location: South Africa

location: South Africa

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Meet the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize Winners
- This year marks the 35th anniversary of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, which honors one grassroots activist from each of the six inhabited continents.
- The 2023 prize winners are Alok Shukla from India, Andrea Vidaurre from the U.S., Marcel Gomes from Brazil, Murrawah Maroochy Johnson from Australia, Teresa Vicente from Spain, and Nonhle Mbuthuma and Sinegugu Zukulu from South Africa.

Study: Tiny tortoise may play large role in South Africa’s Karoo landscape
- The diminutive Karoo dwarf tortoise may play a key role in seed dispersal of plant species in its semidesert habitat in South Africa, a new study finds.
- A germination trial showed the tortoises transport seeds to microsites suitable for germination, a potentially vital means for plants to survive drought in the arid Karoo region.
- The dwarf tortoise is highly endangered due to degradation of its habitat and increased predation by ravens and crows accompanying expanded human presence in the Karoo.
- The findings underline the broader ecological roles that small, understudied species play in landscapes.

Track-a-mole: Sniffer dog and eDNA help ‘rediscover’ South African golden mole
- A sniffer dog and environmental DNA analysis enabled researchers to confirm the continued existence of the rare De Winton’s golden mole, not seen by scientists since 1936.
- The habitat near Port Nolloth, South Africa, where the critically endangered mole was found, is currently unprotected and threatened by development and mining.
- De Winton’s moles are one of the of 25 “most wanted” lost species that have been found again by science.

Do tree-planting projects on grasslands increase fire risk?
- Global tree-planting initiatives, aimed at storing carbon from the atmosphere, could include plantations in fire-prone African savannas.
- 58% of tree plantations grown in South African grasslands between 1980 and 2019 burned, polluting water and releasing carbon dioxide back into the air.
- As efforts to plant trees for carbon storage in Africa expand, researchers suggest cutting fossil-fuel emissions would be a better approach — but scientists are hotly debating the issue.

Mongabay launches Africa news bureau
- Mongabay is launching a bilingual news bureau, Mongabay Africa, to cover environmental and conservation news across the continent in French and English.
- The bureau will support original reporting on wildlife conservation, development pressures, natural resource industries, and climate change impacts in Africa.
- This expansion aligns with Mongabay’s efforts to provide credible independent journalism, make science accessible, elevate voices impacted by environmental change, and serve a diverse audience with free news in various languages and formats.

South Africa’s penguins heading toward extinction; will no-fishing zones help?
- With just 10,000 breeding pairs left, the endangered African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) could be extinct in the wild by 2035 if the current rate of population decline continues.
- To protect the bird’s food supply and slow its population collapse, South Africa is throwing a protective no-fishing cordon around its main breeding colonies for a period of 10 years.
- But the devil is in the details, and conservationists say the cordons are too small to ensure the penguins get enough fish.
- Negotiations over whether to adjust the cordons are continuing in advance of an early 2024 deadline.

African Parks to rewild 2,000 rhinos from controversial breeding program
- African Parks, which manages national parks in several countries across the continent, announced it has purchased Platinum Rhino, John Hume’s controversial intensive rhino breeding project
- The conservation organization plans to rewild all 2,000 southern white rhinos in Hume’s project, following a framework to be developed by independent experts.
- The biggest challenge African Parks will face is finding safe spaces to translocate 300 rhinos to every year, as poaching the animals for their horns shows little sign of diminishing.

For South Africa’s small fishers, co-ops prove a necessary, but bumpy, step up
- Sixteen years after small-scale fishers in South Africa were promised legal recognition and fishing rights, the policy regulating the new sector is at last being implemented.
- As fishing communities draw closer to finally claiming equal rights in a fishing industry that has been dominated by the commercial sector, they are currently forming cooperatives to access collective fishing rights and co-manage local marine resources.
- The rollout of the new policy has been long and bumpy, with many issues still to be resolved, and long-time fishers complaining they’ve been excluded.
- Even so, hope remains that cooperatives can hold new opportunities for income generation and equity building.

South Africa community members decry traditional leaders’ power amid mine plans
- Community members, commercial farmers and environmentalists are raising concerns that Jindal’s proposed $2 billion iron ore mine project, slated to be one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, could be allowed to exploit the mineral without community consent — but only with that of their leader.
- Due to the structure of South African law, traditional leaders tend to see themselves as the sole decision-makers in their communities and approve of extractive projects for their stated economic benefits in the region.
- Many communities sit on valuable resources like platinum and titanium, and there is a significant possibility that with the current structure of the law, people will be removed from their lands to make way for extractive industries, say land policy researchers.
- Traditional leaders maintain that it is important for the law to recognize traditional authorities after decades and centuries of fighting for formal recognition after colonization.

