African rhino poaching rates declined from 3.9% of the continent's rhino population in 2018 to 2.3% in 2021, most likely due to better policing, but the total number of rhinos fell from 23,562 to 22,137 – says a new report by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Poachers have since January killed 106 rhinos in the South African KwaZulu-Natal province, surpassing numbers for the whole of 2021, claims a poaching report partially released last week.

U.S authorities in Seattle arrested two men from the Democratic Republic of the Congo for smuggling several small packages of ivory into the country to strike a deal with a buyer to bring over a much larger load. 

The Grahamstown High Court in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa sentenced Wednesday three individuals to a total of 500 years in prison after they were found guilty of more than 55 counts of rhino poaching between the years 2013 and 2016, the South African Police Service (SAPS) announced in a press release.

Major gaps between South African and Namibian legislation that regulates the endangered species trade allowed for the sale of at least 13 white rhino bulls from a South African game park to a Russian big game hunting outfit in Namibia. Nine of these rhinos were found to have died.

An adult and baby rhino at Kruger National Park in South Africa. (Photo: Violator1, Flickr)