location: Niger

location: Niger

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Forests & finance: Setbacks for a rare bat, and progress for an oil pipeline
- As much as three-quarters of forests flanking Mozambique’s Mount Namuli have been lost since 2006, researchers say, threatening the newly described Namuli horseshoe bat.
- Environmentalists fear a new pipeline linking oil fields in Niger to the Atlantic coast in Benin will damage forest and wetland habitat along its length.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

Let it grow: Q&A with reforestation and land restoration visionary Tony Rinaudo
- Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) is a community-led approach to naturally restoring degraded landscapes and ecosystems, and it’s credited with reforesting many millions of hectares of degraded land, globally.
- Though FMNR has literally sprouted in many places over time, Tony Rinaudo is the best known and most vocal proponent of this technique that’s reforested an estimated six million hectares of Niger alone.
- Encouraging cleared forests to resprout makes resilient, climate-positive agroecology practices like agroforestry possible, as crops grown in the cooling shade of trees also benefit from improved soil health and water levels.
- In a wide-ranging interview, Rinaudo shares his hopes, dreams, and insights about FMNR with Mongabay readers.

Farmers regreen Kenya’s drylands with agroforestry and an app
- In Kenya, less than 20% of farmland is suitable for crops due to inadequate rains and degraded soils, and many farmers have seen their land produce less to the point of needing food aid.
- Dried-out soils create a hard pan that rains and roots can’t penetrate, but in Kenya, more than 35,000 farmers have joined the Drylands Development Programme to regreen their lands with agroforestry, joining peers in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Mali and Niger.
- By planting annual crops among useful trees like mango, orange and neem, vegetables and animal forage crops receive enough cooling shade and moisture for them to take hold out of the scorching sun.
- As each farmer learns what combination of crops and trees works for them, the results are rapidly shared with researchers and fellow farmers through an app, speeding the rate at which all the program participants can benefit from the knowledge.

Though forests burn, trees retake farmland globally as agroforestry advances
- Agroforestry is an ancient agricultural technique being rediscovered all over the world as limitations of the globe’s highly industrialized agriculture become obvious.
- On the old and exhausted soils of Africa, trees’ power to nourish life is potentially integral to a reboot of the continent’s agriculture.
- Agroforestry is the intentional combination of woody perennials like trees and shrubs with crops and also livestock to create a resilient “food ecosystem” that benefits farmers, biodiversity and the climate.
- In an analysis for Mongabay, agroforestry expert Patrick Worms suggests that while news reports show forests burning in many places, one can take heart from the fact that trees are busily taking root upon the world’s vast swaths of farmland.

Camera traps yield surprises in West Africa’s largest protected area
- The first camera study of wildlife in Burkina Faso and Niger has shown that the main human activities in the region’s largest protected area are gathering resources and grazing livestock.
- Poaching remains a threat, but it occurs less frequently than other human pressures on the region’s wildlife.
- The findings suggest possible changes in management strategies for three national parks in West Africa.

Africa’s largest reserve may lose half its area to oil development
- The Termit and Tin Touma National Nature Reserve in Niger was Africa’s largest when it was established in 2012.
- Just seven years on, however, the government is considering redrawing its boundaries and slashing its size by nearly half.
- The move comes in response to a push by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which has exploration rights in a small section of the reserve, to expand its operations significantly.
- Conservation groups, including the NGO that manages the reserve, say the move would impact areas of high biodiversity, threatening species such as the critically endangered addax and dama gazelle.