Zimbabwe sees recycling boom as waste picking becomes lucrative business
- Recycling trash by picking it up and selling it, or buying it and converting it into profitable materials, has become a booming business in Zimbabwe, as the country and its citizens struggle under hyperinflation.
- Community-based recycling organizations, which handpick litter, quadrupled in the last few years, now picking up 15% of all plastic waste generated in the country, says Zimbabwe’s Environmental Management Agency.
- Zimbabwe struggles under the weight of its plastic waste found in rivers, streets and open areas, which causes water pollution and breaks down into microplastics.
- However, environmentalists say relying on recycling itself, which can cause its own pollution, is still not enough to tackle the country and world’s plastic waste problem at its root.

World’s largest private rhino herd doesn’t have a buyer — or much of a future
- Controversial rhino breeder John Hume recently put his 1,999 southern white rhinos up for auction as he can no longer afford the $9,800 a day running costs — but no buyers have come forward so far.
- Hume’s intensive and high-density approach is undoubtedly effective at breeding rhinos, but with the main issue currently a shortage of safe space for rhino rather than a shortage of rhino, the project’s high running costs and concerns over rewilding captive-bred rhino make its future uncertain.
- Platinum Rhino’s financial issues reflect a broader debate around how to move forward with rhino conservation and the role that private owners have to play when the financial costs of rhino ownership far outweigh the returns.
- Update: The nonprofit conservation organization African Parks has moved to buy the rhinos and reintroduce them to the wild.

S. Africa to purge bird-eating mice from key albatross breeding island
- Non-native house mice arrived on Marion Island in the southern Indian Ocean two centuries ago, when the island was a stopping-off point for sealing ships.
- Their population has exploded recently, as temperatures warm and summers lengthen. With more mouths to feed, they’ve gutted their main food source — insects — and are now feeding on seabird chicks and adults.
- While mouse attacks on seabirds remain low and their impact on nesting or breeding success isn’t known yet, conservationists nevertheless see them as a serious and growing threat.
- Now the South African government is planning a rodent eradication program for mid-2025 that will be the largest of its kind on a sub-Antarctic island.

‘Shocking’ levels of pangolin deaths from electric fences (commentary)
- Pangolins are considered the world’s most trafficked mammal, and despite this massive illegal trade, South Africa loses more of them each year to something else: electric fences.
- Used by farmers to protect livestock, their lowest strands are often set at a height so low to the ground that up to 2,000 pangolins are electrocuted each year.
- A new op-ed shares simple mitigation measures that can combat this largest threat faced by pangolins in South Africa.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

‘Anthill tiger’: Putting one of Africa’s rarest wildcats on the radar
- Black-footed cats (Felis nigripes) are the smallest and also one of the rarest wildcat species in Africa. They’re very reclusive, extremely hard to find, and are among the least-studied nocturnal mammals on the continent.
- Data-scarce species like the black-footed cat are difficult to conserve because the most basic knowledge — of their home ranges, territories, habitat, and reproductive, dietary and other behaviors — is often lacking. Without these many life-cycle details, the targeting of effective preservation strategies is near impossible.
- German ecologist Alexander Sliwa has made it his life’s mission to research the elusive black-footed cat. Establishing and working with a small team, he eventually led the way to the formation of the Black-footed Cat Working Group. Thanks largely to those efforts, a substantial database on Felis nigripes now exists.
- This work led to the black-footed cat being listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Though the species’ survival remains far from secure, the design and implementation of conservation strategies will no longer have to start from scratch, and can be built on valuable, already accumulated baseline data.

Forests & Finance: Agroforestry in Cameroon and reforestation in South Africa
- An agroforestry initiative in a cocoa-growing community on Cameroon aims to prevent the expansion of cocoa farms into the nearby forest while also providing additional income to farmers.
- A community effort in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province is restoring the region’s mistbelt forest that’s home to the iconic Cape parrot, and since 2011 has planted 52,000 trees while allowing participants, mostly women, to earn a living.
- A program meant to ensure the legality of timber in Gabon’s supply chain was briefly suspended between March and April over what the government says was missing paperwork — a justification that proponents have called into question.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

South Africa: Little hope in green transition in town with “the dirtiest air in the world”
- The majority of South Africa’s coal production is in the northern province of Mpumalanga, along with 12 of the country’s 15 coal-fired power stations.
- Research carried out in the coal town of Carolina finds women here suffer ill health due to the surrounding mines, as well as sexual harassment and marginalization from formal jobs in the industry.
- Women surveyed for a report nonetheless said they fear for their future if the province’s coal industry is closed down as part of a transition to less-polluting power generation.
- They called for a greater role for women in decision-making, better education about climate change in both classrooms and communities, and for transparency over companies’ green transition plans.

