In 2019, Malawi registered a massive win in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade. Intelligence-driven operations culminated in the arrest of more than a dozen members of the Chinese-led “Lin-Zhang gang,” one of Southern Africa’s most prolific trafficking syndicates. Found to be in possession of hundreds of pieces of elephant ivory, rhino horn, pangolin scales and hippo teeth, the traffickers were sentenced to between 18 months and 14 years in prison. The case was hailed as a milestone in Malawi’s growing capacity to curb wildlife crime. With help from international donors, the country has set up a forest and landscape monitoring center, trained police, judicial and anticorruption officials on forest and wildlife crime, and achieved major reductions in elephant ivory and pangolin scale trafficking — not bad for a nation with a GDP per capita of $602 a year. Such progress, however, is now in jeopardy following the Trump administration’s sudden shutdown earlier this year of USAID and its sweeping freezes of conservation grant programs administered through several federal agencies. U.S. funds channeled through NGOs in Malawi have helped equip frontline law enforcers and strengthen wildlife laws, according to Brighton Kumchedwa, director of Malawi’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife. Taking down the Chinese syndicate, he told Mongabay, “would not have been possible” without this assistance. But in Malawi and elsewhere, the abrupt cuts now threaten to diminish this momentum, thrusting wildlife officials into what Kumchedwa describes as a “difficult situation.” Elephant tusks confiscated by forest officials in Uganda,…This article was originally published on Mongabay