commercialisation...
Experts say the government is ignoring science and dragging its feet in the face of a crisis. According to scientists and marine conservationists, overfishing is threatening...
The legal trade in wild animals between SA and China is helping the illegal trade grow, writes environmental investigator Don Pinnock. The legal trade in...
Chimpanzees, Bengal tigers, wolves, wild dogs and lions are among thousands of endangered wild animals exported, sometimes in contravention of CITES regulations, often in...
Wild animals are back. Kangaroos bounding through the streets of Melbourne, elephant herds passing through Indian villages, jackals in Johannesburg, leopards in Mumbai, wild boar...
Everything a costly high-level panel appointed by the Department of Environmental Affairs is tasked to find out about wildlife is already known... so what’s going on? Millions of...
There are growing concerns around the South African government’s wildlife high-level advisory panel, which will evaluate the captive lion breeding and canned hunting...
Twelve rangers and four civilians were killed late last week in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s Virunga National Park, home to the highly endangered mountain gorilla....
The legal global wildlife trade is worth roughly $300 billion. Of more than 31,500 listed terrestrial birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles, approximately 5,500 are...
‘Sustainable use’ ideology ignores the complexity of ecological systems and the impact of repeated over-extraction on the functionality of those systems over time....
If anything has become patently clear from the Covid-19 pandemic it is that we need to change the way we think and live. Current paradigms are failing us. While we know humans...
As the world staggers under the catastrophic impact of eating a wild animal, probably a pangolin, the South African government has reclassified 130 wild animals as meat. The next...
Botswana hides behind national “sovereignty” while selling off its natural heritage to foreign hunters and treating elephants as mere commodities. In February 2020 the government...
The world is witnessing an unprecedented, human-induced collapse of biodiversity and is in the middle of a global pandemic caused by the consumption of wild species often kept in...
SPCA calls for permanent closure of Bloemfontein Zoo after discovering starving animals At least five animals - including a buffalo, an impala and three Barbary sheep - were...
Symptomatic of the Botswana government’s shaky relationship with reality is its letter to the United Kingdom’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). A full...
Irked by widespread local and international opposition to its decision to reopen elephant trophy hunting the Botswanan government has become increasingly strident and populist in...
Beyers Coetzee had a dream to see the elephants of Mawana Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal live out their days in peaceful co-existence. He hoped to establish a reserve where...
The Chinese government yesterday placed an immediate ban on the illegal trading of wildlife and the consumption of wild animals. This follows a link between pangolin meat and the...
The Botswana government has again demonstrated to the world that it either does not understand or does not care that elephants play a critical role in maintaining healthy...
The Botswana government has auctioned off the last of its big tuskers to hunters despite offers from conservationists to buy the licences to save the elephants. There are...
Cape Town — Unethical hunting has exposed a community to dangerous, aggressive elephants rather than solving Human Elephant Conflict (HEC) Following the recent killing of a...
In listing 32 wild animal species as farm animals under the Animal Improvement Act in 2019, the Department of Agriculture went against the recommendations of the government’s own...
The evidence suggests that ethical, economic and ecological problems with trophy hunting warrant a trophy import ban. Trophy hunting is a deeply controversial topic and the...
It was a bizarre and disturbing sight. About 100 sharks – beheaded, finned and gutted – dumped on Strandfontein beach along the False Bay coast. Why were they there? What was...
Through what appear to be wilfully ignorant policies, South Africa is facilitating the illegal trade in lion bones, not only enabling the activities of notorious international...
When President Mokgweetsi Masisi opened up Botswana’s rich wildlands to hunting, it helped gain him the essential rural votes he needed to get re-elected. But the ‘unethical’...
For a Western hunter to pay to kill an African animal and expatriate its parts is a form of objectification, dehumanising and therefore morally reprehensible. It may entrench a...
In the matter of guarding the chicken run, there’s a big difference between giving the job to a chicken or a fox. In October the government appointed a high-level panel ‘to...
Interactions with all infant wildlife, walking with predators or elephants, interacting with predators and the riding of wild animals are no longer acceptable practices,...
Tony Weaver has defended Botswana President, Mokgweetsi Masisi, who decided to reintroduce trophy hunting to that country ahead of the upcoming October election. Weaver writes...
The trophy hunting lobby and its ideological hangers-on will do whatever they can to defend the right of members to shoot wild animals and display their stuffed carcasses. ...
Tony Weaver has defended Botswana’s decision to reintroduce trophy hunting. Personally, he doesn’t ‘quite understand what motivates hunters’, but intellectually, he fully...
By the stroke of a legislative pen, a list of iconic and in some cases endangered wild animals can now be manipulated as farming stock. What happens next is anyone’s guess....
The Southern Africa Tourism Services Association (SATSA) has welcomed the move from global tourism heavyweights Airbnb and TripAdvisor to shun wildlife interactions and...
The continual poaching of rhinos in southern Africa for their horns, in particular in Botswana, has raised the argument yet again of whether it isn’t time to reintroduce an...
A Chinese ground crew has just arrived to prepare 33 baby elephants for imminent shipment to China, according to sources near Hwang National Park. These elephants have...
The arguments for trophy hunting contained within a recent letter published in the journal Science simply don't stack up. A new letter published in Science argues...
Cape Town — The overwhelming message from a global conference on elephants in captivity, hosted in Hermanus on September 6, was that elephants belong in the wild. Given what...
No new elephants should be placed in captivity and elephants currently in captivity should be rewilded, was the overwhelming conclusion of the Captive Elephant Indaba held in...
The Community Resources Boards (CRB) in Zambia on Thursday released a press statement expressing their deep concern over the fact that the communities have not been given their...
Debunking myths about the impact of elephants on large trees African elephant in Kruger national park, South Africa. PACO COMO/Shutterstock Ross Harvey, University of Cape Town...
South Africa, DRC, Namibia and Zimbabwe believe they should be able to sell threatened wildlife species on global markets, just like mass-produced trinkets. The South...
The Johannesburg Zoo finds itself embroiled in another legal controversy after three elephants were caught on video in seeming distress on Elephant Day, according to animal...
Lammie’s 40th birthday celebrations and World Elephant Day at Johannesburg Zoo were marred by scenes of highly stressed elephants. In a viral video shared online, Lammie is...
The Gauteng High Court in Pretoria has ruled in favour of the NSPCA regarding the welfare of lions in captivity and how that should affect the setting of an export quota for lion...
Welfare problems have always characterised the captive lion industry, but have proliferated over the past few years due to a shift in the markets as lion breeders actively...
Further scenes of animal abuse were unearthed at Jan Steinman's lion farm in Lichtenburg, while the local SAPS fails to act on the charges laid against him by the National...
US zoos now plan to import baby elephants from Zimbabwe, undeterred by the international furore over their 2016 import of 18 wild elephants from Swaziland. The US Association of...
A new report by global NGO, World Animal Protection, provides a damning indictment on the captive predator breeding industry. Big cats are being bred for the use of...
Botswana has a growing population of humans and cattle, not elephants. Outside protected areas, desertification caused by cattle over-grazing too often gets ignored. Hunting will...
The trophy hunting industry is on the wrong side of history, serves the macabre leisure pursuits of a handful of the wealthy elite and yet, bizarrely, we environment writers are...
For most experts concerned about the survival of elephants, the idea that a global ivory market could be part of the solution was discarded as fundamentally unsound decades ago....
Namibia's most famous elephant bull known as Voortrekker ("Pioneer") to thousands of tourists was shot last week by a trophy hunter, ten years after he first escaped the...
The Botswana government recently reintroduced trophy hunting after a five-year moratorium. It did so on the pretext that Botswana has “too many elephants”....
The Zoo paid almost R1milion more than the market rate for its two new elephants from Inkwenkwezi Private Game Reserve. The City's funds have been grossly overspent,...
Trophy hunting elephants has negative consequences for conservation and local communities. A colonial attitude remains pervasive among those who defend the trophy hunting...
Tigers, leopards, lions, elephants and rhinos were among the many species of wild animals on offer by South African hunting outfitters at the first-ever Chinese hunting show in...
Poachers have poisoned hundreds of raptors in northern Botswana using three elephant carcasses as bait. The information has just been released by the Botswana Department of...
Elephants have become a hot political issue in Botswana, with President Mokgweetsi Masisi beating the hunting drum, a sure vote-catcher in rural communities. But the country,...
At least 385 elephants were poached in the last year, however the Botswana government has just set an annual quota of 400 elephants to be killed by trophy hunters and...
The Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries’ determination to set yet another export quota for lion bones flies in the face of several ongoing processes ...
A second Lion King movie is due for release this month and wildlife conservationists are urging Disney to share its billion-dollar profits to fund wild lion conservation in...
Another dead 12-metre Bryde’s whale was found in False Bay near Cape Town last week after becoming entangled in octopus trap ropes. The traps have been in use by a single...
Two free-roaming elephants from the Eastern Cape have been relocated to a small barren enclosure in Joburg Zoo. The move cynically ignores over 300 000 signatures to...
