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…
An orange-furred bat, new to science, has been described from the caves and mining tunnels of the Nimba Mountains in Guinea, West Africa. Led by the American Museum of Natural…
Three men are piling wood on a solitary truck parked along the only the road to Djendo, a small town in eastern Guinea-Bissau. They work in silence, throwing rosewood, a…
DIANA REGION, Madagascar — With the sun still low in the sky, my taxi boat pulled up to a floating wooden pontoon in the bustling port of Ankify in northwestern…
A new fisheries law enacted this month in Mozambique is being hailed as a landmark by conservationists. It seeks to empower communities and extend protection to an array of threatened marine species,…
There’s nowhere on Earth quite like Madagascar when it comes to the sheer wealth and wonder of biodiversity. But along with its natural richness, the island nation is beset by…
On December 21, Reconnaissance Energy Africa (Recon Africa) announced that it had begun exploratory drilling for oil and gas in the Namibian portion of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA).…
Aid agencies amass nutrition data diligently from the scorched south of Madagascar. But on the ground, the sale of kitchen utensils is a real red flag for aid workers —…
There’s a saying in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that refers to “Article 15,” a nonexistent paragraph of the country’s constitution during the Mobutu Sese Seko dictatorship in the…
Smallholders and family farms, Indigenous people, rural women, youth, and landless rural communities are being squeezed into increasingly smaller parcels of land or forced out entirely as global land inequality…
For years, Anthony Caere, an anti-poaching pilot at Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), peered through the windows of his helicopter to see a landscape mostly…
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — On Oct. 21, Madagascar’s council of ministers issued a decision to reopen the domestic market for so-called ordinary wood — non-precious timber logged from natural forests. This…
Poaching is a pervasive global problem, and iconic mammals like elephants and rhinos are hit hard by illegal hunting. This is especially true in the world’s poorest countries and within…
Two years ago, the villagers of Ambodifohara on the Masoala Peninsula in northeastern Madagascar knew nothing about sakondry, a small hopping insect, except that it was tasty. Locals would collect…
Contributors/Endorsed by: Colleen Begg (Mozambique/South Africa), Ethel Sharon Sillah (Sierra Leone), Moreangels Mbizah (Zimbabwe), Muyang Achah (Cameroon), Shivani Bhalla (Kenya), Thandiwe Mweetwa (Zambia), Alayne Cotterill (U.K./Kenya/Zambia), Amy Dickman, (U.K./Tanzania) Annsarah…
For centuries, Lake Andranobe in Madagascar's central highlands has nourished the surrounding communities. Over the past 16 years, its dependents have come together to restore the ailing lake. Now, that…
The growing consensus that the earth is in the throes of a sixth mass extinction has focused attention on a centuries-old ecological puzzle: why do species suddenly disappear by the…
Although the exact source of the coronavirus outbreak is unknown, it has been widely reported to have originated with wildlife. Since then, animals infected with COVID-19 include a small number…
From the Gulf of Guinea to the mouth of the Senegal River, a sprawling shroud of seaweed is choking coastal ecosystems and the fishing communities that depend on them. Offshore,…
