In May, a commission of experts appointed by the governor of Nigeria’s Bayelsa state released its long-awaited report on the impact of oil production on the small riverine state. The…
A new report released by the Liberian and Dutch affiliates of Friends of the Earth accuses a palm oil producer operating in a remote part of Liberia of mistreating workers…
Up in Tanzania’s Ukaguru Mountains, researchers have found a new-to-science frog species with a unique trait: it doesn’t make a sound. The small, silent Ukaguru spiny-throated reed frog (Hyperolius ukaguruensis)…
DAKAR — Scientists warning of a “potential ecological disaster” from gas drilling off West Africa have won a small victory after convincing U.K. oil major BP to review the project’s…
Should African countries use natural gas to power their economies until they can build more climate-friendly renewable electrical grids? The question has been at the heart of an acrid debate…
One of the first on-the-ground investigations into the Democratic Republic of Congo’s proposed oil exploration blocks suggests that in some of the regions marked for auction, many residents are wary…
In just over a month, the world will gather in Egypt for the United Nations’ annual climate summit. This will be the 27th Conference of Parties, or COP, which has…
It was a victory for African climate campaigners and their allies in Europe and the United States: a group of powerful countries and institutions including the U.S., Canada and the…
In the 1970s, there were around 20,000 critically endangered western chimpanzees in Sierra Leone. But by 2008, when the most recent census was carried out, there were only around 5,500…
It was a banner moment at COP26, one of the climate summit’s headline achievements. On stage, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson sat with President Félix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic…
When commodity prices spiked in the late 2000s, multinational agribusiness giants smelled profits. Eager to branch out of crowded Southeast Asian rainforests, some palm oil companies set their sights on…
“When we caught it, we all just looked at it and said, ‘You look ridiculous. Look how big your nose leaf is,’” Jon Flanders, director of endangered species interventions at…
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation along with a number of prominent U.S. university endowments are among the top investors in a troubled set of oil palm plantations in the…
Mount Mulanje’s bare granite face looms above the lush surrounding landscape. Said to be the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lonely Mountain (home to Smaug the dragon), Malawi’s highest mountain also…
By the OECD’s estimates, every year countries in Africa are cheated out of more than $50 billion in taxes, mainly by multinational corporations that run mines, oil wells, and plantations…
On July 19, Australian mining firm Predictive Discovery posted a breathless press release on its website. “Bonanza”-grade gold had been discovered at its Bankan exploration site in a remote part…
Since 2002, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has had a moratorium on the issuance of new logging concessions in its vast portion of the Congo Basin rainforest. If the…
On a recent expedition to the remote forests of Sierra Leone, West Africa, researchers found two species of crabs new to science and rediscovered two species not seen in more…
Researchers have described a new chameleon species from the Bale Mountains of south-central Ethiopia, and say the biodiversity hotspot may harbor even more. Named Wolfgang Böhme’s Ethiopian chameleon (Trioceros wolfgangboehmei),…
In another blow to the Liberia-based palm oil company Golden Veroleum, an investigation by an independent grievance panel has found that it bulldozed rainforests and ignored community rights as it…
An orange-furred bat, new to science, has been described from the caves and mining tunnels of the Nimba Mountains in Guinea, West Africa. A group of researchers, led by the…
When Singaporean customs officials opened a shipping container en route to Vietnam from Nigeria on April 3, 2019, they found piles of canvas sacks stuffed full of dusty, dried flakes.…
Six rangers working at Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo were killed in an ambush by a local militia group on Sunday, according to the park’s…
Liberia’s Nimba county lies about an eight-hour drive north of the capital, Monrovia. In the dry season, the road leading into the far-flung region kicks up swirling clouds of red…
In March 2019, Buzzfeed News published the first of a series of articles tying international conservation giant WWF to violent and severe human rights abuses allegedly committed by park rangers…
The DreamWorks version of Madagascar is exactly that, a fantasy. The island nation is no unpeopled paradise teeming with dancing lemurs, as depicted in the animated Madagascar film. On the contrary,…
The meerkat mobs of the Kalahari Desert fend off snakes and feast on scorpions, but a new foe is wearing them down: the slowly creeping heat of the day. Over…
As countries around the world experience rapid urbanization, many animal species have been forced to adapt to the encroachment of humans into their habitats. For species like the vervet monkey,…
This is the second article in a two-part series on Botswana’s population of African elephants. Read the first part, about a reported increase in poaching, here. CHOBE NATIONAL PARK, Botswana…
by 1 April 2013
Eight Central African countries have announced they will send a thousand soldiers after poachers responsible for killing 89 elephants in Chad earlier this month. The mobilization of soldiers and law…
