On Dec. 9, the Ugandan parliament passed a bill allowing the controversial East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) to proceed. Construction can now begin according to the agreement signed between…
All across the arid and semi-arid landscapes of Africa, grasslands meet the eye. These ecosystems provide a wealth of environmental services, sequestering immense amounts of carbon (grazing lands store up…
A South African court has ordered oil giant Shell to suspend plans for seismic blasting along the country’s Wild Coast, in a decision hailed by environmentalists. The Dutch oil giant…
For the Congo Basin, 2021 proved to be an up-and-down year. Funding commitments totaling in the billions of dollars were announced that would help forested countries preserve some of the…
KAMPALA, Uganda — Tour guide Patrick Kataama relied heavily on income from leading gorilla-trekking tours in Uganda's national parks. These tours were abruptly shut down in late March 2020, after…
A major fire has burned more than 1,000 hectares, or nearly 2,500 acres, of grassland in the Guassa Community Conservation Area of Ethiopia. While any long-term impacts are yet to…
This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay…
This is the fourth article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Three. The muddy cores that Ian Lawson and his colleagues…
Years before the obsession with wild-borne pathogens latching onto humans gripped the world, Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka was already dealing with disease spillovers. Except, she worried about humans infecting gorillas in her…
This is the third article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two and Part Four. The logging concession moratorium signed in 2002 was supposed to shore…
This is the second article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Three and Part Four. The announcement came in mid-2019: A pool of oil lay deep…
This is the first article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. The notion seemed straightforward: A massive swamp in the Congo Basin…
At the COP26 climate summit earlier this month, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari struck an upbeat note on Africa's plan to build a Great Green Wall. "With all hands on deck…
MONROVIA, Liberia — Civil society groups say logging companies are exploiting weak monitoring and enforcement of Liberia’s forestry laws. A new briefing highlights the illegal harvest of as much as…
When the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) was created by a coalition of industry giants, retailers, banks, and NGOs in 2004, it was supposed to be the catalyst for…
KARUNGARU, Kenya — Karungaru village in eastern Kenya’s Tharaka Nithi county is dry — so dry that even the resilient acacia trees have shed their leaves to cope. But amid…
BAMBA, Nigeria — It’s sunset in Bamba, a small farming community in Cross River state in southeast Nigeria. Louis Nkonyu, 46, caresses the touchpad of his laptop in search of…
CROSS RIVER STATE, Nigeria — Sampson Akoba's long career as a ranger has left him with a wealth of assorted memories: hunters’ revolts, the death of his nephew in a…
CROSS RIVER NATIONAL PARK, Nigeria — It wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward. For days, we’d crisscrossed rainforest-blanketed mountains, hacked through thorny thickets and corkscrewing lianas, narrowly escaped rockfalls, and…
In early July, the ephemeral promise of a new life blinked into existence. Not in the usual way, but on a clear microscope slide in a sterile lab in Cremona,…
The Democratic Republic of Congo's Sankuru province saw record-breaking fires in 2020 — 9500 square kilometers (3,700 square miles) of land burned. More than 1,500 km2 (580 mi2) of this…
Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting a large antelope native to sub-Saharan Africa:…
Soaring demand for charcoal, especially in urban areas, is putting intense pressure on Ugandan forests as well as on local fruit trees, which are being cut to make fuel for cooking and small-scale enterprises.
Aina Randriarisoa found a perch for Labramia ambondrombeensis on the taxonomical tree of life. She helped identify the tree from its genetic signature, the arrangement of its leaves, the shape…
There’s a tree-planting frenzy everywhere you look. In August 2019, the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India announced that more than a million Indians had planted 220 million trees…
From Tripoli to Phoenix, the world’s thirst in great desert cities is deepening, even as agribusiness guzzles more water to feed them. Humanity’s arid urban places are colliding with a key Planetary Boundary, scientists warn.
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Madagascar's protected area network has failed to improve the lives of people, the country's environment minister observed at a recent meeting, setting the stage for an overhaul of how…
When searching for mouse lemurs in Madagascar's forests, scientists seek out their gleaming eyes in the dark. Their eyes are large for an animal about the size of a fist…
If COVID-19 has taught us one thing, it is that we need a green life support plan that enables the private and public sectors to finance conservation of the natural…
When Hans Peter Lankes, a top official at the International Finance Corporation, visited Madagascar in February, he made it a point to tour the IFC-backed BoViMa facility near the southern…
