SEAL, a French transport company, is scheduled to ship 79 containers of rosewood tomorrow from the port of Toamasina on its vessel Terra Bona, reports Midi Madagascar. The shipment comes less than three months after Madagascar’s ruling authority banned timber exports after international uproar over the organized logging of the country’s national parks in […]
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.Published: May 31, 2010 MUKONO, Uganda — Lynet Nalugo dug a cassava tuber out of her field and sliced it open. Inside its tan skin, the white flesh was riddled with necrotic brown lumps, as obviously diseased as any tuberculosis lung or cancerous breast. “Even the pigs refuse this,” she said. […]
A tawny water fowl that lived in a tiny corner of Madagascar has officially been declared extinct by conservationists. The Alaotra grebe, also called the rusty grebe, had been highly vulnerable as it was found only in Lake Alaotra, eastern Madagascar, according to the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles […]
(University of Arizona) Droughts in the late 20th century rival some of North Africa’s major droughts of centuries past, reveals new research that peers back in time to the year 1179. The first multi-century drought reconstruction that includes Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia shows frequent and severe droughts during the 13th and 16th centuries and the […]
By MICHAEL BURNHAM AND NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of GreenwirePublished: May 25, 2010 AMBOSELI NATIONAL PARK, Kenya – … When the rains failed for the second straight year in 2009, plants withered to their roots in this critical dry-season refuge. Marshes and the shallow bed of Lake Amboseli, usually fed by seasonal rains and runoff from […]
Tucson AZ (SPX) May 25, 2010 – Lake Tanganyika’s surface waters are currently warmer than at any time in the previous 1,500 years, a University of Arizona researcher and his colleagues report online in Nature Geoscience. The rise in temperature during the 20th century is driving a decline in the productivity of the lake, […]
By Tom Kirkwood; editing by Tim CocksSERENGETI NATIONAL PARK, TanzaniaFri May 21, 2010 4:44pm EDT (Reuters) – Conservationists flew the first five of 32 critically endangered East African black rhinos from South Africa back to their habitat in Tanzania’s Serengeti park Friday. The rhinos had been bred from a group that was rescued from […]
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Date: 19 May 2010 In 2009, agricultural production has been seriously affected in parts of the Sahel following late onset of rains, prolonged dry spells and significant pest infestations. The eastern and central parts of the Subregion were most affected with cereal outputs estimated to have […]
By MICHAEL BURNHAM AND NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of GreenwirePublished: May 17, 2010 NAKURU, Kenya — The wooded ridge rising to the west of this bustling provincial capital is the home of one of Kenya’s greatest natural resources and one of Africa’s biggest environmental crises. The Mau Forest Complex encompasses almost 1 million acres of wilderness, interspersed […]
By Tim Cocks, Editing by Paul Casciato – Sun May 16, 1:01 pm ET ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Africa’s lake Tanganyika has heated up sharply over the past 90 years and is now warmer than at any time for at least 1,500 years, a scientific paper said on Sunday, adding that fish and wildlife are threatened. […]
