Namibia has suffered a leap in rhino poaching in the first months of 2015.
The police raid discovered 340 elephant tusks, weighing 1,160 kilogrammes, and 65 rhino horns, weighing 124 kilogrammes.
Rhinos have already disappeared from several Asian and African countries and 94% of rhino poaching takes place in just two countries – Zimbabwe and South Africa – where it has increased from an estimated 50 animals in 2007, to over 1,000 in 2013, due to the involvement of crime syndicates.
You'll spend a night in Kruger and two at the Sabi Sands Game Reserve, overlooking a river bed where lion, elephant, rhino and co often chill.
Highlights of the exhibition included a stuffed alligator bearing a tray of drinks – a gift from the government of Nicaragua – and a rhino horn presented by Robert Mugabe – presumably ripped from the animal's head with his own bare hands.
You will be scrutinised, too, so if you want to be taken remotely seriously (or unless you have the skin of a rhino), make sure you're dressed up to within an inch of your life.
A Texas hunting club was once again scheduled on Saturday to auction off a chance to kill a large animal whose numbers are dwindling, a year after it faced international criticism over doing the same with a permit to shoot an endangered black rhino.
On 14 May, police in Mozambique said they had seized 1.3 tonnes of elephant ivory and rhino horn – the result of killing about 200 animals – in the country's biggest-ever find of illegal wildlife products.
Suspects wanted for crimes including poaching rhino, trafficking ivory and illegally chopping down forests feature on the first ever Most Wanted-style appeal to catch environmental criminals.
It worked pretty well for them to start with, but rocketing demand for ivory and rhino horn has proved irresistible (see article).Pesticide regulation, too, has been tightened over the years, partly thanks to Rachel Carson.
"They became wild again," says Berry White, a rhino expert who oversaw the move.Yet the chances of saving the northern white are remote.