A controversial contract to hunt at least 1250 hippos under the pretext of culling in Zambia's world-renowned Luangwa Valley has been cancelled following global criticism and...
After Barack Obama came Donald Trump, a bigoted populist prone to crass outpourings and some peculiar legislative ideas. His time in office has reminded the world how prone...
Botswana has lifted its ban on hunting based on five myths about that country’s elephant population. The decision has as much to do with Botswana’s upcoming elections and the...
Botswana has now committed to a policy built on myths, while the rest of the world takes stock of the implications ecological crisis. Botswana’s Ministry of Environment, Natural...
Botswana president, Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi, recently hosted a summit in Kasane for five southern African heads of state to forge a common regional elephant conservation policy....
A gun manufacturer in the Czech Republic is implicated in flooding Africa with thousands of high-calibre hunting rifles. Now poachers are even more deadly, writes Don Pinnock A...
Lifting of ban attributed to ‘political play’. The Botswanan government announced yesterday that it was “lifting the hunting suspension in an orderly and ethical manner” – a...
Splashing in the Zambezi River at Botswana’s Chobe National Park. Shutterstock Ross Harvey, University of Cape Town Botswana has reinstated trophy hunting after a 5-year...
Elephant poaching, Mozambique President Mokgweetsi Masisi of Botswana categorically denies that his government would ever cull elephants, contradicting the Parliamentary Report...
The United Nations Special Report on Global Warming in 2018 sounded a sharp warning few could disagree with: Earth has a problem. A new UN report on Biodiversity released this...
Photo credit: Conservation Action Trust The NSPCA has laid criminal charges against Jan Steinman, a lion farmer in North West, for several contraventions of the Animal Protection...
Lions seen at Willie Jacobs’ farm, Ukutula Lodge, on 31 July 2015 in Brits, South Africa. Jacobs’ farm was heavily criticised after the release of the doc Conservationists who...
A male white lion, part of a rare white lion pack, in the wild in South Africa. (PHOTO: EPA/LIESL EICHENBERGER) Trophy hunting has historically been the preserve of...
Photo: Francis Garrard The Joburg Zoo continues to make unilateral decisions regarding Lammie the elephant’s future while the DA led City council turns a blind eye. The zoo...
WILL giraffes survive humanity? They are as iconic as lions, rhinos and elephants and their long-term existence in the wild is under similar threat. However, the world’s tallest...
The Blood Lions presentation by Campaign Director, Nicola Gerrard, at WTM Africa in Cape Town last week was abruptly cut short after only five of a planned 20 minutes. “Blood...
Balule Associated Nature Reserve has justified the killing of a young elephant bull in front of tourists as an ‘act of self-defense’, backtracking on an original announcement...
A new safari park near the small town of Kleinmond in the Western Cape may hold economic gains for its owners – but at what cost to the sensitive Overstrand environment or...
As tourism is a mainstay of Botswana’s economy, lifting the hunting ban could, the poll suggests, have severe economic consequences and damage Botswana’s international...
Picture: Martin Meja/AP A Parliamentary Resolution to end the Captive Breeding of Lions in South Africa has been ignored by the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), who...
Two lionesses rub against a cage fence at a captive breeding centre for large predators at an undisclosed location in South Africa's Free State Province in an undated picture...
Photo credit: Francis Garrard President Mokgweetsi Masisi of Botswana said last week that “elephants bleed [the] government coffers”, as “Botswana is indirectly subsidising...
The seasonal flood plains of the Kwando River. (Photo by Gallo Images/GO!/Toast Coetzer) There are worrying signs that Namibia’s legendary wild game numbers may be...
Botswana’s proposals to lift its hunting ban and to introduce elephant culling has fuelled political posturing, denials, misinformation, and lobbying from pro hunting and culling...
Nambia's wild horses. Photo: Christine-Wulff-Swiegers The desert sun is setting on the Wild Horse population that has roamed Namibia’s Garub plains for over a hundred years as...
The results of the recent and most extensive elephant population survey of Botswana estimates the country’s population at 126,000 elephants, a further decline from 131,600...
Image supplied A report by Elephants Without Borders claiming ‘a significant poaching outbreak is ongoing in at least four distinct hotspots’ in Botswana has provoked government...
Killing of elephants for their tusks crisis is not a new issue Photo credit: Mike Chase After months of controversy, the results of the most extensive elephant population survey...
Tigers rub against a cage fence at a captive breeding centre for large predators at an undisclosed location in the Free State, South Africa, in this undated Before more...
South African hunting outfitters are eagerly awaiting the end of the Zambian rainy season in April to start a killing-spree of up to 1250 hippopotamus living in the...
Kruger National Park has been condemned by Parliament for signing an agreement which it had been expressly forbidden to sign by the Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs....
Johannesburg Zoo claims that Lammie the lonely elephant is getting the best care and that there’s no need to mover her to a sanctuary. Who’s doing the caring is cause for...
Rangers risk their lives while Chinese tech giants facilitate illegal wildlife trade. Instead of dealing with the problem, last year the former head of Alibaba, Jack Ma, was in...
Every year, thousands of tourists visit South African private nature reserves to see wild animals in unspoilt surroundings. But how many of these travellers know that some of the...
A Norwegian company has applied to conduct seismic surveys for oil along the Cape’s West Coast using air-gun blasts known to be highly damaging to marine life. Petroleum...
Photo: South African Breaking News Thirteen of the world’s most respected elephant behavioural specialists and researchers have supported calls to release Lammie to a rewilding...
Image supplied. We need to talk about the future of zoos. There are about 1,500 formal and many more informal ones in the world, holding between three and four million...
The furore over the zoo’s solitary elephant has increased as the NSPCA (National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) resigned from the...
A picture made available Wedensday 22 September 2004 shows young black rhinoceros staring at the camera in this undated file photo. EPA/JON HRUSA CITES, the United Nations...
Slowly, the tiny ball in the wooden crate began to unwind. Its scales moved and a pointy nose followed by two black button eyes emerged. Natalie was entranced. The baby pangolin...
East London Zoo - Photo: SABC News This is a story about a lonely bear in a pit, a jaguar with nowhere to run or trees to climb, a vulture with nowhere to fly and the cruelty of...
Just as the furore about the trophy hunting of the pride male named Skye began abating, another incident has highlighted the ethics of hunting in the Associated Private Nature...
Botswana’s parliament recently passed a motion considering lifting the ban on elephant trophy hunting, citing an increase in both the elephant population and human-elephant...
Are we about to see the end of one of South Africa’s most infamous practices – captive lion breeding for hunting and trading of their parts? If Parliament adopts the...
This is despite animal welfare specialists’ renewed calls on The Johannesburg City Council to relocate the grieving elephant from the zoo to a free-roaming area after the...
South Africa is playing a dangerous double game with rhinos and it’s time to ask why. The department doesn’t appear to have a clue how to save them from extinction. Last week the...
Dinokeng Game Reserve's dominant elephant bull was recently shot as a ‘problem animal’ for breaking fences and escaping from the reserve, even though management admits that the...
The Department of Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries (DAFF) plans to appeal the recent Western Cape High Court ruling against fishing quotas for West Coast Rock Lobster...
Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, China, Thailand and the Philippines, some of the world's worst countries for poaching and illegal trade in ivory have been allowed to exit a key...
The NSPCA has made an urgent application to the Gauteng High Court which contains photographic evidence of alarming and persistent neglect by a game farmer in Alldays....
A strategic report on poaching just released by the Department of Environmental Affairs shows that fewer rhinos but more elephants are being killed. Of concern,...
Lion experts dispute conservation value of test tube lions questioning whether this merely supports lion breeders’ claims that they contribute to the conservation of lions....
Reports of elephant poaching in Botswana are under the spotlight with various claims in national and international media that the current adverse situation is driven by...
THE controversy deepens around the death of a magnificent male lion in Umbabat Private Nature Reserve (PNR) as Parliament was given the wrong pictures last week, which may have...
The authority that licensed the lion trophy hunt which became the focus of a parliamentary inquiry last week has been at pains to assure everyone it was not the pride male named...
While Lammie the elephant languishes alone since the recent death of her partner, Kinkel, elephant experts are calling for her release from Johannesburg Zoo to a sanctuary,...
It was in Umbabat that a lion was recently hunted and ended up being discussed in Parliament, following accusations that it was an under-age pride male and was baited illegally....
Captive Bred Lions destined for canned hunting or slaughter for their bones are not protected by South Africa’s animal welfare laws. The Departments responsible for their welfare...
There was an overwhelming consensus for the need to bring an end to the controversial captive lion breeding industry in South Africa at a two-day Parliamentary Colloquium of the...
The largest airline exporter of lion bones from South Africa to Southeast Asia will no longer support SA’s bone trade from captive-bred big cats. Following a recent internal...
"MPs must be concerned when reputable conservation agencies turn their backs on SA and deplore its policies [regarding captive lion breeding],” said Mohlopi Mapulane, Portfolio...
Canned lion hunting and trading in lion skeletons is having ever-widening negative ramifications for Brand South Africa. More than 40 airlines are refusing to transport trophies,...
