Ryan Truscott

Ryan Truscott

About

Freelance wildlife and nature writer based in southern Africa.

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81 stories
Eastern tree hyrax in Pare mountains. Image courtesy of Hanna Rosti.

Tanzania’s tree-climbing hyraxes have adapted to life without trees

Ryan Truscott 19 Dec 2025
A bull elephant strolls past a fenced rural homestead in Namibia that is on high alert. Risk of confrontation between elephant and people is high if people don't know how to handle the situation safely. Image courtesy of Abi Best.

How Southern African farmers & elephants can both adapt to coexist

Ryan Truscott 19 Dec 2025
A herd of elephants crosses the M10 highway en route to the Zambezi River, Zambia.

Corridors, not culls, offer solution to Southern Africa’s growing elephant population

Ryan Truscott 11 Dec 2025
The river survey team near the Zambian border. Image courtesy of Jen Guyton / TWP/NGOWP.

Scientists chart a new source, and length, for Africa’s famous Zambezi River

Ryan Truscott 3 Dec 2025
Rüppell's vultures pictured in Kenya’s Masai Mara — these endangered birds raise only one chick per year. Image by Thomas Fuhrmann via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Colony of world’s highest-flying bird under threat in Uganda

Ryan Truscott, Musinguzi Blanshe 29 Oct 2025

Tanzanian conservationists mourn death of plant expert Aloyce Mwakisoma

Ryan Truscott 13 Oct 2025

Mozambican reserve harbors largest documented breeding population of rare falcon

Ryan Truscott 18 Sep 2025
A brilliant blue male Francis’s gorgeous sapphire, euthanized after being reared in captivity. Image courtesy of Jonathan Francis.

Discovery of dazzling blue butterfly underscores peril facing Angola’s forests 

Ryan Truscott 3 Sep 2025

Kafue River Transect

Ryan Truscott 30 Aug 2025
A female greater honeyguide eating wax combs left behind by a honey-hunter. Image courtesy of Dom Cram.

Eswatini’s young honey-hunters sustain a rare bond with wild birds

Ryan Truscott 13 Aug 2025
Deforested land in Nkondjock district with newly planted cacao saplings. Image courtesy of Communauté et Développement Durable (CODED), Cameroon.

Cocoa boom fuels new wave of deforestation in Cameroon

Ryan Truscott 4 Aug 2025
The Wilderness Project team stops to conduct research on the island, surrounded by the waterberry trees’ fluted trunks.

Bicolored waterberry: The overlooked tree shaping Zambia’s rivers

Ryan Truscott 16 Jul 2025
While navigating the Kafue River inside the national park, the team regularly pauses to deliberate on the best route to take around hippos that block their way.

River of giants: Canoe team tracks hippos in one of Africa’s last strongholds

Ryan Truscott 15 Jul 2025
A herd of elephants gathers to drink beside the river several kilometers below Hook Bridge, on the main highway running through the middle of the park. Reid says elephants that had very specific distributions previously are now moving more freely through the park.

Wildlife & tourists on the up in Zambia’s Kafue Park: Q&A with manager Craig Reid

Ryan Truscott 15 Jul 2025
Expedition leader Mike Ross and boat captain Dominic Mwahamubi ease their canoe down rapids along the Kafue River.

‘Croc on a rock’: How a group of explorers suffers for science

Ryan Truscott 14 Jul 2025
A leopard caught on a camera trap in the Musekese Lumbeya section of Kafue National Park, where Musekese Conservation conducts its research into recovering carnivore populations.

A success story at Zambia’s leopard hotspot: Interview with ecologist Chisomo M’hango

Ryan Truscott 14 Jul 2025
Team makes their way down the center of the river in a canoe.

From cattle to crayfish, human pressures mount on Zambia’s Kafue River

Ryan Truscott 11 Jul 2025

Mining spill highlights need to protect Zambia’s vital Kafue River & its fish

Ryan Truscott 10 Jul 2025
A Blyde rondawels flat gecko. Image courtesy of the Endangered Wildlife Trust.

‘Absolutely ecstatic’: Scientists confirm survival of rare South African gecko

Ryan Truscott 20 May 2025
A giant girdled lizard, also known as a sungazer (Smaug giganteus). Image by Cloudtail the Snow Leopard via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Traffickers slither through loopholes with wild-caught African snakes and lizards

Ryan Truscott 13 May 2025
Yao honey-hunter Seliano Rucunua holds a wild honeyguide that guided him to a bees’ nest; the bird was briefly captured for research, then released. Image courtesy of David Lloyd-Jones.

Malice or memory lapse? Why honeyguides sometimes lead hunters to danger

Ryan Truscott 6 May 2025
Hooded vulture, Gambia 2017. Image by Pete Richman via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

In West Africa, hooded vultures vanish as abattoirs modernize

Ryan Truscott 24 Apr 2025
One of approximately 200 kipunji monkeys in the Udzungwa Mountains. Image courtesy Anthony Jarrett.

New strategy launched to protect Tanzanian biodiversity hotspot

Ryan Truscott 2 Apr 2025
Elephants Crossing Ewaso Ewaso Ng'iro river, Samburu, Kenya. Image courtesy of Fritz Vollrath

For wandering elephants, path of least resistance could help map out safe corridors

Ryan Truscott 31 Mar 2025
In a vibrant green forestscape, a man in a blue t-shirt and gumboots stretches his arms across the dark bole of an enormous, extravagantly buttressed tree.. Image courtesy Andrea Bianchi.

‘3,000 year-old’ trees in Tanzania are new species

Ryan Truscott 20 Mar 2025
Image of a male western chimpanzee

When a chimp community lost its males, it also lost part of its love language

Ryan Truscott 11 Mar 2025
Tropical botanist Andrea Bianchi examines a species of Anthocleista in Ngezi Forest Reserve. Unlike the species that grows in Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains, the ones he and colleagues found in Ngezi are armed with spines, more akin to a species that grows in West Africa. Image by Ryan Truscott for Mongabay.

Forest of rare trees in Zanzibar now earmarked for ‘eco-resort’

Ryan Truscott 13 Feb 2025
One man lifts honeycomb from a bees' nest while his companion holds a red plastic bag open to receive it, smoke drifts in the background. Image courtesy Claire Spottiswoode.

Birds guide honey-hunters to most of their harvest in Mozambican reserve

Ryan Truscott 7 Feb 2025

‘An oval with legs’: In search of Tanzania’s tiny island antelope

Ryan Truscott 20 Jan 2025
Khamis Ali Khamis, acting-chief-in-charge of Ngezi Forest Reserve, wearing a brown peaked cap and green t-shirt, smiles at the camera. Image by Ryan Truscott for Mongabay.

Growing conservation and community: Interview with Ngezi reserve chief

Ryan Truscott 20 Jan 2025

Rare new Guinean flower is ‘canary in a coal mine’ — but in an actual iron mine

Ryan Truscott 27 Dec 2024
A southern patas monkey (Erythrocebus baumstarki) sits on the branch of a tree in the Serengeti. Image courtesy Katie Sanborn.

Gum-eating Tanzanian monkey is AWOL, fueling extinction fears

Ryan Truscott 9 Dec 2024

News and Inspiration from Nature's Frontline.

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Forest illegally cleared for oil palm in Riau Province. Photo by Rhett A Butler
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Judith Enck, author of The Problem with Plastic, holding a copy of the book. Image by Jerrick Mitra.
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