Element Africa: Gold in Ghana, oil in Nigeria, and fracking in South Africa
- One small-scale miner was killed and four injured as security forces moved to evict them from a concession held by Ghana’s Golden Star Resources.
- ExxonMobil’s plan to exit from onshore oil production in the Niger Delta is effectively an attempt to escape from its toxic legacy in the region, communities say.
- Plans to frack for gas in South Africa will have devastating environmental impacts and cannot form part of a just transition to cleaner energy sources, an advocacy group says.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

‘Impact assessments need a shake-up’: Q&A with Georgine Kengne & Morgan Hauptfleisch
- Environmental and social impact assessments as they’re implemented in development projects across Africa need a “shake-up” to ensure they’re fit for purpose, experts say.
- Georgine Kengne, from the WoMin African Alliance, says the ideal ESIA process would be one in which “the government and the mining company are not just colluding to make profits.”
- Morgan Hauptfleisch, a professor of nature conservation in Namibia, says the fundamental problem is that ESIAs and other safeguards can simply be ignored with little consequence other than fines that the companies just budget for anyway.
- Mongabay spoke with both Kengne and Hauptfleisch about ESIAs, community participation, and the underused tool that is the strategic environmental assessment (SEA).

Element Africa: Claims of mining encroachment in DRC and broken promises in SA
- Activists say Canada-registered miner Alphamin Bisie has been operating outside its concession in the DRC’s North Kivu province, and encroaching into community forests.
- Police in South Africa have arrested seven activists protesting against Anglo American Platinum for what they say is the mining giant’s failure to report back on its social and work commitments to the mining-affected community.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

Element Africa: The platinum ‘bully’ and the secret oil deal
- South African authorities have extended the deadline for compensation talks over a platinum mine, after a no-show by the mining company that affected communities say is “run by bullies.”
- Also in South Africa, a community that only recently reclaimed land it was driven from during apartheid faces fresh eviction for a planned coal plant and steel mill.
- In the Democratic Republic of Congo, NGOs say a secret deal to allocate two of 30 oil blocks to a company with no industry experience should be grounds for suspending the whole auction.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories about land rights & extractives in Africa.

In South Africa, a community says no after a coal miner said go
- A South African court has ordered one of the country’s largest coal mines to redo an environmental impact assessment for expanding its footprint by nearly 18 square kilometers (7 square miles).
- The court agreed with residents of Somkhele who said that the pre-2016 public participation process to expand the mine — and extend its productive life — was seriously flawed.
- Communities around the mine are deeply divided; the traditional authority and some residents support its extension and the jobs and income this would provide, while others stand firm against the destruction of their homes and way of life.
- The new EIA process is allowing community members to raise a range of concerns about the mine’s social and environmental impacts.

‘I have anger every day’: South African villagers on the mine in their midst
- Rural families removed from their homes in Somkhele, in northern KwaZulu-Natal province, to make way for a giant coal mine are suffering from collective trauma, a new report has found.
- A psychologist evaluated members of 26 of the 220 families displaced and found alarming levels of clinical depression and suicidal feelings.
- He found they had been traumatized by witnessing the exhumation of family graveyards as well as the loss of both income and cultural space provided by cattle encosures.
- The report, commissioned by a law firm representing opponents of the mine, recommends that the mine rehabilitate polluted land and water resources and make greater financial compensation available to allow families who wish to leave to reestablish themselves elsewhere.

Will shipping noise nudge Africa’s only penguin toward extinction?
- The African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) is expected to go extinct in the wild in just over a decade, largely due to a lack of sardines, their main food.
- A colony in South Africa’s busy Algoa Bay is suffering a population crash that researchers say coincides with the introduction of ship-to-ship refueling services that have made the bay one of the noisiest in the world.
- They say theirs is the first study showing a correlation between underwater noise pollution and a seabird collapse.
- Current studies are investigating whether the ship noise is interfering with the penguins’ foraging behavior and their ability to find fish.