Outrage, secrecy, abomination, controversy, suspicion, and cat and mouse game, are some of the verbalisations around the events linked to the lion hunt in the Umbabat Private...
South Africa has opened hunting season on leopards after two years of grace. The Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) has given permission to shoot two leopards in...
Predator breeding using lions and other species could cost South Africa over R54-billion over the next 10 years in loss of tourism brand attractiveness. This is according to a...
A number of the private reserves in the Greater Kruger National Park appear to be violating the protocols and regulations that permitted them to drop fences with Kruger and hunt...
South Africa's unregulated captive lion breeding industry will shortly be reviewed by the Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs in a two-day hearing open to the public....
Last week, the carcass of a 40-year old elephant bull was found in Ngamiland, northern Botswana, partly covered with still green Mopane bushes and half of its skull hacked away...
At least 600 cheetahs are kept in captivity in South African tourism facilities, offering interactions and cub petting in the name of conservation and education. Do these...
Dogged by allegations of bribery and unethical operators, a dodgy permitting system, and the contentious hunting of so-called ‘problem animals’ – Namibia’s hunting community has...
A DAMNING report on South Africa’s lion bone trade has called for the end of the trade, a forensic investigation into the affairs of lion breeders and a restriction on the...
The Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) has increased South Africa’s lion bone export quota from 800 to 1,500 a year, despite being aware that some skeletons are being...
Given the importance of wildlife in South Africa’s tourism industry and its international reputation, it may come as a surprise that the legal protection of wild animals in South...
The proposed hippo culling spree in Zambia’s world-renowned Luangwa Valley has a dodgy tender process at its core and appears to be an attempt by Zambian Government to cover...
The hunting of a lion in Umbabat Reserve alongside the Kruger National Park has been cloaked in secrecy ever since it was discovered. With the worldwide outcry at the killing of...
An American is believed to have paid R1-million to bring down a Kruger Park lion from a pride beloved of tourists. On Friday a male lion was shot by a trophy hunter...
South African hunters will take part in the slaughter of 2 000 hippos in the pristine Luangwa Valley in Zambia next month. This follows a shock move by the Zambian government,...
Captive-bred lions at a recently exposed 'lion-abattoir' in the Free State are waiting for their fate to be decided as both the Departments of Environmental Affairs (DEA) and...
EMBATTLED North West Premier Supra Mahumapelo has set his sights on the wildlife reserves within the province, proposing a bill last week repealing the North West Parks Board...
The troubled East London Zoo’s plans to buy Wild Dogs as soon as a moratorium on purchasing animals at the zoo is lifted are facing criticism from conservationists. The Zoo is...
HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THAT WILDERNESS IS NOT A PLACE BUT A SEASON AND THAT WE ARE IN ITS FINAL HOUR? – IAN MCCALLUM, WILDERNESS This Friday, 18...
Trophy hunting is like the fossil fuel industry. They’re both messy, unsustainable, in need of an alternative approach and, ultimately, fail to deliver on their promises. ...
Lion cubs bred in captivity. Picture: Audrey Delsink Two South African hunting associations that embrace canned lion hunting have lost an appeal to retain their membership...
It's been a bloody time for the South African canned lion industry. Last week‚ a lion 'abattoir' was exposed on a farm in the Free State‚ where close to 100 lions were...
The life of an elephant bull in his prime is hanging in the balance as a tug of war ensues between private reserve owners and conservation groups. Riff Raff, a 40 year-old...
South Africa is one the world’s biggest exporters of endangered tigers, almost all of which end up as floor mats, wall hangings or skeletons submerged in vats of Asian tiger-bone...
In Africa an elephant dies from a poacher’s bullet every 15 minutes. But in South Africa’s private reserves they’re breeding like bunnies and there’s trouble up ahead. The...
The practice of breeding the animals in captivity as ‘ambassadors’ is doing the species more harm than good, Louise de Waal reports A WORRYING trend is emerging in South Africa...
In this photo taken on May 3 last year, a ranger takes care of Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhino, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Laikipia county in Kenya. Sudan...
Criminal syndicates may use the legal trade in lion bones from our captive lion population, as a cover for illegal wildlife trade, reveals new report. A damning report titled...
More than 25 years of civil war in Angola between 1975-2002 not only took its toll on people, with huge losses of life and the displacement of millions of people, but it also...
The Department of Environmental Affairs has been slammed for allowing canned lion hunting and the export of lion bones without evidence that it has any scientific or conservation...
The second Giants Club Summit meets in Kasane over the next few days, uniting African leadership with global science, finance and influence to accelerate anti-poaching efforts,...
Quite apart from the decimation of illegal poaching, legal export to Asian markets is tearing the wild heart out of Africa. Each year thousands of tonnes of live animals, bones,...
Parliamentary wildlife colloquium ignores benefits of non-consumptive wildlife utilisation as ecological sustainability is obscured by the increasing commodification of SA’s...
DA MP Ross Purdon tabled a parliamentary motion this week calling on government departments to revisit this national rhino poaching crisis with the urgency it deserves....
"The only value ivory has is on a living elephant," said Karen Pomeranz as she handed in six 20-year-old napkin rings to be crushed. "I was never comfortable owning ivory items....
This is the story about near-magical seabirds that criss-cross the globe, and small, lentil-sized blobs of plastic called nurdles. It is both astounding and worrying, writes DON...
All is not well at the Dinokeng Game Reserve in Gauteng. As the reserve weathers the furious storm of criticism after a lion belonging to local owner Kevin Richardson killed...
Changes to Cites legislation in 2016 allowing South Africa to establish ‘annual export quotas for trade in bones, bone pieces, bone products, claws, skeletons, skulls and teeth...
Cape Town - The East London Zoo has again come under fire for the poor care of its captive animals with experts saying the neglect has been going on for years. Despite these...
In a surprising move, President Donald Trump has left-footed his own Department of Interior’s attempts to overturn former president Barack Obama’s ban on the import of wildlife...
By the time Zimbabwe’s new political winds of change reach its wildlife practices – the heart of its potential tourism industry – they appear to ebb to a light Chinese breeze. It...
The small decrease in overall poaching in 2017 has been overshadowed by a growing concern for the increase and broadening of poaching elsewhere in South Africa as only 1 in 10...
All wildlife interactions, including walking-with-lions and cheetah petting at the Polokwane Ranch Resort has been stopped. Following an article highlighting the...
Cape Town - Three weeks after 31 young elephants were exported, presumedly to China, Zimbabwe’s office of the president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, announced the nation would...
Cape Town - Human-wildlife interactions with iconic big cats including lions, cheetahs and their cubs are being promoted via the Ranch Protea Hotel in Limpopo, owned by Marriott...
China has reportedly imported more than 30 wild caught elephant calves from Zimbabwe in a controversial if not cynical move which took place on the very day China banned the sale...
Cape Town - Regulations governing the extensive trade in wild caught baby elephants require only that they are housed in suitably equipped facilities, in appropriate and...
The South African Predator Association (SAPA) – whose members breed for hunting, among other creatures, what it terms “managed ranch lions” – has set its cross-hairs on another...
US policy on trophy hunting has descended into a confusion of mixed messages following a tweet by President Donald Trump that it’s a “horror show”. This coincided with an...
A split in the ranks as some professional hunters still side for canned lion hunting and the debate continues in South Africa. “Canned hunting is fake hunting for people who...
European and American conservation leaders today called on governments worldwide to support requests from African nations to end all trade in elephant ivory to safeguard the...
Two major US conservation NGOs are suing the Trump administration for allowing American hunters to import elephant and lion trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia. Two major US...
US President Donald Trump and his Department of Interior Affairs Secretary, Ryan Zinke, have halted the reversal of a ban on importation of elephant hunt trophies...
Australian MP Jason Wood, who introduced the motion last month, says an Australian domestic trade ban “is about stopping illegal poaching and illegal trading in elephant ivory...
Two young elephants were shot in the Komatipoort region close to the Kruger National Park after their herd was reportedly terrorized by poachers across the Mozambican border....
SA master baker has won an international 2017 Cake Master Awards for her life-size elephant and calf cake South African master baker Dot Klerck has won the Best Showpiece award...
If you imagine fish as birds of the ocean, they fly through forests and over fields which grow in the rich soil of the continental shelf. Just as on land, it’s Earth teeming with...
Parliament’s Environment Committee has called for criminal charges against top North West officials following a R183m (€11,1m) donation of rare wildlife species to ‘politically...
When thousands of people donated nearly R20-million to the Oxford University Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) after the killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe, their...
The South African government has formed an alliance with organisations which kill wildlife for gain to the exclusion of those who wish to protect it. By JANINE AVERY. In 2005 the...
A report from the Convention in the Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) shows that in 2016, the overall trend of elephant poaching in Africa has declined. However,...
The cruelty of the capture of baby elephants from their families in the wild has been revealed in disturbing photos and videos secretly taken in Zimbabwe last month, writes Adam...
Two of the only five remaining mature desert elephant bulls that occupied the Ugab region of Namibia have recently been hunted and killed. Tsaurab and Tusky, along with another...
