The Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism seized about 1,000 illegally cut timber logs last year.

This was revealed in the ministry's Wildlife Protection and Law Enforcement in Namibia report.

While reporting on the successes, the ministerial report indicates numerous challenges still facing the ministry in protecting timber.

These include transport limitations, staff shortages, ineffective permit systems, open transit trucks that allow en-route tampering, difficulties in quantifying timber volumes, and some tree species not being listed on CITES.

Namibia has been identified as a major channel for both legal and illegal timber consignments from Zambia, the DRC, and Angola to China via Walvis Bay.

Other challenges include identifying the origin of species and limited knowledge of producers' import and export profiles.

To address this, the ministry last year undertook a review of forestry legislation and regulations, presenting a first step towards strengthening plant laws.

Numerous capacity-building events were further held, and MoUs have been signed between the ministry, law enforcement, and other key stakeholders towards combating plant crime.

At the same time, a state-of-the-art species identification lab is being developed with the assistance of international partners, and the verification of CITES permits for in-transit timber is also in place.

The Ministry seized over four thousand live plants.

The sampled plants all carry protected status in Namibia, though few are listed by CITES.

And despite clear permit requirements within Namibia for propagating, harvesting, transporting, and exporting protected plants, a key hindrance remains the lack of such extensive legally binding controls beyond the country's borders.

Twenty-two people were arrested for being in possession of timber and live plants, with two convictions.