South africa News

RSS
355 stories
The number of cuttings this Hive Ecosystem team manages to plant in a day is dizzying. This project is halfway toward its original goal of planting spekboom across nearly 5,500 hectares (nearly 13,000 acres). Image by Leonie Joubert for Mongabay.

South Africa’s new gold rush: Spekboom restoration speeds up, but it’s a bumpy road, insiders report

Leonie Joubert 1 Sep 2026
Loyiso Dunga working to map indigenous community cultural connections in the Wild Coast, South Africa. Image courtesy of Loyiso Dunga.

‘You can’t protect what you don’t know:’ Interview with marine scientist Loyiso Dunga

Alexandra Talty 31 Aug 2026
Angora goats, which produce mohair. Image © Samantha Reinders.

South Africa’s new gold rush: Big money, high stakes in emerging spekboom restoration sector

Leonie Joubert 27 Aug 2026
Harvesting timber in Mpumalanga province, South Africa. Image by York Timbers (Fair Use).

In South Africa, renewable energy latest part of timber industry’s green efforts

Mkhululi Chimoio 26 Aug 2026

In Spain & South Africa, communities use restoration to ‘grow’ fire insurance (commentary)

Claire Patterson, Penelope Choussat 24 Aug 2026
A colony of Cape Fur seals during a euthanasia attempt of a Cape Fur seal suspected of having rabies at Seal Island in False Bay in Cape Town, South Africa on August 07, 2024. Image by Matrix Images / Nic Bothma.

A deadly cross over: In South Africa, rabies moves from land animals to seals

Nic Bothma 24 Aug 2026
Fisherpeople in Port St. Johns, Eastern Cape. Image courtesy of Aletta Harrison CC BY 4.0.

South Africa’s top court blocks Shell oil exploration off country’s Wild Coast

Victoria Schneider 17 Aug 2026
Steve Smit. From his Facebook page

Steve Smit, South Africa’s “Monkey Man,” has died

Rhett Ayers Butler 15 Aug 2026
Volunteers work in a vegetable field belonging to Tiyani Secondary School where the manure is thrown after gas is extracted. Image by Bernard Chiguvare.

South Africa school uses cattle dung to generate biogas for cooking meals

Bernard Chiguvare 14 Aug 2026
Heavy machinery is used to excavate pristine beaches for diamond mining along South Africa’s West Coast. Image courtesy of Arthur Neumeier.

Documentary captures impacts of diamond mining along South Africa’s West Coast

Victoria Schneider 3 Aug 2026

World Ranger Day: Justice for the protectors of the wild

Shreya Dasgupta 31 Jul 2026
The village of Phozi, Eastern Cape. Image by Anna Weekes for Mongabay.

‘The shape of the land will change:’ South African villages resist heavy sands mine

Anna Weekes 28 Jul 2026
A mixed flock of curlew sandpipers and gray plovers feed in shallow water at the salt mine in Velddrif, in South Africa’s Western Cape province, where the team captured 20 sandpipers and three plovers for the tracking project. Image courtesy of Cassie Carstens.

Tiny trackers reveal where migratory shorebirds need protection across Africa

Ryan Truscott 20 Jul 2026
Baobab (Adansonia digitata) in Mapungubwe National Park, Limpopo.

Like ‘climbing Kilimanjaro’ without help: Interview with a Limpopo conservationist

Bernard Chiguvare 15 Jul 2026
An adult cheetah spotted at a monitoring site in Limpopo Province. In the background is a still closed trap cage, which was placed there during the census to capture cheetahs for collaring. Image courtesy of the Ashia Cheetah Conservation.

South Africa’s free-roaming cheetahs in steep decline, first national census finds

Victoria Schneider 15 Jul 2026
Gus Mills with a cheetah. Sourced via the Endangered Wildlife Trust

Gus Mills, hyena expert and ‘the cheerful pessimist of the Kalahari’, has died

Rhett Ayers Butler 14 Jul 2026
The desert rain frog. Image courtesy of Bob Steele via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Desert rain frogs threatened with extinction in southern Africa

Victoria Schneider 10 Jul 2026
A fin whale captured off the coast of Lüderitz, Namibia, in 2014. Image courtesy of Sara Golaski for the Namibian Dolphin Project.

Sightings off Southern Africa suggest blue and fin whales may be rebounding

David Brown 6 Jul 2026
Kusile Power Station, South Africa's largest plant at 4,800 MW, on the outskirts of eMalahleni. Image by Joe Walsh for Mongabay.

Failed promises to clean air in South Africa’s coal belt take toll on public health

Joe Walsh 24 Jun 2026
While caracals are classified as species of least concern overall, some populations are seriously declining, with some local extinctions; rodenticides join habitat loss, hunting, conflict with humans and other threats to their survival.

Rodent-killing baits threaten small wild cats and other wildlife

Sean Mowbray 23 Jun 2026
Transvaal Thicktail Scorpion (Parabuthus transvaalicus) is one of the two venomous scorpion species in South Africa whose stings could be fatal to humans

South African authorities thwart smuggling of 150 venomous scorpions, arrest man

Spoorthy Raman 19 Jun 2026
Baboons at the village of Rooi Els, on the outskirts of Cape Town. Image by Barry Christianson for Mongabay.

In South Africa, a village learns to live with baboons — but it may be the exception

Barry Christianson 17 Jun 2026

Two pangolin traffickers in South Africa sentenced to eight years in prison

Spoorthy Raman 10 Jun 2026
The Imbabala mine was abandoned and toxic waste formed a giant pool on the surface, creating dangerous living conditions for the Ermelo community living in the vicinity. Image courtesy of Daylin Paul/Centre for Environmental Rights (CER).

South Africa’s move away from coal marred by legacy of abandoned mines: Report

Anna Weekes 8 Jun 2026
A stranded Bryde’s whale at Dyer Island. The 90-degree bend of the body suggests broken vertebrae as result of a ship strike, according to Loraine Shuttleworth. Image courtesy of Loraine Shuttleworth/Dyer Island Conservation Trust.

Whale strike risk rises as international shipping reroutes around South Africa

Victoria Schneider 5 Jun 2026
Rhino populations across their ranges in Africa and Asia are threatened by poaching for their horns, which are in demand in China and Vietnam for medicinal uses and as a luxury item.

Rhino-poaching suspect, repeatedly freed on bail, shot dead in South Africa

Spoorthy Raman 23 May 2026

South Africa declares natural disaster as flooding kills at least 10

Associated Press 12 May 2026
A European roller (Coracias garrulus) at B'stonliq, Uzbekistan. Image by bereskletic via iNaturalist (CC BY-NC 4.0)

From Africa to Central Asia, the European roller’s migration builds relationships

Terna Gyuse 9 May 2026
A gemsbok (Oryx gazella), also known as the South African oryx, in a mixed herd of herbivores at Tswalu. Image by John Cannon/Mongabay.

The value of South Africa’s wildlife shouldn’t be in the hands of wealthy foreign hunters (commentary)

Stephanie Klarmann 30 Apr 2026
A bat-eared fox (Octocyon megalotis). Image courtesy of Tswalu Kalahari Reserve.

Restoring land with wildlife & earning carbon credits in the Kalahari Desert

Mongabay.com 27 Apr 2026
The town of Aggeneys in Northern Cape province lies close to the mining area. Image courtesy of Northern Cape Tourism.

Little-known company targets South African biodiversity hotspot for mining

Anna Weekes 23 Apr 2026
A portrait of a cute Gentoo penguin during the snowfall in Antarctica with a blurry background

How much does a penguin weigh?

Abhishyant Kidangoor 22 Apr 2026

you're currently offline