A dodgy phosphate operation mining bordering the West Coast National Park and near the environmentally sensitive Langebaan Lagoon has been slapped with an interdict to stop it...
People on the Highveld are dying prematurely and suffering from respiratory and cardiac illnesses because of the government’s controversial non-enforcement of minimum emission...
Cape Town - Three bull elephants were saved from being shot and further damage to mango orchards averted after the bulls broke through the fences of a game reserve bordering the...
With a lack of appropriate enforcement tools at the border and unregulated domestic markets, if you manage to get your ivory or rhino horn into New Zealand or Australia, you are...
Cape Town - Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs has slammed the donation by the North West Province of wild animals worth over R100-million’s to private...
126 captive elephants in 26 facilities. All used for human entertainment of which 14 facilities offer elephant back riding and only a handful of facilities show signs of...
Three of Namibia's iconic desert elephants have become moving targets after the Ministry of Environment & Tourism (MET) earlier this month approved permits to hunt them. The...
While many good people and fine organisations raise public funds to support conservation, there are others who use conservation issues to raise money for themselves. The...
The walls are closing in on animal interaction operators in South Africa as international tourism role-players distance themselves from unethical wildlife experiences....
With the Department of Environmental Affairs stalling the first legal rhino horn auction actually happening remains to be seen. Update August 30th: On August 20th the DEA did...
Are we taking an environmental risk for Japanese sushi? This is a story about a filmmaker, a fisherman, certain government officials and one of the most intelligent animals on...
The death of Cecil’s son, Xanda at the hands of trophy hunters on 7 July is mired in confusion. He was shot just outside Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, near the spot his father...
OPINION: Rhino - a commodity for sale? South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs is increasingly seeing wildlife as a commodity to be marketed rather than protected and...
“Our primary mandate is to protect these animals (leopards) so that we don’t open them up to a situation where they will be hunted and where they will perish,” said Mr P...
Cape Town - Asian demand for tiger wine and other products is creating a crisis for big cats across the world, according to a study just released by the Environmental...
Rhino poaching might be on the decrease, elephant poaching is on the rise, but without up to date poaching figures from the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), how do we...
The Minister of Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa, has permitted an annual sale of 800 skeletons of captive-bred lions. Conservation organisations say the quota has been...
Author: Don Pinnock The DEA is concerned that we’re getting it wrong about the legalization of domestic rhino horn trade. But it is they who are getting it wrong about the...
Durban - How did a 27 year-old ANC Youth League official and an army sports instructor - both with limited work skills and experience - end up as nature conservation...
Cape Town - The South African Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) has blatantly ignored public opinion by formally approving the export of 800 lion skeletons to Asia this...
What is the purpose of national parks in modern South Africa and where will the money come from to protect and sustain them? asks TONY CARNIE. What will South Africa’s national...
More than 14 elephants, including a mother and her young calf, have been poisoned in and around Zimbabwe’s premier game reserve, Hwange National Park. Most of the poisoned...
Permission granted by the Namibian government to a game farm owned by a Swedish national to capture and export to Dubai five wild young elephants has raised a storm among...
The threat posed by illegal bushmeat hunting to the Okavango Delta‘s tourism industry in Botswana has been exposed in a recently published report. Botswana is not normally...
First there was a clampdown on rhino poaching statistics. Now the same is happening with information on elephant ivory poaching. SA National Parks has refused to provide...
Namibia’s environmental authorities confirm that they have issued the necessary CITES (Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species) export permit for the sale of...
As South Africa continues to lose rhinos in the poaching war, it seems that the government is failing those fighting it. Although there has been some success in protecting rhinos...
AN orphaned baby elephant has been fully accepted into a semi-wild elephant herd at Camp Jabulani outside Hoedspruit in a rare success story. The baby elephant, Timisa, which...
Cape Town - Two endangered lionesses have been killed after being lured out of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe to a hunting trap set up using meat from a cow...
Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA) has confirmed that it will not issue permits to hunt trophy elephants with unlimited tusk weights. In a surprise development MTPA...
Cape Town - It would have been unthinkable just a few years ago that rhinos would be dehorned for their own protection in a park as large and famous as the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi...
Botswana's world acclaimed anti-poaching success story is being threatened by budget cuts that have forced the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) to curtail patrols...
VERY few tourists will have the privilege of seeing a real tusker in Africa’s game reserves today. Historically, a tusker was defined as an elephant with tusks each weighing at...
Photo: Elephants in Timbavati Game Reserve, 2 Jan 2013. Photo by Maureen Barlin via Flickr In response to “insults” from Simon Espley, DON PINNOCK responds that his article on...
With the Sumatran rhino officially extinct in the wild, are South Africa’s rhino doomed to the same fate? With the Sumatran rhino officially extinct in the wild, are South...
Cape Town - Animal welfare organisations are reeling from an unexpected announcement that they will no longer receive funding from by the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) - a...
Cape Town - If cats do have nine lives, leopards are on their last. Especially the big, strong males of the species as the DEA seems set on reintroducing leopard trophy hunting...
Confused explanations at a public meeting in Skukuza on Saturday are concerning stakeholders as the Kruger National Park forges ahead with its program of shooting buffalo as part...
Main photo: There are only about 25 to 30 super tuskers in the world and all in Africa. (Don Pinnock) Synecdoce is an interesting but seldom used word of Greek origin which means...
Photo by Steve Evans via Flickr. The public has until March 10 to respond to draft regulations by the South African Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) which seek to...
File picture Parliament - According to the Department of Environmental Affairs, the time has come to sell rhino horn. Speaking in a Parliamentary portfolio committee on Tuesday,...
The fate of South Africa’s rhinos continue to hang in the balance as the South African government dithers over releasing rhino poaching statistics. Three times in as many...
Photo by Don Pinnock. There’s a thin line between the marketing of, and the genuine conservation of, wildlife. In the past few weeks that line was definitively crossed by the...
There is something extremely bizarre about drinking a lion. But maybe in this world of post-truth it’s a new normal. After all, the cruelty we do to creatures in factory farms...
SA’s top marine scientists are shocked by the Environmental Department’s (DEA) recent decision to allow fishing in the Tsitsikamma Marine Protected Area (MPA) and have announced...
South Africa is about to permit the export of lion bones to produce fake tiger wine but has given the public almost no time to object. The permit will allow an annual export of...
Cape Town - In a move clearly supporting the canned lion hunting industry, the South African Government plans to permit the annual export of 800 lion skeletons to manufacturers...
The recent announcement by the central government of China to ban all domestic ivory trade and processing by the end of 2017 offers a glimmer of real optimism in the fight...
A new Concourt ruling recognises the intrinsic value of animals and allows NSPCA to prosecute. Melissa Reitz In a land mark move for animal welfare in South Africa the...
Main photo: Jackal cull in Karoo 2012. It may be a story of extreme cruelty in the name of science. It may also be about fraud. You be the judge, writes DON PINNOCK. This story...
A scathing new report shows that key countries affected by wildlife crime have failed to halt poaching and illegal trafficking of endangered animals as a result of widespread...
Outrage at the looting of Africa’s wildlife and environmental destruction by Chinese nationals boiled over in Namibia last month in a strongly worded letter of protest to the...
Parliament is struggling to get answers out of the North West province’s Department of Rural, Environmental and Agricultural Development about a suspicious “donation” of 130...
Hunters who engage in unethical and illegal practices are largely to blame for the decline in the “overall acceptance” of trophy hunting by the general public and influential...
According to the NGO World Animal Protection, most tourists go on elephant rides because they love elephants. They don’t know about the intense physical and psychological pain...
How could you tell males from females? Were the elephants left-tusked or right-tusked? Who were the matriarchs? Who belonged to which family? How did they communicate? Would she...
A South African, Pieter Jansen van Rensberg, has been arrested on a charge of poaching inside the protected buffer zone of the Mozambique’s Parque Nacional de Limpopo (PNL),...
Circus owner, Brian Boswell, is challenging the legality of elephant protection laws after his attempt to sell African elephants to a zoo in the United Arab Emirates was blocked...
Tracking collars and sophisticated telemetry are a good way to see where wild elephants roam. They can also lead to grisly discoveries about where they die. The world-famous...
Draft legislation proposes cruel and unethical methods for dealing with problem wild animals, including the use of poison, hunting dogs, gin traps as well as extermination in...
People around the world celebrate cheetahs annually on 4 December. These beautiful animals have paced and graced human existence for thousands of years. There are not many of...
Tshekedi Khama,Botswana Minister of Natural Resources and Environment says his country is under unprecedented pressure from the pro-hunting lobby in the European Union and...
Trophy hunting in Zimbabwe’s Matetsi Safari Area is not sustainable at current levels as trophy sizes are declining, there is little scientific data supporting quota sizes and...
A row is brewing in Parliament over a donation of 150 buffaloes, 50 rhinos and 50 sable antelopes worth R100-million to politically connected private individuals in North West...
Credit: pexels.com New research shows that elephant numbers increase when more ecotourists visit the areas with elephant populations. This is in stark...
Japan has ensured the continued existence of its deeply flawed internal ivory market through sly diplomacy at the CITES conference in Johannesburg. However, reports in the...
