Africa News

In 2019, when Jeremy Raguain turned up for a cleanup campaign on Aldabra Atoll, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, he bagged a marine monstrosity like no other: a beached fish…

Until Jan 9, 2014, the Playa de Anzoras, a 2,200-ton tuna fishing vessel named for a beach in Spain, built in Spain and owned by Spaniards, sailed under the Spanish flag. On…

In 2019, animal welfare inspectors visited Pienika Farm, a captive-lion facility in the North West province of South Africa. They found sick lion after sick lion living in conditions inspectors…

Researchers have described a new chameleon species from the Bale Mountains of south-central Ethiopia, and say the biodiversity hotspot may harbor even more. Named Wolfgang Böhme’s Ethiopian chameleon (Trioceros wolfgangboehmei),…

Swarms of locusts tens of kilometers wide have threatened to devastate crops in East Africa since late 2019, putting some 32 million people at risk of going hungry.  The desert…

A forestry company in Gabon has built new roads to log a forest in the northeastern province of Ogooué-Ivindo. Villagers had applied to the government last August to reclassify this…

LAKE ALAOTRA, Madagascar — Madagascar’s environment minister, Baomiavotse Vahinala Raharinirina, celebrated World Wetlands Day last month by planting native reeds and sedges along the shore of sprawling Lake Alaotra in…

No one was sure exactly what near-term impact the global pandemic would have the world’s forests in 2020. Some expected lockdowns and economic shocks to dampen deforestation rates; others thought…

Nahoko Tokuyama says she couldn’t believe what she was seeing when she noticed the wild bonobo with an unknown infant on her back in the Luo Scientific Reserve in the…

Reconnaissance Energy Africa (ReconAfrica), a Canadian oil and gas company, has begun public consultations for the second phase of its controversial exploration activities in northeastern Namibia. Critics have raised concerns…

Well-known investment funds in the U.S., Europe and South Africa are financing a set of oil palm plantations that have been at the center of more than a century of…

The Aedes aegypti mosquito, with its distinctive white-spotted spindly legs, is one of our species’ most irksome foes, sucking blood and capable of spreading dangerous diseases like dengue. Attempts to control their…

For decades, Indonesia has been blighted by some of the highest levels of deforestation on earth. It also provides more than half the world’s palm oil. The two things are directly related. Palm…

Luísa Carvalheiro says she remembers a time when açaí was just a humble berry, a staple for the Amazon's Indigenous communities. That was before the inky purple berries became all…

Deforestation is so rampant throughout Madagascar, an island far larger than California, that it’s easy to forget the impact of tree clearance in any one specific area of the country…

That forests are good for the environment is a no-brainer. What isn’t as clear-cut: how do newly planted woodlands affect water availability? New research from Madagascar has drawn up some…

Rodger Schlickeisen made a name for himself in conservation circles from the early 1990s thanks to his leadership at Defenders of Wildlife, which grew rapidly in membership and influence during…

National and international NGOs from around the world have asked more than two dozen banks not to finance a 1,445-kilometer (898-mile) pipeline to shuttle oil from fields in Uganda to…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting one of the most iconic African animals:…

"If a tree lives 500 years, it carries the carbon assimilated and stocked for the last 500 years,” says Giuliano Locosselli, a researcher at the University of São Paulo (USP)…

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — To the detriment of the forests surrounding his village, Safidiharinjaka Emmanuel Tolojanahary knew only traditional farming methods. Like most residents of his village, located in eastern Madagascar,…

Traditional wood stoves in developing countries are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and rely on a steady supply of wood, often causing habitat destruction. Around Kibale National Park,…

The naked mole-rat (Heterocephalus glaber), a hairless rodent that lives in the arid areas of eastern Africa, is one of the strangest-looking creatures in the animal kingdom. But what it…

Frank Glaw is no stranger to discovery. The German herpetologist has helped describe scores of new species from Madagascar, but the latest one is special: Brookesia nana is arguably the…

A Malagasy law enforcement officer was hacked to death by a mob during a confrontation over illegal logging 150 kilometers (93 miles) from the capital, Antananarivo, on Jan. 20. Two…

High-resolution satellite imagery, modern digital cameras and drones have opened up new possibilities for surveying remote wildlife populations. But the huge volume of data created presents its own unique challenge…

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — As drought pushes more than 1 million people toward famine in southern Madagascar, violent winds have been veiling the sky with dust and sand, at times blotting…

Despite a petition of over 100,000 signatures condemning the sale, Namibia’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism (MEFT) plans to finalize a controversial auction of 170 of its wild elephants…

Ten million hectares of forest: that’s the total area The Nature Conservancy (TNC) aims to see protected or restored by the Africa Forest Carbon Catalyst, launched this week. Adapting a…

In 2005, farmers in Antananarivo discovered an unfamiliar creature in their rice paddies. It was a crayfish unlike any other in Madagascar, and it soon spread throughout the country’s central…