YAOUNDÉ — It’s already been three years since the nearly 4,000 inhabitants of Apouh, a village in eastern Cameroon, have been locked in an intractable conflict with Socapalm, a local…
From his home on the Kinangop plateau, overlooking the Aberdare mountain range, James Gichia can see thin fingers of smoke rising from scattered settlements, farmers at work in their potato…
Uganda announces ban on timber exports KAMPALA — The Ugandan government has banned the export of timber from the East African country. In a directive issued at the end of…
Formed in 1938 on a swath of primary forest nearly four times the size of Paris, Nigeria’s Akure-Ofosu Forest Reserve is home to a diverse array of wildlife. These include…
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Ankarafantsika, a primary forest in Madagascar’s northwest Boeny region, is the site of a vicious cycle where declining livelihoods and its environmental impact aggravate one another. Rice paddies,…
CAPE TOWN — Evidence of mice attacking albatross chicks on Marion Island, midway between South Africa and Antarctica, makes for grim viewing. One video, captured at a colony of endangered…
In January 2003, when Wildlife Conservation Society researchers working in Tanzania’s Southern Highlands heard from local hunters that there was a monkey called the kipunji living on the slopes of…
GUASSA COMMUNITY CONSERVATION AREA, Ethiopia — On an early misty morning in July, Worku Mekonen, 39, one of the scouts at the Guassa Community Conservation Area in Ethiopia’s central highlands,…
MORONDAVA, Madagascar — As the director of Kirindy Mite National Park and Andranomena Special Reserve near Madagascar’s southwestern coast, Diamondra Andriambololona oversees the protection of nearly 162,770 hectares (402,213 acres)…
Anger over latest oil spill as Shell pipeline contaminates river and farms in Nigeria Nigeria’s National Oil Spill Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA) says an oil spill from Shell’s Trans…
On this episode of the Mongabay Explores podcast, Terese Hart, a researcher with the ICCN (the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature); Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, a wildlife veterinarian and founder…
JAKARTA — The tropics lost 10% more primary rainforest in 2022 than in 2021, as forest loss in deforestation hotspots like Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) continued…
Over the past decade, communities affected by transnational palm oil and rubber company Socfin’s plantations have raised complaints with local authorities and in international media. Socfin recently initiated an investigation…
Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.
Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of brief stories from the extractives industry in Africa.
Climate change will severely reduce the distribution of a caterpillar that’s harvested, sold and eaten by millions of people across Southern Africa, with some regions projected to lose nearly 100%…
Lions are returning on their own to parks in Mozambique and Chad thanks to the creation of vast landscape mosaics that include core protected areas, corridors and cooperating communities through which the big cats roam.
ADDIS ABABA — Indigenous communities in the Lower Omo River Valley of southwestern Ethiopia have taken ownership and management responsibilities of what is now Ethiopia’s largest community conservation area, the…
ROBERTSPORT and MARSHALL, Liberia — On a mild Friday afternoon, Emmanuel Appleton beamed with smiles as he defied the waves of the Atlantic Ocean and landed his canoe on the…
KILIFI, Kenya — Between 2019 and 2022, during the construction of Kenya’s first-ever expressway in the capital, Nairobi, thousands of trees were felled to pave way for the construction. However,…
In front of his rural home in the district of Thyolo in southern Malawi, Douglas Tana grows maize on a tenth of a hectare, or a quarter acre. Before 2010,…
BELO-SUR-MER, Madagascar — The situation was dire in Kirindy Mite National Park during a visit in November 2022. The previous year, a huge tract of forest had been ravaged by…
The past decade has seen a wave of academic and activist writings criticizing the use of militarized conservation to protect nature. In this commentary piece, we argue that the use…
When growing up in the Congo Basin forest, I witnessed the consequences of forest destruction by logging and industrial agricultural plantations. In some areas, Indigenous communities used to live alongside…
“South Africa loses between 1,000 and 2,000 pangolins each year to fence electrocutions. This far overshadows the number of individuals that are illegally poached and trafficked,” says Dr Darren Pietersen,…
When it comes to mapping green cover, it's easy to miss the trees for the forest. New research suggests that there are a lot of missed trees: almost 30% of…
READER ADVISORY: This story contains images of dead animals that some viewers may find disturbing. LODJA, Democratic Republic of Congo — Disaster struck Héritier Mpo’s tiny NGO in the central…
In Saint Louis, northern Senegal, farmers have had to buy extra rice for as long as anyone can remember. “Normally, people can only live off the rice they grow for…
A population of endangered elephant shrews has rebounded in a threatened coastal forest reserve in Kenya, suggesting the rabbit-sized mammals with endearingly long snouts could be adapting to both human…
A new study shows that both conservation and agricultural production can improve when women farmers more widely participate in group decisions about sustainable practices. The report, published in February in…
