Sunday Standard
Most countries in southern Africa anticipate poaching and the illegal wildlife trade to revert to pre-pandemic trends as restrictions imposed to reduce the spread of the disease are relaxed. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime anticipates that once the virus has been contained through large-scale vaccinations by early 2022 it is likely that poaching will resume to supply pent-up demand. This is contained in the UK Government’s research on the impact of Covid-19 on the illegal wildlife trade released in early 2022. The research was relaunched at a wildlife conference co-…