Ten hyenas that were seized by customs authorities at the Harare Airport from a Chinese businessman as he tried to smuggle them out have been returned to Hwange National Park. In...
CITES corruption killing Africa's apes Africa's wild apes are being illegally exported to China using fraudulent permits from the Convention in International Trade in Endangered...
The failure to effectively shut down domestic ivory markets at the recent COP17 in Johannesburg leaves the ban on international ivory trade as little more than an ineffective...
Because South Africa was unable to demonstrate the conservation value of canned lion hunting, the United States last week banned the import of all trophies from captive lion...
Some cities have good bicycle lanes, some towns have excellent footpaths, but Kasane in Botswana has well-stomped elephant corridors. Of course they’re also used by warthogs,...
Johannesburg - The ongoing Asian demand for lion bones has led to an horrific wildlife poisoning in the Limpopo National Park, just over the Mozambican border from Kruger Park....
Photo: ©conservationaction.co.za Southern Africa is losing protected wild plants and animals at an alarming rate. Between 2005 and 2014, around 18,000 individual species worth...
The notion of 'sustainability' has become the most overused and consequently meaningless phrase within conservation and wildlife circles. Used in equal measure by those...
September 28th 2016 will be remembered by many delegates attending CITES CoP17 as a bitter-sweet day for pangolins – an ancient species that has earned the unfortunate label of...
Cape Town - New evidence of Japan’s failure to control illegal ivory trading at a time when Africa’s elephants face extinction is revealed in a damning report just released. The...
Photo: Namibian elephants (Eric Bauer via Flickr) The results of the most comprehensive survey of African elephants ever undertaken – the Great Elephant Census (GEC) announced...
We first spotted Charlie from about 700 foot up over the arid Mozambique savannah and it was love at fist sight… A majestic African elephant bull, approaching his...
The future of Africa’s elephants may be decided in Johannesburg at the end of this month. When delegates from around the globe arrive at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the...
As the countdown begins to the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (CoP17) for CITES, which commences in Johannesburg on 24 September, conservationists question the...
This is a story about too much hippo poo in the Kruger National Park, hungry neighbours and rain that just won’t fall. It’s also about culling, but the park doesn’t like the word...
© iafrica.com A motion to terminate the hunting and breeding of captive lions and other predators in South Africa has been approved by the IUCN World Conservation Congress...
At least 26 elephants, their faces hacked off and their tusks removed, lay in congealing blood on Botswana’s Chobe National Park floodplain. Poachers had killed them within sight...
The largest wildlife survey ever taken has delivered alarming data for the ongoing survival of elephants. The results should be taken as a major wake-up call. By DON PINNOCK. To...
SA white sharks numbers dropping A proper review of deterrents is needed to keep the species alive, writes Melissa Reitz Recent results of a population count of great white...
A comprehensive new review of the threats facing global biodiversity indicates that a popular approach to saving the planet’s wild animals from extinction may be fatally flawed....
Hard to image that presently fewer than half a million elephants are left in Africa. This is the reality World Elephant Day, held annually on 12 August, aims to highlight. In...
The South African government refuses to destroy its ivory stockpile unlike the 25 other countries that have publically destroyed tonnes of ivory to highlight that ivory should...
Knysna Elephant Park owners will face charges for animal cruelty despite an initial decision to decline prosecution The NSPCA has announced that the National Director of Public...
Despite the arrests and long-term sentences passed on several Zimbabwean pangolin capturers, dealers and traffickers over the past year, conservationists believe the increased...
It is not hard to spot the successful rhino poachers in Okahao: at a time when everyone else in Namibia was suffering the effects of a crippling, four-year-long drought, they...
After pangolins, elephants are the most poached animals in Africa. But to get to grips with the implications, we need to know how many there are now, were once and will be in the...
South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia are seeking to overturn a UN ban on ivory trade. If they succeed, it could spell the end for elephants. A United Nations ban on the...
A social media storm expressing public outrage at recent photos of starving lions and video footage of a disastrous wild dog introduction, taken at a farm owned by Walter...
The fatal breach in South Africa’s defence against rhino poaching in the Kruger National Park is Mozambique – and corrupt diplomats are continually widening it. According to a...
A working document requesting commercial exports of ivory will be submitted at the next Conference of the Parties (CoP17) of CITES (the Convention on International...
On Heritage Day this year South Africa will be hosting the 17th meeting of the CITES Conference of the Parties (CoP) in Johannesburg which will address the international legal...
A paper published last week by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S.A. holds unequivocally that permitting a legal trade in some wildlife species will be those...
Ivo Vegter passes himself off as an environmental journalist, but consistently backs the right of those with money and power to destroy the environment. I have no other choice...
South Africa and Kenya will hold talks with other African countries to find a common position on ivory trade ahead of the 17th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on...
Madikwe Game Reserve is becoming congested and a 75-kilometre corridor is the solution – if only bureaucracy can get out of the way. Whenever a reserve finds it has too many...
A growing number of international tour companies refusing to promote elephant riding is putting South Africa’s elephant back safari industry under pressure to pack in the...
When researcher Kristoffer Everatt spotted a movement in the grass while conducting field work in Banhine National Park in Mozambique in July 2015, he wasn’t sure what it was....
When it comes to statistics, the devil is always in the detail – or in the spin, when it come to politics. The fight against rhino poaching is no exception. On the 8th of May,...
Trophy hunters legally shoot wild animals that move from Kruger on to some private reserves, but the Game Theft Act has muddied the waters. Who owns South Africa’s wild animals?...
After the international outrage at the cynical killing of Cecil the Lion last year, and the unethical practices exposed in the film Blood Lions - which blew the lid off...
Swaziland conservation authorities have accused South Africa of reneging on an agreement to propose the legalization of rhino horn trade, which draws into question South Africa’s...
Kenya will burn 105 tons of ivory on Saturday 30 April – the largest destruction of ivory in Africa’s history and seven times the size of any ivory stockpile destroyed so far....
As the world's largest planned burn of ivory is set to make a massive anti-poaching statementin Kenya on Saturday 30 April, we take a look at a multi-pronged Tanzanian project...
The scale of the elephant poaching problem is immense. The global crisis is now well documented, with an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 African elephants being illegally killed...
Recent reports say that one of Zimbabwe’s largest private wildlife areas, Bubye Valley Conservancy, is suffering from an overpopulation of lions. The conservancy has more than...
32 international environmental organisations have appealed to the world’s largest internet ivory seller – Yahoo! Japan, and its major Shareholder SoftBank, to halt all elephant...
This week, investigative journalist and author Julian Rademeyer revealed that the decision to submit a rhino horn trade proposal to the Convention on International Trade in...
South Africa’s official approach to rhino conservation involves a contradiction. While calling for the protection of rhinos as a species, it promotes their use as a resource to...
The ongoing drought is taking its toll on South Africa’s wildlife. In the Kruger National Park, questions have been raised about the possible impact that a potential re-opening...
The elephants were flown out in defiance of a US court order temporarily freezing the import pending the submission of veterinary statements on the elephants’ physical condition...
Africa’s extraordinary and charismatic wildlife is clearly under siege from the wrecking ball of Chinese demand. Heading the list of critically damaged species are elephants. As...
While poaching in KwaZulu-Natal is in fast forward, the prosecutorial system in some areas appears to have gone into reverse. Many of the worrying poaching cases are linked to a...
Poachers aren’t the only problem when it comes to wildlife trafficking. Also complicit are the very institutions and rules designed to protect animals, and the people that are...
Elephants Alive received the call at lunchtime on Tuesday, 16 February 2016. An elephant calf had become trapped in a dam at Phalaborwa Copper, Limpopo. The Elephants Alive team...
Two elephants have been rescued instead of put down after breaking out of the Balule Private Reserve, bordering Kruger National Park, on Wednesday, 10 February. The two young...
An 18-month national study on the wildlife ranching sector of South Africa by the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), an NGO that protects southern Africa's threatened wildlife...
China’s desire for exotic animals, tastes and products will probably push wild elephants, rhinos, pangolins and many other species to extinction within the next 10 to 15 years....
Wildlife poaching and Illegal Wildlife Trade in Africa is not merely a calamity for animal populations, but has become a serious threat to governance in countries in which it...
Community anglers are threatening tourist safety if fishing rights are not granted, spurring the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) on in opening up parts of the...
Does trophy hunting support wildlife conservation in Africa? The world’s most influential hunters’ association would like you to think so. The annual convention of the Safari...
Despite worldwide opposition, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has approved permits to import 18 wild elephants from Swaziland to three US zoos. Conservationists, scientists and...
South Africa has announced its first decrease in rhino poaching since 2007: “We are pleased to announce that for the first time in a decade the poaching situation in South Africa...
South Africa opposed a resolution that lauded CITES for supporting the destruction of government stockpiles of ivory seized from poachers and traffickers. It asserted that CITES...
THE EU has recommended that the conservation treaty organisation Cites enforce an immediate suspension of trade for Angola, Laos and Nigeria. This comes after the three countries...
Attempt by marine scientists to reverse SANParks permission to fish in the sensitive MPA has been blocked by a High Court judge An application to halt a pilot period for...