When losing your soil means losing your livelihood (commentary)
- In Niger, where agriculture is the main source of income, the message is simple: Losing your soil means losing your livelihood.
- The ability to grow food is inextricably linked to the productive capacity of the soil. In the case of Niger’s soil, the picture is bleak: The soils hold poor structural stability, low nutrient holding capacity, low water retention capacity… the list goes on.
- How can soil management be improved in a region that has little to no resources? It is indisputable that Niger should reverse unsustainable agricultural practices, but how realistic is this when the very livelihood of Niger’s people depends on extracting the maximum benefit from the soil?
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Farmer-managed natural regeneration: the fastest way to restore trees to degraded landscapes?
- Farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR) is the encouragement of regeneration and then the management of trees and shrubs that sprout from tree stumps, roots and seeds found in degraded soils, such as those currently in agricultural production.
- Trees and crops grown in combination like this is called agroforestry and provides multiple benefits to farmers, crops, climate, and wildlife.
- FMNR has been successful in Niger, with 5 million hectares of formerly treeless cropland found to have re-greened via the practice.
- Cathy Watson of World Agroforestry Centre interviewed two of her colleagues currently conducting research on FMNR to hear what they’re learning and to ask if it’s the fastest (or the easiest) way to re-green degraded croplands.

There are only three Saharan addax antelope left in the wild
- The IUCN did not mince words in assigning culpability for the precipitous decline of the addax. Oil operations in Niger, chiefly those of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), have decimated the addax population, the IUCN said, mostly due to poaching by the military personnel hired to protect CNPC’s operations.
- Addax numbers have declined sharply since 2010, when an initial round of surveys estimated the population at 200 animals.
- After extensive aerial and ground-based surveys, the ground team sighted one small group: “three very nervous Addax individuals,” as the IUCN reported.

West African countries come together to stop the illegal rosewood trade
- Several species of rosewood, belonging to the genera Dalbergia and Pterocarpus and collectively known as hongmu, are highly sought after by Chinese furniture manufacturers, who use them to make products that are coveted status symbols.
- The majority of rosewood imports into China have traditionally come from Southeast Asian countries, but West Africa has become one of the largest exporting regions feeding China’s growing demand for rosewood in the past few years.
- In 2014, nearly half of China’s rosewood imports came from Nigeria, Ghana, and other African countries, which supplied just 10 percent of Chinese rosewood imports a decade ago.

Shot Egyptian vulture leads conservationists to bizarre black-market for bird parts

Captive Egyptian vulture adult. Photo by: Carlos Delgado/Creative Commons 3.0. The hunt Around 11 AM on Thursday, 27 February 2014, Angoulou Enika was lying hidden in the tall grass on the side of a large water hole in the Sahel region of Niger. He was staying as quiet as he could while aiming his custom-made […]
86 percent of big animals in the Sahara Desert are extinct or endangered

Bigger than all of Brazil, among the harshest ecosystems on Earth, and largely undeveloped, one would expect that the Sahara desert would be a haven for desert wildlife. One would anticipate that big African animals—which are facing poaching and habitat loss in other parts of the world—would thrive in this vast wilderness. But a new […]
Nearly a million people face food crisis in Niger

Around 800,000 people in Niger face food insecurity in coming months, according to the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Rising food prices and refugees from Mali, which is plagued by conflict, have made access to food difficult in the west African country. The OCHA calculates that currently 84,000 are in need […]
Scientists: stop treating population growth as a ‘given’ and empower women

Climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, water scarcity, and land issues: almost all of the world’s environmental problems are underpinned by too many people inhabiting a finite planet. A new study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B warns that overpopulation—combined with over-consumption—is threatening to push the entire globe into “a collapse of global […]
Alarm rising over food crisis in Sahel region

A mother with her severely malnourished child in the Sahel region. Photo: UNICEF/Chad/2012/C Tidey. Warnings over a possible famine in Africa’s Sahel region are becoming louder and more intense. Abnormal drought, locally high food prices, and regional conflict have ramped up concerns that 18 million people could suffer from malnutrition and starvation as the lean […]
The vanishing Niger River imperils tourism and livelihoods in the desert

Contrary to conception, the Sahara Desert’s most common feature is really the Hamada, or stone plateaus and gravel plains, which cover over three quarters of its surface, and harbors at great distance the barely visible silhouette of the once-majestic Niger River. Photo by: Linda Leila Diatta. Severely affected by recent turmoil across its northern frontiers, […]
‘The real Hunger Games’: a million children at risk as Sahel region suffers punishing drought

