When around 70,000 Indigenous Maasai were expelled from their lands in northern Tanzania in 2022, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. For years, the Tanzanian government has systematically attacked Maasai…
In eastern Sierra Leone, straddling the border of Liberia, lies Gola Rainforest National Park, one of the last remaining intact tracts of the tropical Upper Guinean forests in West Africa.…
BLANTYRE — Police and wildlife department officials in Malawi have arrested two men suspected of having killed an elephant in Kasungu National Park in the country’s west. In July 2022,…
Anthropologist Maud Mouginot recalls an encounter with bonobos early one morning in 2019 deep in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo that helped revise her impression of them…
Ten years ago, says Mike Chase, the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area was one fluid contiguous elephant habitat. “An elephant could be in Botswana in the morning, midday in Zimbabwe…
Since he was old enough to work, Sam Elong has been a fisherman in Kribi, a coastal town of more than 90,000 inhabitants that stretches along the shore of the…
The World Bank’s independent watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), has finalized its investigation into a complaint filed five years ago, alleging grave human rights violations by communities living near…
MASVINGO, Zimbabwe — At the end of November last year, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Sinomine Resource Group chair Wang Pingwei walked into a lithium processing plant, construction hats firmly…
It’s been about a decade since Foday Fahnbulleh was arrested. Along with other students and workers from his home in Bong Mines about an hour’s drive north of Monrovia, he’d…
The global race to secure minerals critical to the clean energy transition is driving toxic pollution with severe health repercussions for communities living near some of the world’s largest cobalt…
Scientists have recently described six new species of millipedes, including one from an entirely new genus, in Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains. This brings the number of new species found in…
Located in northeastern Central African Republic (CAR) close to the Chad and Sudan borders, Manovo-Gounda St. Floris National Park is the largest park in the Central African savannas, covering 17,400…
LUBUMBASHI, Democratic Republic of the Congo — Land-grabbing, lack of consultation, communities wiped off maps and impunity. These are the serious accusations made against the mining company Alphamin Bisie Mining…
Scientists from Madagascar, the U.S. and Europe have described a new orchid species found up in the forest canopies of central Madagascar. The orchid, named Solenangis impraedicta, boasts a nectar…
Kamilo Melo was building a robot shaped like a salamander for his Ph.D. in 2015 when an unexpected assignment came knocking on his door. Two producers at the BBC were…
New research is ringing alarm bells about how climate change may impact one of Africa’s most iconic and vulnerable animals: the rhinoceros. “Climate change has the potential of wiping out…
Blantyre, MALAWI — When Cyclone Idai stormed Mozambique in 2019, researchers at Gorongosa National Park rode the current to test a long-held theory that the vulnerability of wildlife species to…
There is an “inland archipelago” of mountains stretching across southern Malawi and northern Mozambique — a chain of hard granite inselbergs lifted high above the surrounding landscape as it weathered…
For years, monitoring water levels in the semiarid Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya was a tedious task. Team members would travel the 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the main office…
This week, more than 150 conservation and community organizations, experts and policymakers are gathering in Zambia for the Accelerating Nature-based Solutions conference. Billed as the largest land restoration programming conference…
Being silly and indulging in humor may sound easy, but our brains need to do a lot of heavy lifting to pull it off. Landing a joke requires recognizing what’s…
ANTANANARIVO — Madagascar recently released its first fisheries transparency report, part of an effort to open up, democratize, and improve the sustainability of its fisheries sector. The report is a…
Civil society groups have criticized a new $61 billion initiative to industrialize African food systems, calling the plan a “significant threat to small-scale farmers.” The groups, under the Alliance for…
The term “field station” has an air of mystery, conjuring images of some tropical or icy outpost where scientists go to “do science.” And while it’s true that scientific research…
This is the second of a two-part series on climate-related disasters in western Uganda. Read Part One here. KASESE, Uganda — Right as the Nyamwamba River emerges from the foothills…
It’s a man’s world when it comes to ape societies — at least, that’s been the prevailing assumption for years. But some recent research is shaking up how we think…
In 2016, an infestation of fall armyworms hit a vast swath of Africa, alarming farmers and governments. Eight years on, experts say that crop losses from the agricultural pest are…
This is the first of a two-part series on climate-related disasters in western Uganda. Part Two will be published next week. KASESE, Uganda — In March 2020, right as the…
WESTERN PROVINCE, Kenya — In the 44 years Naomi Rita Sitati has lived in Bukirimo village in western Kenya, she has known only one system of farming, which her community…
YELWA, Nigeria — Nightfall at the Ngel Nyaki Forest Reserve field station is clad in the whispers, chirps and trills of insect song. Flames from the burning wood in the…