Millions are spent on climate research in Africa. Western institutes get most of it
- More than 75% of funds earmarked for Africa-related climate research go to institutes in the U.S. and Europe, according to a study in the journal Climate and Development.
- Of the $620 million that financed Africa-related climate research between 1990 and 2020, research institutions based in Europe and the United States received most of the funding ($480 million), while those located in Africa got less than 15% ($89.15 million).
- However, the analysis only provides an estimate for financing trends because it leaves out a host of agencies that fund climate research, like aid organizations, and crucially is restricted to English-language research.
- What is equally, if not more, worrisome, is that the prioritization of countries as sites for research doesn’t align with the severity of the climate risks or impacts a country faces.

Breeding success raises hopes for future of endangered African penguin
- Two African penguin chicks have hatched at a nature reserve in South Africa where conservationists have been working for years to entice the endangered birds to breed.
- The colony was abandoned more than 10 years ago after a caracal killed a number of penguins.
- The recent hatching comes at a time when survival prospects for Africa’s only resident penguin species look grim, due mainly to declining food stocks.
- But encouraging new colonies at sites close to abundant food sources could help to bring the species back from the brink.

Element Africa: Keeping platinum in the ground, and minors out of mines
- South Africa’s minister of mines has approved a platinum mine in the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve despite objections from a farming community of 500 whose homes sit atop the deposits.
- The end of a government-funded program to incentivize parents in the Democratic Republic of Congo to keep their children in school has seen more than 250 return to working in cobalt mines.
- It’s a different story in Kenya’s Makueni county, where strong local regulations are keeping minors, and criminal elements, out of the sand mining industry.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

Element Africa: Mines take their toll on nature and communities
- Civil society groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo are demanding the revocation of the license for a Chinese-owned gold miner operating inside a wildlife reserve that’s also home to nomadic Indigenous groups.
- Up to 90% of mines in South Africa aren’t publishing their social commitments to the communities in which they operate, in violation of the law, activists say.
- A major Nigerian conglomerate that was granted a major concession for industrial developments in 2012 has still not compensated displaced residents, it was revealed after the company announced it’s abandoning the project.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

Poaching surges in the birthplace of white rhino conservation
- Poaching has more than doubled this year in South Africa’s Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park, the birthplace of white rhino conservation.
- Conservationists say poaching syndicates have turned their attention to this and other parks in KwaZulu-Natal province because rhino numbers in Kruger National Park, the previous epicenter of rhino poaching, have been drastically reduced, and private reserves around Kruger are dehorning their animals.
- Hluhluwe-Imfolozi is a very challenging game reserve for anti-poaching patrols to defend, exacerbated by leadership issues in Ezemvelo, the government body responsible for managing KwaZulu-Natal’s conservation areas.
- Unless more is done to tackle the wider issue of the illegal wildlife trade, the future looks bleak for the rhinos of HIP.

Element Africa: Diamonds, oil, coltan, and more diamonds
- Offshore diamond prospecting threatens a fishing community in South Africa, while un-checked mining for the precious stones on land is silting up rivers in Zimbabwe.
- In Nigeria, serial polluter Shell is accused of not cleaning up a spill from a pipeline two months ago; the company says the spill was mostly water from flushing out the pipeline.
- Also in Nigeria, mining for coltan, the source of niobium and tantalum, important metals in electronics applications, continues to destroy farms and nature even as the government acknowledges it’s being done illegally.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

Agulhas Current enigma: An oceanic gap in our climate understanding
- Comprehending the workings of western boundary ocean currents, like those of the Agulhas Current off the South African coast, may hold a key to Earth’s climate system. But understanding this particular current is hampered by a major lack of in-situ data. This gap leaves us in the dark about local, regional and global climate impacts.
- The Agulhas Current, located in the Indian Ocean, is one of the most energetic ocean current systems in the world. Changes to it can impact local weather in South Africa and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, and perhaps influence large-scale climatic changes in the Northern Hemisphere and globally as well.
- However, it is not clear how and what these impacts may be, or when they may occur. With climate change escalating rapidly due to unabated human carbon emissions, it is now more important than ever that we understand the impacts of Southern Hemisphere ocean currents, and integrate their actions into climate models.
- But attempts at long-term monitoring of the Agulhas Current System have not been fully successful. Accomplishments and failures to date have underscored significant local research capacity challenges, and differences in the approach to, and financing of, ocean science in the Global North as compared to the Global South.

