In Cape Town, South Africa, an ongoing conflict between people and baboons has escalated to the point that local authorities are considering culling 117 animals from four troops, roughly a quarter of the local population. The 45-kilogram (100-pound) primates sometimes raid homes for food and have injured people, but local conservationists argue killing them isn’t the answer.

Urban expansion in Cape Town has pushed chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) into areas with fewer natural food sources but plenty of unsecured garbage bins that provide easy access to high-calorie food. Authorities say the local baboon population has nearly doubled since 2000 as suitable habitat has shrunk, a predictable recipe for conflict. Residents report property damage while baboons are injured and suffer health consequences from eating from trash cans.

The Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team (CPBMJTT) says culling is one option, alongside translocating baboons, fencing them in, and creating sanctuaries.

“No decision has been made as yet about the proposed removal of four troops from the Cape Peninsula,” a CPBMJTT spokesperson told Mongabay by email.

Carol Knox with Green Group Simon’s Town, a local environmental nonprofit, said the best solution is simple: provide locals with baboon-proof trash bins. “You blame baboons for coming for food that you don’t secure and now you say they must die because of that. That’s really perverse,” Knox told Mongabay in a video call.

The latest 10-year baboon management plan, for 2023-2033, says the city of Cape Town “will work to improve waste management through providing baboon-proof bins.”

But Knox said the number of such bins actually provided is inadequate. “This group has not done what they promised to do according to their own documents.”

Another strategic baboon management plan also notes an “insufficient response” to calls for baboon-proofing waste and human food sources.

Baboons are vital ecosystem engineers and critical seed dispersers: a 2018 study found they disperse seeds from least 24 different species of plants. Researchers emphasized “the need to conserve, rather than persecute, chacma baboons.”

Baboons are especially important for the health of Cape Town’s fynbos, a diverse shrubland full of endemic plants found only on the tip of South Africa. “Their roles are so intertwined with the whole environment that if you take them away, it’s a devastating loss,” Knox said.

Part of the baboons’ habitat is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and conservationists warn that culling baboons could undermine both the region’s biodiversity and UNESCO status.

A UNESCO spokesperson told Mongabay by email: “We are following closely the issue and are in contact with the South African authorities to better understand the situation” and how it might impact the qualities that justify the UNESCO status.

For now, local authorities are still working with residents and local stakeholders to come up with a plan for the baboons.

Banner image: Baboons forage near Constantia, Cape Town. Monday, Sept. 17, 2018. (AP Photo/Halden Krog)

BANJUL, Gambia (AP) — A “sea war” is brewing off the West African nation of Gambia as desperate local fishermen attack foreign commercial fishing vessels, and each other. The fight is driven by market forces and foreign seafood appetites that are far beyond their control. The Associated Press exclusively obtained video of one attack that documents the emerging problem in the fight for dominance. The fighting threatens to tear fishing communities apart, while overfishing undermines livelihoods for everyone. There are concerns that the fish population off Gambia could collapse in the coming years. That would be a business and environmental disaster in the small nation.

Watch the video here.

By Grace Ekpu, Associated Press

Banner image: Artisanal fishermen cast their nets in the waters off the coast of Gambia, on March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Grace Ekpu)

Most plants get their coloration from pigments, but an endangered South African cycad gets its unique silvery-blue hue from wax crystals and an underlying chlorophyll-rich layer, according to a recent study. Researchers say understanding how such layers work could pave the way for creating materials that protect from UV and water exposure.

Cycads, sometimes described as “living fossils,” are an ancient group of cone-producing plants that appeared around 270 million years ago, predating even the dinosaurs.

The study examined the “remarkably glaucous” or bluish leaves of Encephalartos horridus, the Eastern Cape blue cycad. The species is native to shrubland and rocky areas of South Africa. It’s listed as endangered due to declining subpopulations and poaching.

The study explained that land plants are typically coated with a water-repelling layer called a cuticle, which protects plants from environmental stresses. Cuticular wax comes in two types: intracuticular wax found inside, and epicuticular wax (EW), found outside the cuticle. The genus Encephalartos, which includes cycads, diverged around 9 million years ago and evolved to have substantial layers of EW.

“To the best of our knowledge, visually detectable EW deposits have been primarily documented in angiosperms [flowering plants] and are largely absent in other major plant lineages,” the researchers wrote. “Thus, studying the unique properties of an extant gymnosperm species such as E. horridus may provide valuable insights into plant adaptations to challenging environments.”

Researchers learned that the cycad’s EW is mostly composed of a wax compound that forms tubular crystals that reflect light from ultraviolet to blue wavelengths, resulting in the bluish sheen.

The study noted that the wax is common in gymnosperms — the group of plants that produce uncovered seeds, including cycads — and has even been found in ginkgo fossil records dating back 300 million years. This suggests the ability of plants to produce this wax compound “emerged early in land plant evolution.” But only a few species can use it to produce color.

“The leaf surface is coated with ultra-thin wax crystals about one ten-thousandth of a millimeter wide,” Takashi Nobusawa, study co-author and assistant professor at Hiroshima University’s Graduate School of Integrated Sciences for Life, said in a press release. “Peeling off the leaf’s surface layer makes the blue disappear. But placing it back on a dark surface [rich in chlorophyll] brings the blue back, as if by magic.”

Nobusawa added in an email to Mongabay that, “The study is fascinating because it shows how an evolutionarily ancient plant lipid can self-assemble into crystals that both change color and add protective functions.”

He said that understanding the process to create such a wax compound “could open the way to bio-based coatings that are reflective, UV-protective, and water-repellent — for example, a sustainable alternative to car wax.”

Banner image of an Encephalartos horridus in a greenhouse under natural sunlight. Image courtesy of Takashi Nobusawa/Hiroshima University.

