West Africa News

As she peered into the collection chamber of her harp trap, Iroro Tanshi instinctively knew she had caught something peculiar. It was small, with large ears, and a button-like patch…

Eating chocolate shouldn’t mean fueling environmental and social destruction. But, as a stream of news stories and reports make abundantly clear, too often it does. Cocoa production in Ghana and Ivory Coast – the world’s biggest cocoa producers…

IKPAKO, Nigeria — Dark stumps of half-charred trees, dry cassava stems and dead tree trunks cover a large   swath of land on the way to Ikpako, a small farming enclave…

Nigeria's Ekiti state government has moved to establish a conservation area within the Ise Forest Reserve, an important step toward protecting the habitat of the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti).…

Law enforcement officials around the world have seized more than 200 tonnes of pangolin scales since 2016, more than half of it linked to Nigeria, a new report has found.…

APOI, Nigeria — It’s sunset in the small Niger Delta village of Apoi. The town crier's bell rings out over tilted electricity poles and small bungalows. “The epiene people are…

Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo shut its doors to tourists this week in an attempt to protect its great apes from possibly being infected by the…

The European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR), which came into force in 2013, prohibits operators from placing illegally harvested timber on EU markets. EUTR implementation relies on a due diligence process…

By supporting programs aimed at securing the economic well-being of communities in Nigeria's Cross River state, the European Union hopes to help protect Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli), Africa's…

Around 1,000 vultures have been found dead in Guinea-Bissau in the last two weeks, believed to have been poisoned. The birds, almost all critically endangered hooded vultures (Necrosyrtes monachus) were…

Billions of dollars in loans issued to resource-rich countries could saddle them with insurmountable debt, according to a new report from the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), a nonprofit organization…

ACCRA — “Beginning now, the full-scale exploitation of Ghanaian bauxite resources will commence,” Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said last June. “I am satisfied by what I have been…

Fish are an indispensable source of food and protein for communities in many African countries. But the growth in industrial-scale fishing fleets around the continent has put that resource and…

Toward the end of 2014, Tanya Rosen, a former New York-based international lawyer, found herself being followed by a car while walking back to her apartment in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.…

2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…

A final effort to find Miss Waldron's red colobus is under way in the forests of southeastern Côte d'Ivoire. Should it fail, this monkey will next year become the first…

Every year, billions of fish — almost one-fifth of the world’s annual wild catch — are dried, pressed and ground into oil and meal. The majority of this material is…

Protected lands in the tropics are often managed to curtail poaching, creating a refuge for vulnerable wildlife that face risks of extinction.  However, a new study in West Africa’s largest…

COBIANA, Guinea Bissau – He remembers the first time he heard the voice of Mama Djombo. Albino Moreira Mendes was sleeping in his bed in Cobiana, a small town in…

Last year, when we published the report High Risk in the Rainforest, it was far from the first time that palm oil company Golden-Agri Resources (GAR) and its subsidiary Golden…

How does fish soup end up on a maize plant? Farmers in Malawi developed the idea to protect their plants from the invasive fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda). They found that…

Around 400 people spread out across the coastline of a beach in the Lekki neighborhood of Nigeria’s commercial city, Lagos. Hands in gloves and some faces partly covered by disposable…

LAGOS — In early October, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) fitted six elephants in northern Nigeria's Yankari National Park with satellite collars. The collars will help WCS, which works with…

Millions of people around the world suffer from malnutrition despite the ready availability of essential nutrients just off their coastlines. Dietary deficiencies in iron, calcium and other micronutrients are responsible…

It was the “next new frontier” for palm oil. A “mutually beneficial relationship” that would be a win-win for struggling nations in Africa and multinational producers running out of land…

Lofa County, Liberia - Ten women are gathered in the open-air concrete slab building that serves as a community center for Gbonyea, a village a few kilometers from Liberia’s border…

KUMASI, Ghana — The West African country of Ghana is known for having rich natural resources including vast tracts of rainforest. But its primary forest has all but vanished, with…

LAGOS, NIGERIA -- Surrounded by smoke-capped dense forest thick with tall, evergreen trees and wildlife, the Ekuri people in southeastern Nigeria’s Cross River state treasure the forest near their homes.…

EPE, LAGOS – A babel of voices hangs in the misty air over the Oluwo bushmeat market in Epe, in Nigeria's southwestern Lagos state. Smoke curls toward women selling live…

Created in 2012, Niger’s Termit and Tin Toumma National Nature Reserve is the last region of the Sahara relatively undisturbed by human activity. But expanding oil exploration threatens this sanctuary…