A new report, Plundered – South Africa’s cold-blooded international reptile trade, explores loopholes in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) regulations and finds that an ineffective local permitting system is allowing the illegal international trade of South Africa’s reptiles.
In the very fringes of the Kalahari Desert lies Hwange – Zimbabwe’s oldest and largest national park – crisscrossed by fossil riverbeds that bear testament to a time when water was abundant, and mudflats, swamps and forests thrived.
Aardvarks are notoriously elusive, nocturnal mammals.
Although its size makes it fearsome looking, the hippo is often one of the most underrated animals in Africa in terms of its fearless and potentially bad-tempered nature. Hippos rank as one of the largest animals in Africa and are not known for their sunny dispositions, causing more human deaths in Africa annually than lions, leopards, crocodiles, or any other of the major predators.
The last official sighting of the Voeltzkow’s chameleon (Furcifer voeltzkowi) was in 1913 in Madagascar, earning it a spot on the Top 25 Most Wanted taxon in Global Wildlife Conservation’s Search for Lost Species initiative.
There are an estimated 12,000 captive lions in the country, while fewer than 10,000 wild lions roam the continent.
