Eight suspects will appear before a South African court to face charges of illegal possession of game products including lion parts and a tiger's carcass, police said Monday.

Police found lion bones, lion meat, a tiger skin, gas cylinders, gas burners, containers, a saw, knives and other equipment when they intercepted the suspects' two vehicles headed to an unused farm in the North West province on Sunday.

"As far as how many (lions), from our side there's been no definite number really... but its quite a few of them," Captain Tlangelani Rikhotso told AFP.

"There were different parts of the lion that were there... so you can't exactly tell if its the stomach or whatever, but the lion in its entirety was chopped up basically."

Local media reports said at least 40 lions were killed.

Of the eight suspects, aged between 22 and 60, two are South African and six are Vietnamese nationals.

Once detained, the suspects took the police to a farm where a lion skin was found dumped in the bush and large machines which were believed to have been the instruments for cutting the bones were also found in a garage.

The arrest follows a three-month long intelligence driven operation by the Hawks' North West Serious Organised Crime Unit in collaboration with other law enforcement agencies.

But police would not say whether they believed this to be part of a poaching syndicate or an isolated incident, saying the investigation was continuing.

South Africa has 8,000 lions in captivity bred for hunting, and just 3,000 wild lions living in the country's national parks where hunting is prohibited.

Related Links
Darwin Today At TerraDaily.com

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

Human ancestors not to blame for ancient mammal extinctions in Africa
Salt Lake City UT (SPX) Nov 26, 2018
New research disputes a long-held view that our earliest tool-bearing ancestors contributed to the demise of large mammals in Africa over the last several million years. Instead, the researchers argue that long-term environmental change drove the extinctions, mainly in the form of grassland expansion likely caused by falling atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. Tyler Faith, curator of archaeology at the Natural History Museum of Utah and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at ... read more