Trafficked: Kidnapped chimps, jailed rhino horn traffickers, and seized donkey parts
- Armed intruders who kidnapped three young chimpanzees from a sanctuary in the DRC have threatened to kill them unless a ransom is paid for the apes’ return.
- Calls for renewed focus on organized crime in wildlife trafficking, as specialized courts in Uganda and the DRC are delivering convictions for wildlife crimes that in the past would likely have gone unpunished.
- A seizure in Nigeria has sounded the latest alarm over growing exports of donkey parts for traditional Chinese medicine.
- Trafficked is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the illegal wildlife trade in Africa.

Drought-beset South African city taps aquifer, shirks long-term solutions: Critics
- A major coastal city located in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province is facing a total water cutoff for about 500,000 residents, almost half its population, following a prolonged drought.
- Disaster relief hydrologists have begun drilling boreholes to access groundwater so that hospitals and schools can stay open during the emergency in Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality.
- But critics say the city administration has failed to develop a long-term plan to support water harvesting from intermittent rains and construction of desalination plants.
- They also point out that overreliance on boreholes drilled near the sea could lead to saline water intrusion into the aquifer, contaminating groundwater and rendering borehole water undrinkable.

Mozambique busts notorious rhino poacher
- A sting operation led by Mozambique’s National Criminal Investigation Service has netted notorious alleged poacher Simon Ernesto Valoi and an associate in possession of eight rhino horns.
- Conservationists say Valoi and other poaching kingpins have operated freely from Massingir district to poach thousands of rhinos just across the border in South Africa’s Kruger National Park.
- Valoi’s arrest, following the January sentencing of another major rhino horn trafficker to 30 years in jail, may be a further sign that Mozambique’s law enforcement authorities are successfully targeting high-level poachers.

Beyond bored apes: Blockchain polarizes wildlife conservation community
- Blockchain technology’s various applications, such as NFTs and smart contracts, are being explored for use in wildlife conservation.
- The technology’s potential might be immense, but downsides such as a massive carbon footprint and the imposition of Western technology to dictate resource management in the Global South raise logistical and ethical questions.
- Most proponents and critics agree on one thing: The technology is still in the early stages for its applications to be fully understood and implemented on the ground.

Cheetah reintroduction in Malawi brings vultures back to the skies
- Four species of critically endangered vulture have been recorded in Malawi’s Liwonde National Park after an absence of more than 20 years.
- Reintroduced cheetahs and lions are credited with the vultures’ return: their prey remains have increased food availability for the scavengers.
- Poisoning and deforestation remain a threat to vultures in Malawi and the region, but better park management and close monitoring provides hope for them and other wildlife.

High tech early warning system could curb next South African locust swarms
- The worst locust swarms in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province in 25 years (occurring in May 2022) is in the past. But the millions of eggs laid by the insects could hatch this September, the beginning of spring in the Southern Hemisphere.
- Grassy farmland in the vast region was only just beginning to recover from a devastating six year drought which struck between 2015 – 2021, when the locust swarms arrived earlier this year.
- Farmers are now pinning their hopes on new software that will track newborn locusts in real time, enabling them to target and exterminate the insect pests before they take to the skies and reproduce.
- The software has been used in seven countries in the Horn of Africa and East Africa and is seen as a vital part of minimizing the size of swarms, which can become an annual disaster if they aren’t targeted immediately after birth. South Africa favors chemical pesticides over non-toxic biopesticides for locust control.

Podcast: New whale calls and dolphin behaviors discovered with bioacoustics
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we take a look at two stories that show how bioacoustics research is helping us better understand the lives of marine mammals — and we take a listen to some of the recordings informing that research.
- Our first guest is Erin Ross-Marsh, the lead researcher behind a study of humpback whales at the Vema Seamount in the South Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Africa. Ross-Marsh tells us about the study’s finding that these humpbacks were making gunshot calls, a type of non-song call that was previously unknown in these particular whales, and plays some humpback songs, non-song calls, and gunshot calls for us to listen to.
- We also speak today with Sarah Trabue, a research assistant with the Wildlife Conservation Society who is the lead author of a recently published paper detailing the findings of a bioacoustic study of bottlenose dolphins in and around New York Harbor. Trabue tells us what the study reveals about dolphin behavior in the highly trafficked waters around New York City and plays for us some of the dolphin vocalizations recorded as part of the study.

Can wonder plant spekboom really bring smiles back to sad South African towns?
- Botanists are working on an ambitious project to restore 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) of degraded land in South Africa that were previously covered by thickets of the indigenous succulent spekboom (Portulacaria afra).
- Farmers have stripped the land of its native thicket over the course of decades of commercial agriculture and livestock keeping, and following extended droughts, it’s now turning to desert.
- Spekboom, much praised for its ability to sequester carbon, is not only a resilient native plant, but its growth naturally promotes the recovery of other species.
- Carbon credits are one promising source of funding for restoration that could prove profitable for landowners and workers, though some critics say planting spekboom as an offset lacks a scientific basis.