Tanzania's new president, John Magufuli, won the presidential election on the ticket he would take tough action on corruption. A month after taking office it seems he been making...
In a powerful and poignant edition of HBO's Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel called Blood Ivory to be aired on Tuesday November 24th, has correspondent David Scott not only...
Chinese business leaders from the region and experts on China-Africa relations pledged their full support on Monday for intensified efforts to combat the illegal wildlife trade....
In a statement published this week South Africa’s Elephant Specialist Advisory Group (ESAG) says that the export of the elephants, three adult females and fifteen sub-adults to...
The world's wealthiest hunting organization, Safari Club International (SCI) and professional hunting groups, met behind closed doors with the South African Department of...
Despite strong opposition and a variety of alternatives, Swaziland’s Big Game Parks appears resolute in its decision to export elephants to US zoos, in what seems to be a...
Cape Town - American hunters and SA’s Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) are meeting behind closed doors at a resort near Polokwane on Tuesday to plan the future use of...
While pressure mounts against Swaziland’s Big Game Parks’ (BGP) intended export of 18 elephants to zoos in the U.S.A., US Government documents show that the elephants are fenced...
Humans are almost never the victims of great white sharks, but great whites are always the victims of our mythology about them. And that mythology is doing damage to their...
The oft asked question is: are trophy hunters protectors of biodiversity or are they heartless killers of defenceless wild animals? To make any headway with this question, we...
Controversial plans are progressing to export 18 elephants from Swaziland to US zoos, apparently without proper consideration of relocating them to other reserves in...
Leopards are in trouble. But how much is hard to tell. For hundreds of years they were classed as vermin. Today we don’t know how many have survived the guns – they’re elusive...
Are trophy hunters protectors of biodiversity, as hunting associations and some conservationists claim, providing funds and a reason to protect wild areas? Or are they heartless...
With severe drought in Swaziland, US zoos are yet again taking the opportunity to import elephants and 18 wild born elephants have been earmarked for a life of captivity .They...
The playgrounds of trigger-happy trophy hunters are far removed from the fertile fruit farms of the Western Cape and Eastern Cape. But a recent television expose of driven...
Travel conference organisers have decided not to screen a documentary that raises critical questions about key tourist attractions that their event promotes. Local delegates to...
Zimbabwe has all but let Cecil’s killers off the hook as Mugabe’s wife says hunter did nothing wrong. "I say the dentist who killed the lion must be left alone," said Mrs Mugabe,...
Keeping cheetahs as tourist attractions is widespread in South Africa. But, as a number of attacks have proved, they’re far less tame than ‘cheetah experience’ establishments...
The report by the NSPCA on the welfare status of elephants in captivity at 26 elephant back safari and sanctuary facilities nationwide (14 of which offer elephant back riding)...
Talle jagluiperds word oor die land heen as toeristetrekpleister aangehou. Maar die getal aanvalle wat voorkom, wys hulle is minder mak as wat hierdie ‘cheetah-ervaring’-plekke...
Following attacks on a child and two women by cheetahs at KwaCheetah ‘petting park’ in KwaZulu-Natal, Ezemvelo authorities this week suspended all non-staff access to the...
Given that in Africa wild lions are in catastrophic decline–the latest International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) figures suggest that fewer than 20,000 remain–it...
Throughout history, human beings have killed wild animals to defend, avenge, profit or feed themselves. They still do. But there are a few who kill for another reason: pleasure....
The death of Cecil the Hwange lion and a new documentary film have catalyzed a worldwide rethink on trophy hunting. By Don Pinnock Deep in the ancient part of our brains is a...
To save African elephants from extinction, “range states should put their ivory stockpiles beyond commercial use immediately and simultaneously,” says South African economist...
If you want to save elephants, don’t legalise the international trade in ivory. That’s the message of a major research paper published to coincide with World Elephant Day on...
A child from Cowan House Preparatory School in KwaZulu-Natal was on Thursday bitten on the shoulder by a cheetah at the KwaCheetah Breeding Project in the Nambiti Private Game...
New research suggests things are getting worse for South Africa’s declining wild lion population as the trophy hunting industry is boosting the Asian trade in lion bones. Tiger...
Parks Authority believes that the use of a bow and an arrow “was meant to conceal the illegal hunt by using a means that would not alert the rangers on patrol.” Bow and arrow...
Cape Town - The face of Cecil the lion was projected on the Empire State building over the weekend - just one of the protest action movements sparked by the infamous trophy hunt...
In the past week Southern Africa’s lucrative trophy hunting industry received two devastating blows: the release of an explosive new documentary detailing the unsavoury practices...
In an unprecedented move, the Professional Hunters' Association of South Africa (PHASA) has been told that its "position on lion hunting is no longer tenable". In an email sent...
Johannesburg - An emergency was declared as the first elephant was poached on the western border of Kruger National Park. Each day in Africa around 100 elephants die at the hands...
Durban - Blood Lions, a new documentary film delivers a damning verdict on the rapidly growing South African industry that breeds, hunts and trades lions in captivity. Blood...
Government appears intent on reforming and sanitising the business of breeding and hunting lions. Critics want to see it dismantled altogether Minister Edna Molewa has just met...
A legal trade in rhino horns lies at the heart of a proposed new government policy for the conservation of white rhinos in South Africa, despite the fact that an official...
Wildlife enthusiasts say Cecil, possibly Hwanges’s largest lion, was a favourite among visitors to Zimbabwe’s premier national park as he was extremely relaxed around safari...
The video is shaky having been secretly captured. But the image of the table full of polished ivory artifacts and the merchant sitting behind them is clear. “How much?” asks the...
A hunter recently shot and killed a female elephant whilst trying hunt a bull elephant at Mabalingwe Nature Reserve near Bela Bela in Limpopo. Controversy surrounds both the...
The World Bank has allocated $700,000 bolster trophy hunting of elephants and lions in Mozambique as a way to preserve wildlife. “Hunting, when properly regulated and when...
The recent announcement that Tanzania had lost 60% of its elephants in just five years as well as Zimbabwe’s continued disregard of international opinion on the capture and...
US based bio-engineering firm, Pembient, is one of three companies that plans to flood Chinese and Vietnamese markets with synthetic 3D-printed rhino horn in an effort to stem...
The Cango Caves are caught in the crossfire of political upheaval and corruption, a lack of sound management and financial security which could lead to the permanent closure of...
Environmental destruction across the world is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, which begs the question why the South African government is so complacent in the face of...
One after the other the carcasses were extracted from the crammed vehicle. Burnt, shrunken-back lips exposed grimacing teeth…a gruesome effect. As the pile of animals mounted up...
A group of international experts comprised of over 30 conservationists, academics, journalists, authors and lawyers from Africa, Europe, Asia and America has warned the Committee...
International tourism to Africa reached record levels in 2013, with 56 million tourists bringing in $34.2-billion (about R410-billion). Significantly, 80% of them came to see the...
Virunga National Park is one of Africa’s treasure troves, and one of its most toxic, and intoxicating, killing fields. Under threat from various armed militias as well as...
In an article published in the Sunday Times a week ago [May 31], Edna Molewa, the minister of environmental affairs, admonishes conservationists to “put the lid on” what she...
According to South Africa’s Minister for Environment Affairs, Edna Molewa, there is a big difference between shooting of captive-bred versus shooting of canned lions. In an...
Cape Town – At a conference here at the end of May, experts from around the world gathered to discuss responses and solutions to the poaching crisis facing South Africa’s...
“Please, let’s stop talking about illegal trade in wildlife. It’s not illegal trade – it’s crime,” says John Sellar, an independent anti-smuggling, fraud and organised crime...
John M. Sellar OBE, retired head of law enforcement at CITES for 14 years, speaking at the Wildlife in Crisis conference in Cape Town last week believes the only way to stop the...
Two hundred metres from Pemba’s popular Wimbi Beach towers an opulent mansion. Initially it could be mistaken for the home belonging to one of Mozambique’s burgeoning oil, gas...
Rhino horn trade debate will fuel poaching: By working on a proposal to CITES to legalise trade in rhino horn, South Africa could actually be fuelling rhino poaching. Last month,...
A group of local and international experts converged in Cape Town on Tuesday to discuss the legal and illegal trade in endangered wildlife. Jo Shaw, the manager of WWF-SA’s Rhino...
The draft Biodiversity Management Plan for the Lion (Panthera Leo) in South Africa was published under the National Environmental Management Plan: Biodiversity Act by the...
South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs has released for public comment its first-ever Biodiversity Management Plan for lions, panthera leo. The main purpose of the...
Zimbabwe’s minister for environment, water and climate, Saviour Kasukuwere, claims Zimbabwe’s elephant population is so large it has reached double the country’s carrying...
South Africa’s lion hunting industry has little to do with conservation and everything to do with profit but it seems only foreign governments care. Here’s a trick question: Is...
Australia’s Minister for the Environment has banned the importation of lion parts and remains into the country, saying that canned lion hunting’s time has passed. Greg Hunt,...