Livestock lay dead during the East Africa famine last year. Photo by: Oxfam East Africa. The UN warns that a million children in Africa’s Sahel region face malnutrition due to drought in region. In all 15 million people face food insecurity in eight nations across the Sahel, a region that is still recovering from drought […]
15 million facing food shortages in Africa’s Sahel region

Dogon village Songo in Mali, Africa . The Dogon are an ethnic tribe in the Sahel. Photo by: Bigstock. The UN announced yesterday that food security in the Sahel region is deteriorating, putting over 15 million people at risk. Ongoing drought combined with conflict, has pushed the region into a crisis. The situation appears eerily […]
Niger creates desert park bigger than Hungary

Yesterday, the Niger government formally created the Termit and Tin Toumma National Nature and Cultural Reserve in the Sahara Desert, reports the Sahara Conservation Fund. The reserve, now one of the largest in Africa, expands existing protected areas to 100,000 square kilometers (38,610 square miles), an area bigger than Hungary and nearly twice the size […]
Droughts could push parts of Africa back into famine

Drought and erratic rains could lead to further food scarcities in Africa warns the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). The WFP singles out South Sudan, the world’s newest nation, and Niger as nations of particular concern. Earlier this year famine killed scores of people, including an estimated 30,000 children, in Somalia. In South Sudan […]
Restoring forests: an opportunity for Africa

Rift Valley escarpment with the forest of Lake Manyara National Park below in the East African country of Tanzania. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. Tropical forest news last week was dominated by Indonesia and Brazil. Forest clearing has surged over the past year in parts of the Amazon, the Brazilian Government reported. Meanwhile, Indonesia’s President […]
Great Green Wall gets go ahead
Spanning the entire continent of Africa, including 11 nations, the Great Green Wall (GGW) is an ambitious plan to halt desertification at the Sahara’s southern fringe by employing the low-tech solution of tree planting. While the Great Green Wall was first proposed in the 1980s, the grand eco-scheme is closer to becoming a reality after […]
Record number of nations hit all time temperature highs
To date, nineteen nations have hit or matched record high temperatures this year, according to Jeff Master’s Wunder Blog, making 2010 the only year to have so many national records. In contrast, no nation this year has hit a record cold temperature. Over the past decade, which was the warmest on record, 75 nations have […]
Summer from hell: seventeen nations hit all-time heat records
Asian continent sees warmest temperature ever recorded. The summer isn’t over yet, but already seventeen nations have matched or beaten their all-time heat records. According to Jeff Masters’ WunderBlog, Belarus, the Ukraine, Cyprus, Russia, Finland, Qatar, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Niger, Chad, Kuwait, Iraq, Pakistan, Colombia, Myanmar, Ascension Island, and the Solomon Islands have all […]
Food crisis in Niger occurring “out of the public eye”

The West African nation of Niger is facing an increasingly alarming food crisis as the UN announced it would double the number of people it was feeding today despite continuing budget shortfalls in its World Food Program (WFP). Failing rains have caused crop yields in Niger to decline, while food prices are rising and livestock […]
Indigenous people, forest communities in Africa control less than 2% of forest land

Less than 2 percent of Africa’s tropical forests are under community control, hindering efforts to slow deforestation and alleviate rural poverty, reports a new assessment from the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition of non-governmental and community organizations. Deforestation rates in tropical Africa are among the […]
All about giraffes: an interview with a giraffe expert

Uncovering the mysteries of the imperiled giraffe, an interview with Julian Fennessy
Photos: Rarest cheetah photographed for the first time

On the edge of extinction, desert-dwelling cheetah photographed for first time by camera traps
Goodbye to West Africa’s Rainforests

Goodbye to West Africa’s Rainforests Goodbye to West Africa’s Rainforests Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com January 22, 2006 The state of West Africa’s rainforests West Africa’s once verdant and extensive rainforests are now a historical footnote. Gone to build ships and furniture, feed hungry mouths, and supply minerals and gems to the West, the band of […]

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