‘The wheels came off’: South Africa court nixes coal mine extension
- A South African judge has declared a 2016 decision to allow one of the country’s largest coal mines to expand invalid, saying it failed to secure consent from affected communities.
- The country’s minister for mineral resources and energy will now have to review an appeal by some community members against the expansion — jeopardizing the mine’s expansion.
- The mine’s operation has divided the community, with tensions remaining high after houses of local residents who oppose the mine were burnt down earlier this year.

Bull run: South Africa marks latest rhino relocation to boost populations
- Four black rhinos were translocated to the Bonamanzi Game Reserve in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province in April, part of wider efforts to repopulate the species’ former range and boost their gene pool.
- Black rhino populations fell from nearly 40,000 in the 1970s to just 2,400 in the early ’90s, due to poaching driven by strong demand for rhino horn in Asia and civil strife in and the flow of weapons across Southern Africa.
- More effective protection and measures to support population growth have helped black rhino populations rise to around 5,600 today.
- Translocation helps reestablish rhino populations in parts of their former range where they’ve been extirpated as well as allowing existing populations to continue to breed.

What’s popping? Humpbacks off South Africa, new acoustic study finds
- Researchers recently recorded humpback whales making popping sounds like a gunshot at the Vema Seamount off the coast of South Africa.
- It’s not currently known why humpbacks make these sounds, but researchers suspect it has to do with mating or feeding.
- The Vema Seamount is an important feeding ground for humpbacks and other species, leading experts to call for the region to be protected.

Saving the near-extinct estuarine pipefish means protecting estuary health
- The critically endangered estuarine pipefish is known to inhabit only two estuaries on the eastern coast of South Africa.
- Recent studies are uncovering how the health of its estuarine habitat rests on a dynamic balance between freshwater inflows that support the food change, and salinity levels that promote growth of eelgrass habitat for pipefish and other species.
- Genetic analysis of the remaining estuarine pipefish populations has found low genetic diversity, highlighting a further risk to its conservation.
- Conservationists are working toward a plan to protect the species and the wider ecology of the estuaries it inhabits.

The world’s dams: Doing major harm but a manageable problem?
- Dam construction is one of the oldest, most preferred tools to manage freshwater for various uses. The practice reached a peak internationally in the 1960s and ’70s, but in recent years dam construction has faced increasing global criticism as the hefty environmental price paid for their benefits piles up.
- The flows of most major waterways have been impacted by dams globally. Only 37% of rivers longer than 1,000 km (620 mi) remain free-flowing, and just 23% flow uninterrupted to the sea. Natural flows will be altered for 93% of river volume worldwide by 2030, if all planned and ongoing hydropower construction goes ahead.
- This global fragmentation of rivers has led to severe impacts. Dams have contributed to an 84% average decline in freshwater wildlife population sizes since 1970. More than a quarter of Earth’s land-to-ocean sediment flux is trapped behind dams. Dams also impact Earth’s climate in complex ways via modification of the carbon cycle.
- But dams are needed for energy, agriculture and drinking water, and are an inevitable part of our future. Lessons on how to balance their benefits against the environmental harm they do are already available to us: removing some existing dams, for example, and not building others.

South Africa declares national emergency as flood toll crosses 440
- Flooding and landslides following record-breaking rainfall caused hundreds of deaths and displaced 40,000 people in KwaZulu-Natal province.
- The damage is centered around Durban, South Africa’s third most populous city, which is particularly vulnerable to flash floods.
- In the coming days, 10,0000 military troops will join search and rescue operations and provide aid to the thousands of people impacted by the tragedy.
- President Cyril Ramaphosa said the floods are a reminder of how a changing climate is fueling more extreme weather. However, scientists are still investigating the role of anthropogenic climate change in this disaster.

Stamping out savanna fires doesn’t bolster carbon sink by much, study finds
- Stamping out fires in the African savanna generates smaller carbon sequestration gains than previously thought, an analysis published in the journal Nature found.
- The data from a decades-long experiment in South Africa’s Kruger National Park raises questions about whether fire suppression in savannas can help in combating climate change, according to an accompanying commentary.
- Shrubs and grasses that make up the savanna store more carbon below ground, on average, than forests, which is one reason why fires aren’t as damaging in these landscapes.
- Even for plots in the national park subject to intense fire activity, the researchers found that root and soil carbon stores are largely preserved.