In late August, high in South Africa’s Jonkershoek Mountains, a small group of botanists picked their way across steep ground in search of one of the world’s rarest plants. They were surveying Penaea formosa, a critically endangered shrub thought to number fewer than 50 individuals. Donovan Kirkwood, curator of the Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden, was with them. He slipped, fell, and did not return. He was 51.

His death on August 26th was as stark as it was telling. Fieldwork, he observed, was not all “exciting trips into pristine wilderness” but often involved long treks to degraded remnants, fences and roadside verges, where fragments of rare flora cling to survival. Such places, he believed, deserved just as much attention as the postcard landscapes. In his years at Stellenbosch, he turned a tiny garden of 1.7 hectares into a force in plant conservation, advancing methods to propagate species on the very brink of disappearance.

The Cape Floristic Region, where he worked, is a global hotspot, rich in species found nowhere else but heavily damaged by farming and urban sprawl. Of the 10,000-odd plants in the Western Cape, nearly 40% are considered at risk. He set out to shift the odds. His most noted success came with Marasmodes undulata, a shrub once down to three surviving plants in the wild. From 90 banked seeds, he coaxed eight into life, eventually producing hundreds of offspring, many replanted in the field. The effort was painstaking and fragile, yet for him emblematic of what persistence could yield.

Conservation for him was not confined to science. He helped establish the James and Shirley Sherwood Botanical Art Collection, pairing art with botany to spark public engagement. He saw the garden as not only a scientific hub but also a place where people might, in his words, “fall hopelessly in love with plants and nature.”

Before arriving at Stellenbosch in 2018, he spent years at CapeNature, the provincial conservation agency, shaping reserve management plans and strategies for protected-area expansion. His PhD in ecology, completed at the University of Cape Town, trained him in population dynamics and floristic survey. But his temperament—energetic, curious, and willing to combine meticulous field data with imaginative outreach—was as decisive as his credentials.

Colleagues remember him as “enigmatic, enthusiastic, colorful, kind.” Under his stewardship, the botanical garden earned recognition from Botanic Gardens Conservation International as one of a handful worldwide accredited for threatened-species conservation. He also experimented with “satellite” conservation plots outside traditional gardens, including one in a corporate office building in Cape Town. The idea, radical to some, was to expand capacity by any means necessary.

In the end, he was working much as he always had: in the field, after a plant many had forgotten. That, he believed, was where the future of South Africa’s flora would be secured—one species, one patch of ground, at a time.

Header image: Donovan Kirkwoord. Image courtesy of Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden.

Five months after the World Bank’s private investment arm submitted its action plan to address community grievances against a rubber plantation it funds in Liberia, affected residents are still waiting for its implementation.

The case goes back to a 2019 complaint filed by four Liberian NGOs with the internal watchdog of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO). The complaint was filed on behalf of 22 communities in Margibi and Bong counties who live around a Salala Rubber Corporation plantation, alleging sexual harassment of workers, inadequate compensation for crops, pollution of groundwater sources, desecration of sacred sites, and land grabbing. The CAO validated these allegations in its investigation report in December 2023. It took the IFC until March 2025 to issue a management action plan (MAP). Since then, community representatives told Mongabay, no progress has been made toward addressing the violations.

“We are concerned about how the implementation of the MAP is going,” said Windor Smith from the Alliance for Rural Democracy (ARD), one of the NGOs representing the communities. “Until now we have not seen any tangible differences in the communities, at all.”

Smith added the IFC hasn’t communicated with them since March.

At the time of the complaint in 2019, Salala was owned by Luxembourg-based multinational Socfin, but it sold the plantation to India’s Jeety Rubber just after the CAO investigation concluded in 2024.

It’s unclear whether and how Socfin, or Jeety, will engage in the remedial action. The MAP includes commitments to implement community development programs that improve livelihoods, women’s economic empowerment, and measures to end gender-based violence and harassment.

Paul Larry George from ARD said that while Jeety has taken over the plantation with its existing grievances and liabilities, the new owner hasn’t engaged with ARD or the communities yet, nor shown any signs of getting involved in bringing redress to them.

According to the IFC’s first progress report, released in June 2025, the institution says it has conducted three missions to Liberia and several virtual meetings from March-June 2025. During these meetings, the IFC reportedly engaged with new plantation owner Jeety, former owner Socfin, and Socfin’s consultancy Earthworm Foundation, which found the same grievances in its own investigations.

An IFC spokesperson told Mongabay by email that it “continues to explore opportunities to implement MAP actions as envisioned.”

Jeety didn’t respond to Mongabay’s request for comment. Socfin, too, hadn’t sent its responses by the time this article was published.

The IFC has been under scrutiny for years for failing to ensure that the companies it invests in uphold its own social and environmental standards. Despite adopting two major policies intended to tackle environmental and social issues throughout its investment cycles, concrete actions to redress communities for harm and loss remain to be seen.

The institution’s next progress update is due in December 2025.

Banner image of Jorkporlorsue town, surrounded by rubber trees owned by Salala Rubber Corporation. Image by Ashoka Mukpo/Mongabay.

THE SANTA ROSA PLATEAU ECOLOGICAL RESERVE, Calif. (AP) — Efforts to restore the red-legged frog to Southern California, where it had all but disappeared, seemed doomed when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and restrictions were put in place at the U.S.-Mexico border. But scientists were able to airlift coolers of frogs’ eggs from a tiny population on a remote ranch in Mexico and race them across the border to plant them in American ponds. Biologists have been using artificial intelligence to confirm that the batch not only hatched but went on to breed in a remarkable experiment to restore an ecosystem. The red-legged frog is the latest species to see success from binational cooperation along the near-2,000-mile border.

By Julie Watson, Associated Press