Record levels of poaching are endangering survival of rhinoceros in South Africa By Alex Duval Smith The ObserverSunday 18 July 2010 South African wildlife experts are calling for urgent action against poachers after the last female rhinoceros in a popular game reserve near Johannesburg bled to death after having its horn hacked off. Wildlife officials […]
A new report by the Chatham House finds that illegal logging in tropical forest nations is primarily on the decline, providing evidence that new laws and international efforts on the issue are having a positive impact. According to the report, the total global production of illegal timber has fallen by 22 percent since 2002. Yet […]
Jul 1st 2010 IT IS sometimes called the “polio of agriculture”: a terrifying but almost forgotten disease. Wheat rust is not just back after a 50-year absence, but spreading in new and scary forms. In some ways it is worse than child-crippling polio, still lingering in parts of Nigeria. Wheat rust has spread silently and […]
Contact: Victoria Picknellvictoria.picknell@zsl.org020-744-96361 AFRICAN national parks like Masai Mara and the Serengeti have seen populations of large mammals decline by up to 59 per cent, according to a study published in Biological Conservation. The parks are each visited by thousands of tourists each year hoping to spot Africa’s ‘Big Five’ – lion, elephant, buffalo, […]
The theft of fish from Western Saharan waters should be damned by the European commission, not encouraged By David Cronin, www.guardian.co.uk 10 July 2010 16.00 BST There is one surefire way of allowing the internet to damage your sanity: spend too much time reading politicians’ blogs. Take a recent post from Maria Damanaki, whose career […]
Addis Ababa (AFP) July 8, 2010 – Ethiopia has reassured Egypt that a new pact it signed with four other countries on the sharing of water from the River Nile will not harm Egypt. Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda in May signed the Nile Basin Cooperative Framework meant to replace a 1959 accord […]
By Paula Kahumbu, Executive Director of WildlifeDirect, special to www.mongabay.com July 08, 2010 Tourists, conservationists, individuals, and tour companies have launched an international outcry against the Tanzanian authorities in response to the announcement of the planned construction of the trans-Serengeti Highway highway. There is even a Facebook group and an online petition with 5,038 signatures. […]
Urgent aid is needed to avert a catastrophe in West Africa By Alastair Stewart To the north of Niger, the creeping Sahara; to the south, oil rich and agriculturally lush Nigeria – this nation straddles the Sahel – dry, hot and cruel. It has suffered catastrophic droughts – 1974, 1984 and 2005. And now, another. […]
By TODD PITMAN, Associated Pressupdated 7/3/2010 9:39:02 PM ET THE ITURI FOREST, Congo — They emerge from the stillness of the rainforest like a lost tribe of prehistoric warriors forgotten by time — a barefoot band of Mbuti Pygmies wielding iron-tipped spears. The men come first, cloaked head to toe in coiled hunting nets shaved […]
Bodo, Nigeria (AFP) July 2, 2010 – The waters around the Niger Delta swamps of Bodo are covered in a thick film of oil that has left the once lush mangroves looking like burnt twigs covered in grease. The air reeks of crude. “I struggle everyday,” said fisherman Gaagaa Giadom, 60, paddling his blackened canoe […]