‘Studying a ghost’: In Cape Town, urban caracals give researchers lots to ponder
- Researchers have spent years trapping and tracking the elusive caracal on the edges of the South African city of Cape Town to better understand the needs of these wild cats.
- Urban caracals have adapted their behavior in a number of ways to survive on the margins of the city, including hunting more during the day.
- Although highly adaptable, urban caracals face many challenges, including ingesting rat poison.
- Researchers recommend more greenways to allow the animals to survive in these heavily modified environments.

Latest seismic survey blocked in South Africa court on fishers’ challenge
- A South African court has blocked the continuation of a seismic survey for oil and gas off the country’s west coast.
- The judge agreed with fishing communities and civil society organizations that Australian geoscience company Searcher’s consultation process excluded fishing communities.
- The ruling is the latest successful challenge to a prospecting permit on the basis that it denied local communities their right to participate in environmental decisions.

Could abandoning protections save South African abalone?
- A new report exposes multilayered damages associated with the abalone poaching industry between South Africa and East Asia.
- The illegal trade is embedded in South Africa’s deeply unequal society.
- A highly organized supply chain has led to the near-depletion of the species, the corruption of state institutions, and fuelled gang violence in impoverished communities.
- With decades of anti-poaching efforts failing to curb the illicit trade, the authors of the report suggest a radical change of policy: letting the abalone go commercially extinct.

South Africa authorizes dumping at sea of cargo that turned volatile
- South Africa plans to dump unstable chemicals at sea after they reacted with rainwater during offloading from the NS Qingdao bulk carrier in Durban in October and started releasing toxic fumes.
- The country’s maritime safety authority has until March to dump the cargo of fertilizers and industrial reagents into the open ocean 250 kilometers (155 miles) offshore of the fishing town of St. Helena Bay, a two-hour drive north of Cape Town.
- The emergency authorization for the operation is predicated on it being the most “environmentally, socially and economically” suitable option, but scientists say the dump site overlaps with an area of critical biodiversity within the Benguela Current ecosystem.
- South African authorities said they will investigate what triggered the incident aboard the NS Qingdao, which flies the Marshall Islands flag but has registered owners in Hong Kong.

Court order blocks Shell’s seismic surveys off South Africa’s Wild Coast
- A petition by environmentalists, Indigenous groups and fisheries organizations succeeded in temporarily halting oil giant Shell’s plans to conduct seismic surveys off South Africa’s Wild Coast to prospect for oil and gas reserves below the seabed.
- Conservation groups cited the potential impact on the breeding grounds of southern right whales and humpback whales, and the effect on the local fisheries sector.
- The recent order hinges on whether affected communities that hold traditional rights, including fishing rights in the waters, were properly consulted.
- The judge ruled that they were not, while also noting that concerns about irreversible harm to marine life were “reasonable.”

Indigenous communities in South Africa sue, protest off-shore oil and gas exploration
- Thousands of South Africans, including Indigenous communities, mobilized in a national protest last Sunday against Shell’s planned seismic survey in search for oil and gas reserves off the country’s eastern Wild Coast – with more protests planned this weekend.
- Two court applications were submitted last week challenging the government’s license for oil and gas exploration, and demanded their constitutional right to a safe and healthy environment, as well as their Free, Prior and Informed Consent.
- Activists and communities fear the surveys and possible oil extraction will impact marine life and pollute coastal ecosystems which the Indigenous Xhosa rely on for their livelihood and traditional rituals.
- On Thursday, the Minister of Minerals Resources and Energy underlined the government’s support for oil exploration, criticizing environmental protesters for actions seen as “apartheid and colonialism of a special type.”

Translocation brings white rhinos to Rwanda, a new land for an old species
- On Nov. 29, 30 white rhinos were introduced to Akagera National Park in Rwanda from a private game reserve in South Africa.
- The relocation is aimed at establishing the species in a new range state and ensuring its survival into the future.
- Akagera National Park has not had a single high-value animal poached for the past 11 years, and has become a sanctuary for other translocated species such as lions and black rhinos, according to the NGO African Parks, which helps to manage Akagera.
- White rhinos are considered a near threatened species that under continual threat from poaching incidents.

