Poaching is the illegal hunting or capturing of wild animals, usually associated with land use rights. Poaching was once performed by impoverished peasants for subsistence purposes and to supplement meager diets. It was set against the hunting privileges of nobility and territorial rulers.
Garamba National Park is a national park in the north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo covering nearly 5,200 km2 (2,000 sq mi). It is among Africa's oldest parks and was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980 for its protection of critical habitat for northern white rhinoceroses, African elephants, hippopotamuses, and giraffes. Garamba National Park has been managed by African Parks in partnership with the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature since 2005.
The East Sudanian savanna is a hot, dry, tropical savanna ecoregion of Central and East Africa.
The Northern Congolian forest–savanna mosaic is a forest and savanna ecoregion of central Africa. It extends east and west across central Africa, covering parts of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, and Uganda. It is part of the belt of transitional forest-savanna mosaic that lie between Africa's moist equatorial Guineo-Congolian forests and the tropical dry forests, savannas, and grasslands to the north and south.
The 2006 Zakouma elephant slaughter refers to a series of poaching massacres of African elephants in the vicinity of Zakouma National Park in southeastern Chad. These killings were documented in aerial surveys conducted from May through August 2006 and total at least 100 animals. This region has a four decade history of illegal killing of this species; in fact, the Chad population was over 300,000 animals as recently as 1970 and has been reduced to approximately 10,000 as of 2006. The African elephant nominally has Chadian governmental protection, but the implementation practices of the government have been insufficient to stem the slaughter by poachers. The African bush elephant species occurs in several countries of Eastern and Central Africa.
The wildlife of Chad is composed of its flora and fauna. Bush elephants, West African lions, buffalo, hippopotamuses, Kordofan giraffes, antelopes, African leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, and many species of snakes are found there, although most large carnivore populations have been drastically reduced since the early 20th century. Elephant poaching, particularly in the south of the country in areas such as Zakouma National Park, is a severe problem.
Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) is a state corporation under the Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife established by an act of Parliament; Wildlife Conservation and Management Act CAP 376, of 1989, now repealed and replaced by the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act, 2013. At independence, the Government of Kenya committed itself to conserving wildlife for posterity with all the means at its disposal, including the places animals lived, forests and water catchment areas.
The wildlife of Sudan is composed of its flora and fauna. A variety of climate types in Sudan results in a wide range of habitats and the range of wildlife is diverse. Some 287 species of mammal have been recorded in the country and some 634 species of bird.
Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, is the largest and oldest wildlife reserve in Malawi, near Nkhotakota. The park's hilly terrain features dambos and miombo woodlands as the dominant vegetation, which support a variety of mammal and bird species. Poaching has greatly reduced the number of elephants and other large mammals in Nkhotakota, but conservation efforts to restore the elephant population started when African Parks began managing the reserve in 2015.
African Parks is a non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on conservation, established in 2000 and headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was founded as the African Parks Management and Finance Company, a private company, then underwent structural changes to become an NGO called African Parks Foundation, and later renamed African Parks Network. The organization manages national parks and protected areas throughout Africa, in collaboration with governments and surrounding communities. African Parks manages 22 protected areas in 12 countries as of May 2023, and employs more than 1,100 rangers. Michael Eustace, Peter Fearnhead, Paul Fentener van Vlissingen, Anthony Hall-Martin, and Mavuso Msimang are credited as co-founders; Fearnhead continues to serve as chief executive officer. Prince Harry was appointed African Parks' president in late 2017.
Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park is a national park in the Republic of the Congo. Established in 1993, in the northern provinces of Congo, it is home to forest elephants, great apes, including western lowland gorillas and the eastern sub-species of chimpanzees and bongo. It is 3,921.61 km2 (1,514.14 sq mi) of pristine tropical rainforest with no human habitation within it and with human population densities in its periphery that are comparatively low for the sub-region. The forests have a rich biodiversity of 300 bird species, plus 1,000 plant and tree species which include endangered mahoganies.
Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve is a protected area and tiger reserve located along the area straddling both the Western Ghats and Eastern Ghats in the Erode District of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The Sathyamangalam Forest Division is part of the Bramhagiri-Nilgiris-Eastern Ghats Elephant Reserve notified in 2003. In 2008, part of the Sathyamangalam Forest Division was declared as a wildlife sanctuary and enlarged in 2011, it covers a forest area of 1,411.6 km2 (545.0 sq mi). It is the largest wildlife sanctuary in Tamil Nadu. In 2013, an area of 1,408.6 km2 (543.9 sq mi) of the erstwhile sanctuary was notified as a tiger reserve. It was the fourth tiger reserve established in Tamil Nadu as a part of Project Tiger and is the third largest in the state.
The wildlife of the Central African Republic is in the vast natural habitat in the Central African Republic (CAR) located between the Congo Basin's rain forests and large savannas, where the human density was smaller than 0.5 per km2 prior to 1850. The forest area of 22.755 million, considered one of the richest storehouses of wildlife spread over national parks, hunting reserves and community hunting areas, experienced an alarming loss of wildlife because of greed for ivory and bushmeat exploitation by hunters – mostly Arab slavers from across the borders of the Central African Republic with Chad and Sudan.
Elephant hunting or elephant poaching and exploitation of the ivory trade are illegal in Chad and pose a major threat to elephant populations. The profitable ivory industry is also a threat to the lives of rangers, even in the national parks, such as Zakouma National Park, the worst-affected area.
The Great Elephant Census—the largest wildlife survey in history—was an African-wide census designed to provide accurate data about the number and distribution of African elephants by using standardized aerial surveys of hundreds of thousands of square miles or terrain in Africa.
Many species are affected by poaching, including illegal hunting, fishing and capturing of wild animals, and, in a recent usage, the illegal harvesting of wild plant species. The article provides an overview of species currently endangered or impaired by poaching in the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and South-East Asia.
Chinko, also known as Chinko Nature Reserve and the Chinko Project Area, is a protected area in the Central African Republic. The nonprofit conservation organization African Parks began managing Chinko in partnership with the government of the Central African Republic in December 2014.
The wildlife trafficking network in southern Africa involves the illicit extraction, transportation and transaction of wildlife within and across the nations of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Eswatini. Involvement in the illegal trading network can be divided into three general roles: poachers, traffickers and intermediaries, and consumers. There are a wide range of motives depending on an individual's role in the network. Some motivations include profit, sustenance, and reducing human-wildlife conflict.
Anti-poaching is the organised act to counter the poaching of wildlife. However, it is generally used to describe an overall effort against the illegal wildlife trade. The act of anti-poaching is normally carried out by national parks on public land and by private security companies on privately owned land. Anti-poaching takes many forms and which depends mainly upon the habitat being protected. Typically, it is the act of actively patrolling land in an effort to prevent poachers from reaching the animals.