Once upon a time, a fair prince traveled to a distant land – of Dragons and Emperors but equally, of Ivory – to request that its leaders lend their influence to saving the...
WINDHOEK chiropractor Gerson Kandjii, already facing criminal charges related to the poaching of four critically endangered black rhinos in the Etosha Park since November,...
In April last year South Africa signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Mozambique covering the thorny issue of rhino poaching. At the time, Minister of Environmental...
More than 53,000 elephants have been massacred in the last decade in Tanzania’s Selous game reserve. In Chad's Zakouma National Park 4,300 elephants counted in 2002 were reduced...
Zimbabwe recorded a 30% decline in revenue from sport hunting since the United States banned all ivory and elephant trophies from Zimbabwe last April, an official said at the end...
When listening to Minister of Environmental Affairs Edna Molewa discuss tackling the scourge of rhino poaching, one hears lots of ‘good’ news – but sadly there is little of real...
The Save the Rhino Trust (SRT) has launched an internal investigation after the Board was presented with a letter mid-December outlining possible collusion between some staff...
Conservation officials have been working feverishly with farmers and concerned members of the public to ensure the safety of two wandering bull elephants which have been at large...
Late last year, dozens of baby elephants in the Hwange Elephant Park were forcibly removed from their families and prepared for export. Now, Zimbabwe has confirmed its intention...
Efforts to relocate two elephants which crossed the border from Botswana into Limpopo province have received a blow with the news that Marakele National Park near Thabazimbi is...
Limpopo Nature Conservation officer Gerhard De Beer is working feverishly with concerned conservationists to save two bull elephants from Botswana currently trekking through the...
Dozens of baby elephants and other wild animals are being abducted from Hwange National Park. According to a statement by Zimbabwe’s environment minister last week, the animals...
The air over Sesfontein this time of year is usually a peculiar metallic hue, tinged by the talcum-fine dust whipped by the harsh desert wind blowing from the Skeleton Coast, 250...
Earlier this year horrific photographs and graphic video footage showing baby elephants being abused at an elephant sanctuary in the Eastern Cape and an elephant-back safari...
China is stealing African animals yet again, and covering it up with suspicious paperwork and probably in violation of its own regulations. More than 30 wild baby elephants are...
The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force (ZCTF), a non-profit wildlife organization , has issued a disturbing report claiming that wildlife in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park is...
While the crisis is complex, with root causes in chronic poverty, the absence of sustainable economic alternatives and a burgeoning demand for wildlife products like ivory and...
In the dead of night a group of men hack the meat from a corpse using rusted machetes and pocket knives. Together they’re like a machine systematically tearing flesh from bone,...
There will be no further culling of elephants in Kruger National park for population control. So says Dr Sam Ferreira, SANParks’ large mammal ecologist. That’s because the new,...
A report released this month by The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) called Vanishing Points – Criminality, Corruption and the Devastation of Tanzania’s Elephants has...
A couple of weeks ago a report came out announcing that in 2014 the demand for rhino horn in Vietnam had dropped significantly when compared to 2013 - by 38% to be exact. The...
A report released this month by The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) called Vanishing Points – Criminality, Corruption and the Devastation of Tanzania’s Elephants has...
International indignation over the canned hunting of lions in SA is growing, writes Martina Polley. Lions are majestic animals, the alpha predators of the African bush. We think...
It looks like South Africa is going to break another record: 2014 is set to exceed 2013’s 1,004 rhino poached. But sadly, it’s not as though the nation is sitting back and doing...
A farmer has shot a leopard, which was collared for research, in the Boesmanland area in the Northern Cape earlier this month. The leopard, which was collared by the Landmark...
Conservationists are concerned at reports in Zimbabwe’s media that the Safari Operators Association of Zimbabwe (SOAZ), whose membership comprises almost exclusively of hunting...
A permanent ban on the importation of lion parts, including trophies is planned by Australia. This was announced after South African conservationist; Ian Michler met with...
The African elephant population is already facing unprecedented pressure on its survival from poaching, so added pressure from the captive elephant industry is the last thing it...
Edna Molewa, Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs joined the Global March for Elephants and Rhinos (GMFER) in Pretoria on Saturday causing conservationists to wonder if...
While Africa is losing an elephant every 15 minutes to ivory poachers, trophy hunters are targeting the cross-border population of the Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier...
The greatest threat to the safety of Africa’s elephants is not the poachers who prey on them for their tusks; rather it’s the governments of many of their homelands who lack the...
In a world where poor governance and corruption is rife, particularly in those countries that are home to the largest remaining elephant populations, legalising the ivory trade...
Conservationist Ian Michler met European lawyers, politicians, NGOs and the media this month to discuss ways of introducing a ban on the importation of canned lion hunting...
International arrivals at South African airports are greeted with an image of happy tourists on the back of an elephant experiencing, according to the wording, “Wild and Free...
The contentious issue of whether South Africa will apply to trade legally in rhino horn remains in the hands of a mystery Panel of Experts (PoE) which South Africa’s Department...
Yes, say conservationists if proposals to change The Elephant Norms and Standards (ENS) law are accepted by the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA). Conservation groups are...
Conservationists across South Africa have commended the severe penalty meted out in Cape Town last week to Cheng Jie Liang, a Chinese national for the illegal possession of one...
White River, Mpumalanga - Approximately 400 people, mainly from rural areas in the Mbombela district attended a public hearing of the Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs...
In a Parliamentary debate on Tuesday on the rhino poaching crisis, government provided little hope for rhino as speaker after speaker lamented the rhino poaching...
The Department of Environmental Affairs is clearly scratching around for the ‘good story’ in relation to rhinos. In its latest attempt to solve the poaching problem it had to...
This August - on World Elephant Day - the Conservation Action Trust hosted a Mock Ivory Burn in Cape Town to raise awareness with South Africans about the slaughter of elephants...
On Tuesday Minister Edna Molewa announced SA’s intention to implement an integrated management strategy to reducing rhino poaching – but the failure to change legislation related...
In Cape Town, conservationists, sports stars and celebrities gathered in Blaauwberg Nature Reserve yesterday to celebrate World Elephant Day by igniting a fire of mock ivory...
In the build up to this day, Conservation Action Trust, Wilderness Safaris and Africa Geographic invited readers to submit images celebrating the wonder of African Elephants....
The US government has upheld its earlier ban on the importation of elephant trophies from Tanzania and Zimbabwe for the duration of 2014, despite vocal objections from hunting...
The conservation of wild animals is a wrangle that has divided opinion into two diametrically opposed camps, writes Adam Cruise. As today is World Nature Conservation Day, it is...
A second elephant has been butchered for its tusks by poachers in Parfuri, northern Kruger National Park, 10km in from the Mozambican and Zimbabwean borders. SANParks officials...
The Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) has finally issued an invitation to stakeholders to participate in its exploration of Rhino Horn Trade Feasibility. The long-awaited...
The trampling of a Namibian trophy hunter by an elephant has reignited the heated debate around hunting permits issued for the country’s gravely endangered desert elephants. In a...
Two international environmental organisations have called on the US government to implement trade sanctions against Mozambique for its official complicity in the ongoing rampant...
I have recently read the May/June South African Journal of Science report on a Kruger National Park workshop aimed at finding a management solution to counter the escalation of...
Namibia: Concerns have been heightened by the Namibian Ministy of Environment and Tourism’s (MET) decision to issue additional hunting permits for some of the most unique...
The South African Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) has been having a difficult time of late. Over the past five years they have been unable to stem the exponential...
In debates about whether or not to lift the ban on trade in rhino horn, the real puzzle is the curious positions and untested assertions of people who should be providing...
Guardian animals offer far better livestock protection than lethal methods, according to new research. They’re more effective, need less work, and are cheaper. A formal study of...
With the world still reeling from the tragic poaching death of Satao, the iconic Kenyan tusker, news that Namibia has just followed through on killing the first of the Namibian...
A moral dilemma has emerged following an online debate to an article in Forbes Magazine discussing the US ban on all trade in ivory. The main article by Doug Bandow is palpably...
TWO top international economists say those who advocate trade in rhino horn and ivory fail to understand world markets or the economic muscle of multinational poachers....
It was Leonardo da Vinci, the great Renaissance-era mathematician, architect and artist, who said: “He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards a ship...
To see the desert-adapted elephants of Namibia's north-eastern Kunene region, you have to travel far over rough roads, be patient and trust your luck. The sight of these gaunt,...
A community elephant project in Tanzania has reduced elephant poaching numbers by more than half in two years. Martina Polley investigates how working outside of wildlife...
Namibia: Just months ahead of the elections in November, the Namibian government has issued hunting permits for rare desert elephants in the northwestern Kunene region, a unique...
SANparks confirmed on Thursday that an elephant bull was poached in Kruger National Park and its tusks removed and carried off by the perpetrators – the first such incident to...
Every 15 minutes an elephant is butchered for its tusks. That is 100 elephants every day. Nonetheless, the South African Minister of Water and Environment Affairs, Edna Molewa,...
Is the government really doing all they can to combat rhino poaching? In a report investigating the challenges facing the enforcement of South Africa’s environmental laws,...