For South Africa’s dwindling renosterveld, there’s now a ‘panic button’ app
- The renosterveld shrubland once covered the Swartland and Overberg regions of western South Africa, but its rich soils led farmers to clear it for agriculture.
- Remaining fragments continue to provide habitat for birds like endangered black harriers and vulnerable southern black korhaans, and mammals like the grey rhebok, a near-threatened antelope.
- A “panic button” app has been developed in South Africa to alert the authorities to threats facing the renosterveld, the country’s most endangered ecosystem.

Wildlife trade hub Vietnam is also hub of impunity for traffickers, report says
- Only one in every seven wildlife seizures made in Vietnam in the past decade has resulted in convictions, a new report by the U.K.-based Environmental Investigation Agency has found.
- Low numbers of arrests and prosecutions highlight problems of weak enforcement and a lack of coordination between law enforcement agencies, the researchers said.
- Three-quarters of the shipments originated from African countries, they found, with numerous large-scale seizures indicating transnational organized crime.
- With pandemic-related restrictions easing, the worry is that the cross-border wildlife trade will come roaring back even as Vietnam struggles to follow up on investigations into past and current seizures.

Legal challenge to South Africa mine expansion looks to set new landmark
- In 2016, South Africa’s minister of minerals and energy granted one of the country’s largest anthracite coal mines the right to expand and resettle 143 families.
- The decision was challenged by a local organization that filed an application against the minister, the Department of Minerals and Energy, the mining company, and others.
- If the case is won, it would be a landmark for communities affected by mining activities across the country, as the government, traditional authorities and unions have shown support for the mine.

In Mozambique, mystery of tuskless elephant points to poaching as the culprit
- The civil war that caused a steep drop in elephant numbers in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park also led to tusklessness becoming the norm among its female elephants, a recent study found.
- Only about 200 of an estimated 2,500 elephants living there survived the ravages of the 15-year-long war during which poachers targeted tusked elephants for ivory.
- After the civil war, the number of tuskless females tripled in Gorongosa.
- Scientists agree on the far-reaching consequences of this “artificial selection,” but how the genetic trait is passed on from one generation to the next is still being investigated.

Opposition to South Africa coal mine persists a year after murder of activist
- One year after the murder of South African anti-coal mining activist Fikile Ntshangase, no arrests have been made.
- A legal application to prevent the expansion of the Somkhele coal mine, which Ntshangase strongly opposed, has again been postponed by a South African court.
- Tensions within the communities remain high as the mining company is pushing residents to sign relocation agreements before its existing reserves are depleted in 2022.

Drones are a knife in the gunfight against poaching. But they’re leveling up
- At the peak of the rhino poaching war in South Africa in 2015 and 2016, poachers slaughtered nearly three rhinos a day.
- Although that rate has declined, the numbers are still disheartening and unsustainable, with poachers killing at least one rhino every day.
- Some conservationists have looked to drones as a potentially powerful tool in anti-poaching efforts, with the technology continuing to evolve.
- But experts say it isn’t at the level yet where it can meet the challenge, and that while it can be helpful, conservation efforts must continue to engage and educate local communities.

Nature takes a beating after chemical explosion in South Africa civil unrest
- Unknown quantities of toxic agricultural chemicals spilled into an estuary on the Indian Ocean following an arson attack on a warehouse during civil unrest and looting in South Africa in July.
- The fire burned for 10 days, exposing thousands of people to clouds of poisonous fumes and soot, with poor communication of the health risks to affected communities.
- Thousands of fish and other aquatic organisms were killed by a torrent of turquoise effluent that flowed from warehouse, which held as many as 1,600 different types of chemicals.
- The incident has exposed significant weaknesses in the regulation of hazardous installations, along with major flaws in emergency and pollution control response by South African authorities.

As populations grow, how will thirsty cities survive their drier futures?
- The world’s rapidly expanding cities are on a collision course with climate change, presenting unprecedented challenges to municipal and national governments as they work to continue providing residents with access to safe and sufficient water.
- Increasingly, calls are made to rethink the way we develop urban watersheds and the way we live in them — with water sourcing, transport, use and reuse planning key to the process. One approach, water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) entails a complete reimagining of the role and use of water in urban areas.
- WSUD embraces the water cycle, and considers the entire watershed where cities are located. It uses green infrastructure such as permeable pavements, green roofs and rain gardens, to greatly reduce stormwater runoff. Conscious design allows water to be recycled and reused repeatedly for various purposes. Waste is greatly reduced.
- Some cities are already changing their development pathways to be more resilient to inevitable future climate extremes, with Singapore and Cape Town leading the way. Future water stress can be overcome, but work needs to start now before extreme weather events, including mega droughts and floods, hit.

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