June 15, 2023
South Africa: South Africa Is Famous for Its Biodiversity - a New Network Will Store and Manage Its Plant and Animal Samples
South Africa has created a network of facilities to store hundreds of thousands of samples of biological material from plants, animals, bacteria and fungi. The samples are… Read more »
June 09, 2023
Africa: UK Ivory Trade Ban Extended to Five More Species - Here's Why We Think It Will Be Ineffective
The loss of nature is one of the many environmental crises facing our planet. And a key challenge in addressing this is halting the poaching and trafficking of wildlife, which is… Read more »
May 30, 2023
Africa: Half of Africa's White Rhino Population Is in Private Hands - It's Time for a New Conservation Approach
Southern white rhinos are widely known as a conservation success story. Their population grew from fewer than 100 individuals in the 1920s to 20,000 in 2012, mostly in South… Read more »
May 18, 2023
Kenya: Baboon Bonds - New Study Reveals That Friendships Make Up for a Bad Start in Life
Childhoods can predict a great deal about how adult lives might play out. For instance, research has shown that people whose childhoods involve poverty, abuse and neglect have… Read more »
May 15, 2023
Rwanda: Thriving in the Face of Adversity - Resilient Gorillas Reveal Clues About Overcoming Childhood Misfortune
In 1974, an infant mountain gorilla was born in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda. Researchers named him Titus. As is typical for young gorillas in the wild, Titus spent the first… Read more »
May 02, 2023
Africa: From Enormous Elephants to Tiny Shrews - How Mammals Shape and Are Shaped By Africa's Landscapes
Africa is the world's most diverse continent for large mammals such as antelopes, zebras and elephants. The heaviest of these large mammals top the scales at over one ton, and are… Read more »
April 11, 2023
Africa: Great Apes Like to Spin Themselves Dizzy, a Lot Like Children Do, Research Shows
Children love to spin. Whether it is by whirling around on their feet, whipping around on a tyre swing, or tumbling down a grassy hill, they revel in the drunken effects of… Read more »
April 13, 2023
Africa: New Research Forces a Rethink of Ape Evolution
Human evolution is tightly connected to the environment and landscape of Africa, where our ancestors first emerged. Read more »
April 16, 2023
Ghana: Ghana's Fishing Industry Has a 'Golden Seaweed' Problem - How Citizen Science Can Help
Sargassum is a genus of brown seaweed. Over 300 species are distributed across the world in both temperate and tropical climates. The species fluitans and natans are unique because… Read more »
March 16, 2023
South Africa: New Discovery - Fossilised Giant Zebra Tracks Found in South Africa
Tens of thousands of years ago, a huge horse species walked, trotted and galloped across the shifting sands of what is today South Africa's Cape south coast. Read more »
March 06, 2023
Africa: Children and Teenagers Can Carry Out Valuable Wildlife Research - Here's How
The environment is in crisis. Young people are calling for environmental action and requesting more education about the environment and the climate emergency. They are also looking… Read more »
March 01, 2023
Africa: High-Tech Replacements Aren't Really 'Resurrecting' Endagered Species
It's no secret that human activities have put many of this planet's inhabitants in danger. Extinctions are happening at a dramatically faster rate than they have over the past tens… Read more »
March 02, 2023
Africa: Why Prey Animals Often See Threats Where There Are None - and How It Costs Them
For a nervous horror fan, an evening watching HBO's hit post-apocalyptic television show The Last of Us might be followed by a restless night under the duvet. The silhouette of a… Read more »
South Africa: Roads and Power Lines Put Primates in Danger - South African Data Adds to the Real Picture
About 25 million kilometres of new roads are expected to be built around the world by 2050. Along with power lines and railways, roads cut through the landscape everywhere,… Read more »
February 22, 2023
Africa: In Defence of Vultures, Nature's Early-Warning Systems That Are Holy to Many People
With their long, featherless necks and stern-looking faces, vultures are an easy target for people's fear and loathing. In books and films, they usually appear as a forewarning of… Read more »
January 26, 2023
Africa: It'll Take 150 Years to Map Africa's Biodiversity - And We Can't Protect What We Don't Know
The African continent is bursting with biodiversity. In a 2016 report, the United Nations Environment Programme wrote: Read more »
January 20, 2023
South Africa: Tigers in South Africa - a Farming Industry Exists - Often for Their Body Parts
A tiger escaped from a residence and roamed the countryside outside Johannesburg, South Africa, for four days this month. It attacked a man and killed several animals, and was… Read more »
January 17, 2023
Angola: Peatlands Trap Carbon and Clean the Region's Water - How We Mapped This Newly Found Landscape #AfricaClimateHope
Ask most people what they picture when thinking about natural "carbon sinks" - ecosystems that absorb and store greenhouse gases - and they'll probably describe a forest.… Read more »
Africa: Underwater Noise Is a Threat to Marine Life
Oceans are full of sound. Waves, earthquakes and calving icebergs all contribute to the underwater soundscape. But so do human activities, and this can be a problem for marine life… Read more »
January 11, 2023
Africa: Elephant Poaching Rates Vary Across Africa - 19 Years of Data From 64 Sites Suggest Why
It's a grim and all too common sight for rangers at some of Africa's nature reserves: the bullet-riddled carcass of an elephant, its tusks removed by poachers. African elephant… Read more »
Africa: Penguin Feathers Help Inspire New De-Icing Techniques
Walking down a road during a white winter comes with its own set of challenges: the frigid cold, stepping around slippery ice on roads and the need to switch sidewalks to avoid… Read more »
January 10, 2023
South Africa: First Study to Estimate 'Blue Carbon' Storage in South Africa Is Useful for Climate Strategy #AfricaClimateHope
Marine ecosystems have a valuable role to play in mitigating the effects of climate change. That's because such ecosystems - and, particularly, vegetated tidal ecosystems like… Read more »
January 11, 2023
Africa: Mountain Environments Are Key to Biodiversity - but the Threats to Them Are Being Ignored #AfricaClimateCrisis
Mountains are home to more than 85% of the world's amphibian, bird and mammal species. Lowland slopes are rich in animal and plant species. And rugged, high-elevation environments,… Read more »
January 09, 2023
Africa: Invasive Rats Are Changing Fish Behaviour On Coral Reefs - New Study
Coral reefs are degrading rapidly to the extent that their marine inhabitants must either adapt or die. For many animals, including reef fish, behaviour is one of the first… Read more »
January 05, 2023
Africa: Quiet, Please - Human Noise Is Interfering With the Sex Lives of Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers have a bad reputation. They're not popular with gardeners And locusts, a type of swarming grasshopper, can do huge damage to vegetation and crops when they're in a… Read more »