Addressing a crowd at a ceremony to sign an anti-poaching agreement between South Africa and Mozambique in the Kruger National Park this April, Edna Molewa, South Africa’s...
There is no denying the debate around trade in rhino horn and elephant ivory has polarised the conservation community in South Africa like never before. And with so many...
On 20 April, approximately 80kg of rhino horn was stolen from the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA) offices in Nelspruit. Because rhino horn trades in excess of $65,000...
Tourism’s role in combatting the scourge of rhino and elephant poaching was touched on briefly at last week's international conference on the risks of legalizing trade in rhino...
In the scramble to save our rhinos, what generally comes to mind is a mix of camouflage-clad soldiers, high-powered rifles, tracker dogs and deadly force against ruthless...
Ignoring the hard lessons learned by the global conservation community in its battle against ivory poaching will effectively sign a death warrant for Africa’s rhinos. This...
In the wake of France, the USA, China, Philippines, Chad and Ghana, Belgium became the latest country to destroy its stockpile of ivory. On Wednesday at the Palais des...
Hwange, Zimbabwe – Fresh concerns have been raised over the safety of Zimbabwe’s famous herd of Presidential Elephants after it has emerged that state land bordering on the...
Has a highly suspicious plan to develop an open-cast copper mine in the heart of Zambia’s Lower Zambezi National Park proved the undoing of the country’s former tourism minister...
The enormous donation by US entrepreneur, philanthropist, conservationist and all-round global good-guy Howard G Buffett to help in the battle against rhino poaching has been...
The recently held London Conference on the illegal wildlife trade has made headlines for a number of reasons, not least of which was South Africa’s much criticized decision to...
The State of the Nation address provided a perfect smokescreen to hide South Africa’s real reasons for not attending last week’s crucial gathering on poaching. The government has...
In London last week, international media scrambled to cover the high-level and much anticipated international conference on illegal wildlife trade. However, there was one notable...
It was Mark Twain who observed that “truth is stranger than fiction”, although some will suggest his shrewd comment on life was lifted directly from the line “Truth is always...
London, United Kingdom – Today, heads of state, ministers and officials of around 50 countries convened in London for a summit on illegal wildlife trade. The opening of the...
In a surprise move coinciding with a major conference about elephant poaching in London, the United States government this week announced a total ban on all ivory trade apart...
Dr Jane Goodall travels an average of 300 days a year speaking in venues around the world about the threats facing chimpanzees and other species and biomes. What drives her is...
Paris, France – France is set to crush part of her 17 ton ivory stockpile today, according to the country’s Ecology Ministry. “We are very satisfied that the French state has...
In his rebuttal of my previous story on ivory poaching and some of the hotly debated statistics currently in use by the scientific and academic community when it comes to...
Hoeveel tyd het ons oor voordat Suid-Afrika se goed-bewaarde olifante in die spervuur van ivoorstroping kom? Gerrit Rautenbach kyk na ’n paar kommerwekkende feite. Die feit dat...
In public debates about how to save our rhino, those who advocate ending the ban on trading their horns fail to acknowledge (if you'll excuse the metaphor) the elephant in the...
Geneva, Switzerland – The UN Security Council has just adopted two resolutions that specifically targets illegal wildlife trafficking, especially elephant ivory. The resolutions...
Moet ons weet hoeveel olifante nog in Afrika oor is of moet ons probeer om die vraag na ivoor stop te sit? Gerrit Rautenbach kyk hoe daar met die voortbestaan van Afrika se...
Hong Kong, China – There is some good news in the elephant ivory saga. Following mainland China’s recent destruction of 6 tons of illegal ivory, Hong Kong has announced a...
In March last year, the CITES Standing Committee singled out 8 countries most heavily implicated in the illegal trade of ivory. Vilified by the media as The Gang of Eight, three...
Cape Town, South Africa – Rhino poaching in South Africa has reached record levels in 2013 thanks primarily to an increase in the demand for rhino horn in Asia, especially...
Those that oppose the legalization of trade in rhino horn as the panacea for the continent's rhino poaching crisis have long cautioned against the use of simplistic economic...
Elephants need far greater ranges than any other land animals. But attempts to make space for them in Southern Africa are being thwarted by greed and bullets. By DON PINNOCK. In...
In the wake of the Elephant Summit held in Botswana in early December where urgent measures to halt the rampant illegal ivory trade were adopted, one is left asking if it is...
In 2011 tourism contributed R83,4-billion to South Africa’s GDP and last year more than 9-million tourists splashed out R76,4-billion across the country. As a major economic...
Do we have to know how many elephants there are in Africa to combat the scourge of ivory poaching? It’s a loaded question and one for which there is no easy answer. The future of...
Hans Vermaak’s lamentation of the demise of trophy hunting in Botswana (Farmer’s Weekly 22 November 2013) and profound concern for the future of “sustainable utilisation” of...
The growth in the illegal trade in ivory and the involvement of Chinese citizens is a cause of major concern both internationally and in China. In late October 2013, customs...
Gaborone, Botswana – The first ever summit focusing exclusively on the escalating illicit trade of African elephant ivory convened on the 2nd and 3rd December in Gaborone,...
Elephants need far greater ranges than any other land animals. But attempts to make space for them in Southern Africa is being thwarted by greed and bullets. In the dry end of a...
How many elephants are there in Africa? We don't know for sure. But, in the way that murder is always a more reliable statistic because there's a body to count, we can arrive at...
Toe die wêreld hier nog jonk was en die horison wyd en oop, sing Johannes Kerkorrel in Halala Afrika en wat ’n mens met sekerheid oor daardie tyd kan sê is dat Afrika se wye...
In the piece recently published in The Ngami Times titled ‘A missed opportunity on elephants’ it’s patently clear that the author has completely missed the point on every level....
South African National Parks (SANParks) has been warned that the scourge of ivory poaching currently affecting the rest of Africa is likely to hit South Africa in 2014 according...
Die oneindige slagting van olifante het nou te ver gegaan. ’n Noodberaad van al 11 Afrika se olifantlande gaan op 2 Desember grootkoppe bymekaar...
Hwange is one of Africa's finest national parks where, at the right time of year, elephants stream into waterholes in their hundreds. But the recent mass poisoning of elephants...
Against the backdrop of an ever-escalating attack on Africa's wildlife and the particularly alarming increase in ivory poaching, the International Union of Nature Conservation...
The African elephant is the world’s biggest land mammal; walking the earth at a dignified pace, the elephant has earned its place in the folklore and legend of many cultures....
Several African Heads of State will be among delegates at a three-day African Elephant Summit in Botswana next month. They will be asked to agree on and commit to a set of urgent...
An emergency summit on the illegal ivory trade will take place in Botswana from December 2 in an urgent attempt to halt the slaughter of Africa's elephants. On average, an...
In China the penalty for poaching an elephant is death. In Africa, it is considerably less. The irony in this is that the global trade in illegal ivory is driven, for the most...
We have been incorporating elephants into our lives since humans first became…well…humans. The earliest known San rock paintings depict elephants, so do the cave paintings...
Five tonnes of illicit trinkets to go under the crusher, but legal muddles still allow US citizens to trade in ivory. Behind the worldwide outcry about rhino poaching is another...
A recent report on Transnational Organized Crime in East Africa confirms the shocking statistics pertaining to the elephant poaching crisis in Tanzania and Kenya. Produced by...
Simply put, habitat destruction occurs when functioning natural habitats or ecosystems are degraded to the extent that they can no longer support the biodiversity present. And as...
Regoor die wereld vier mense wat omgee op 12 Augustus die vader van die aarde se diere, die olifant. ‘n Eeu terug was daar vier miljoen in Afrika en Asie. Hierdie syfer is nou...
The African elephant is facing its gravest crisis since the 1980s when between 600 000 and 800 000 animals were killed in a poaching spree. Surveys and data gathered by...
The current plight of Africa's rhino population, as disturbing as it is, pales in comparison to a much less widely reported massacre of more staggering proportions. In 1980 there...
In 1989, after two decades in which the world’s elephant population was halved, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) banned...
On World Elephant Day we are reminded that poaching is a growing concern across much of Africa. Though attempts at working together to end poaching are being made, Don Pinnock...
Today marks the beginning of a new struggle. A large section of South Africans are in grave and mortal danger. Our elephants are staring down thousands of high velocity,...
The trophy hunting industry’s dismissal of its opponents as ‘animal rightists’ is just one of several misconceptions that do it no favours, says Ian Michler. It should perhaps be...
The roads to environmental infamy are not easy to follow. On a bumpy dirt track among rickety stilted houses near the Mekong River in Laos there’s a compound surrounded by...
It may come as something of a shock to those of us who’ve visited the penguin colonies just outside Cape Town to learn that these endearing birds face a daily battle for...
The world’s largest land animal – with a brain bigger than ours and similar family values – has been worshipped as a god, hunted for its ivory, feared for its bravery and has...
In Zambia’s newest national park, on the outskirts of its capital Lusaka, live more than 200 sable antelope. Coralled in condi- tions that are far from ideal, the animals have...