LILONGWE — Malawi’s President Lazarus Chakwera has granted a presidential pardon to Lin Yunhua, a Chinese national sentenced to 14 years in prison for wildlife trafficking. Lin was among 37 inmates who received a presidential pardon as part of Malawi’s 61st independence anniversary celebrations on July 6. Conservationists have since expressed their disappointment, warning that Lin’s pardon might demotivate frontline officers working to protect Malawi’s wildlife. “The news came as a shock to some of us,” Brighton Kumchedwa, director of Malawi’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife, told Mongabay by phone. “For us in the conservation sector, we didn’t expect a high-profile wildlife criminal of his caliber to be set free like that.” While authorities have not published the pardon list, news of Lin’s impending pardon started spreading as early as April this year. Authorities at the time described the possibility as speculation, but more recently British newspaper The Telegraph reported that prison officials familiar with the pardon list confirmed that both Lin and his wife, Qin Hua Zhang, were included. Malawian authorities arrested Lin, Zhang and 12 other members of a notorious wildlife crime syndicate that operated across Southern Africa, in 2019. At the time, Lin and Zhang were found in possession of elephant tusks, hippopotamus teeth, pangolin scales and rhino horns, and their arrest was welcomed by local and international civil society, some describing it as “the destruction of the Lin-Zhang gang.” Zhang was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2020; Lin received a 14-year sentence in…This article was originally published on Mongabay