Nature takes a beating after chemical explosion in South Africa civil unrest
In the early hours of July 13, a group of unknown people set fire to a massive warehouse full of agrochemicals in the Cornubia area of Durban on South Africa's…
Articles by Tony Carnie
Tony Carnie is a South African journalist in the port city of Durban. Born in Kenya, he toyed with the idea of becoming an archaeologist or wildlife vet before signing up as as a print journalist in Zimbabwe in 1982. He has been writing on wildlife, pollution, water conservation and a wide range of environmental issues for 30 years. Following an ownership change and new emphasis on politics and cost-cutting that would have curtailed his ability to focus exclusively on environmental issues, he resigned from the Independent Newspapers SA group in 2016 to become a freelance writer.
Ghost fish: after 420 million years in the deeps, modern gillnets from shark fin trade drag coelacanths into the light
Demand for shark fins and oil has led fishers in southwestern Madagascar to set gill-nets in deeper waters. They are finding — and possibly harming — previously-unknown populations of these…
Spots of hope: Some good news for South Africa’s cheetahs
DURBAN, South Africa — South Africa is home to around 1,300 of the world’s roughly 7,100 remaining cheetahs. It’s also the only country in the world with significant cheetah population…
Lift-off for first African vulture safe zones
Howick, SOUTH AFRICA – The first of at least five new “vulture safe zones” in Southern Africa are about to take off as private landowners and other partners join the…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Indigenous community in Peru losing forests to timber, drug, land trafficking
- Bolivian protected areas hit hard by forest fires
- The protected area that isn’t: Bolivia’s Ñembi Guasu beset by fires, farms, roads
- New oil refinery ‘a huge disaster’ for Nigerian forest reserve
Oceans
- Fishers in Flores Sea opt to limit harvest of overexploited sea cucumbers
- As shark numbers plummet, nations seek ban on devastatingly effective gear
- Illegal bottom trawling widespread inside Mediterranean marine protected areas
- Will shipping noise nudge Africa’s only penguin toward extinction?
Amazon Conservation
- U.N. report calls for the ban of mercury trade and its use in gold mining
- Following the impacts of palm oil alliance: Violated regulations and penalty proceedings
- Brazil’s new environmental future under Lula: Q&A with Marina Silva
- Growing soy on cattle pasture can eliminate Amazon deforestation in Brazil
Land rights and extractives
- ‘We go in and take Indigenous lands back from cattle ranchers’: Q&A with activist Pablo Sibar
- Delayed Indigenous ‘Man of the Hole’ burial reveals dispute over his land
- As gangs battle over Peru’s drug trafficking routes, communities and forest are at risk
- In Brazil’s soy belt, Indigenous people face attacks over land rights
Endangered Environmentalists
- Worries and whispers in Vietnam’s NGO community after activist’s sentencing
- Scientists call for end to violence against Amazon communities, environmental defenders
- Indigenous advocates sense a legal landmark as a guardian’s killing heads to trial
- In Brazil, an Indigenous land defender’s unsolved killing is the deadly norm
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
- Aziil Anwar, Indonesian coral-based mangrove grower, dies at 64
- A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’
Conservation Effectiveness
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows
- ‘South Asia needs its own tiger plan’: Q&A with Nepal’s Maheshwar Dhakal
- Nepal was supposed to double its tiger population since 2010. It tripled it
- In prioritizing conservation, animal culture should be a factor, study says
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
- Sulawesi nickel plant coats nearby homes in toxic dust
- Indonesia’s grand EV plans hinge on a ‘green’ industrial park that likely isn’t
- Java communities rally as clock ticks on cleanup of ‘world’s dirtiest river’
