location: Southern Africa

location: Southern Africa

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Analysis of largest elephant surveys ever shows stable population, but disturbing trends
- New research comparing data from the two largest-ever elephant surveys reveals the overall population in the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area is stable, but also uncovers some concerning local trends.
- Elephant numbers in Botswana, home to more elephants than any other country, are stable overall, but declining numbers in areas where hunting is permitted, and increasing numbers in protected areas, suggest underlying issues for Botswana’s elephants.
- Survey comparisons reveal that elephants have all but disappeared from the western Angolan section of the KAZA area, but a lack of local research, an issue across the region, means conservationists are unsure why.
- More research is needed across the transfrontier conservation area to ensure a safe future for the world’s largest elephant population.

New ecoregion proposed for Southern Africa’s threatened ‘sky islands’
- A group of scientists is proposing the designation of a new African “ecoregion” consisting of an “inland archipelago” of 30 isolated mountains, some harboring animals and plants found nowhere else on Earth.
- The South East Africa Montane Archipelago straddles southern Malawi and northern Mozambique.
- This geographical isolation has fueled the evolution of separate species within the forests that grow on them, and those forests are now severely threatened by charcoal production and agriculture.
- It’s hoped the designation of a new ecoregion encompassing these mountains will promote nature conservation on a landscape-wide scale.

Global conference to accelerate nature-based solutions: Q&A with Self Help Africa’s Patricia Wall
- This week, more than 150 conservation and community organizations, experts and policymakers are gathering in Zambia for the Accelerating Nature-based Solutions conference.
- Discussions will dive deep into critical issues and concerns regarding nature-based solutions and the roles of agroforestry, farmer-managed natural regeneration and wildlife conservation in NbS.
- The conference will also address the issue of carbon offsetting and greenhouse gas emissions, and the need to safeguard the rights of local communities or Indigenous communities when implementing nature-based solutions.

Count, connect, conserve: Southern Africa elephant survey points the way (commentary)
- The Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) is the largest transboundary terrestrial conservation area in the world – spanning five countries in southern Africa, it is home to Africa’s largest savanna elephant population.
- A 2022 survey of KAZA’s elephants revealed an estimated 227,900 individuals, but their movement is increasingly blocked by fences and human settlements, pointing to the need for better habitat connections and corridors.
- “Now that KAZA’s elephants have been counted, the landscape’s key wildlife areas must be connected, so that elephants and other species can be better conserved,” a new op-ed states.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily Mongabay.

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.

Report: Rush for ‘clean energy’ minerals in Africa risks repeating harmful extractivist model
- The nonprofit Global Witness investigated lithium mining projects in Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Namibia, which appear to reproduce the same model of extractivism that has impoverished African countries for centuries.
- In March, residents of the Namibian town of Uis took to the streets to protest the activities of Chinese miner Xinfeng, alleging the company was carrying out large-scale industrial mining without the proper permits or social license.
- In Zimbabwe, activist Farai Maguwu from the Centre for Natural Resource Governance described a similar experience of exclusion and exploitation at Chinese miner Sinomine’s Bikita lithium operation, calling it “typical extractivism.”
- One of the ways to prevent exploitation is to shut out companies that “socialize the costs and privatize the profits,” Maguwu said, adding he remains hopeful that encouraging competition between companies from across the world is the way to ensure better outcomes for Zimbabweans.

Control of Africa’s forests must not be sold to carbon offset companies (commentary)
- A forest carbon deal between Blue Carbon and the nation of Liberia would give the company exclusive rights to control 10% of the nation’s land mass for 30 years.
- Blue Carbon has also signed MOUs for similar deals with Tanzania and Zambia (and others) and combined with the Liberia deal, the land controlled by the company in these three African nations represents an area the size of the whole of the United Kingdom.
- “Carbon colonialism is a false solution to the climate crisis,” a new op-ed states. “The only real answer is to end our fossil fuel addiction by dramatically reducing our emissions, while financially supporting countries and local communities to protect their forests, rather than wrest control of them.”
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

New study pushes for protection of one of Africa’s ‘least understood treasures’
- A new study reveals the extent of a tropical water tower in Angola, which performs the same role as snow-capped mountains in the Northern Hemisphere.
- The Angolan Highlands Water Tower contains peatlands and freshwater lakes that supply major rivers in the region, and the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta in Botswana.
- Despite this vital hydrological role, the water tower currently has no formal protection.
- The team behind the study hopes it will help to strengthen the case for recognition of a vast portion of the water tower as a Ramsar Site of International Importance.

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.

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.

Forests & finance: Fears for forests in Angola, flashes of hope from Kenya & Ghana
- Ghanaian scientists are cultivating seedlings of two critically endangered tree species while searching forests across the country for surviving Talbotiella gentii and Aubregrinia taiensis in the wild.
- Women in Kenya’s Kilifi County are planting trees from which to produce herbal medicines and supplements; they say their efforts help protect local forests.
- Commercial charcoal producers have led the destruction of more than 300,000 hectares (741,000 acres) of forest in Angola’s Huambo province since 2000.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of news from Africa’s forests.

Even community stewardship can’t save rangeland beset by legacy of misrule
- Land degradation, changing vegetation patterns, and depleting soil quality threaten rangeland across Africa, including Namibia.
- The Community-Based Rangeland and Livestock Management (CBRLM) program, funded by the U.S. and implemented by a German consultancy, supported herders in northern Namibia to manage communal rangeland.
- However, the intervention didn’t improve livestock health or herders’ incomes, while rangeland quality actually worsened.
- While community management failed to deliver the desired results, evaluators say program design flaws were also to blame, in particular issues of land tenure and barriers to creating a livestock market.

Southern African caterpillar that feeds millions may be next climate casualty
- A new study projects a significant loss of habitat for an edible caterpillar, known as the mopane worm, in Southern Africa in the coming decades.
- Mopane worms are a key source of seasonal protein for millions of people throughout Southern Africa, but they also face pressures from overharvesting and deforestation.
- Species distribution models devised by a group of scientists project that even under a moderate climate change scenario, some regions will lose 99% of suitable habitat for the caterpillars.
- The scientists behind the study say their projections should be seen as a call to protect regional food security by preventing both climate change and biodiversity loss.

‘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.

Fires threaten Afromontane forests’ ‘whole new world’: Q&A with Martim Melo
- A group of international and local scientists has warned of the threat to a key piece of one of Africa’s most threatened habitats: the Afromontane forests that occur in the highlands of western Angola.
- The scientists recently discovered up to 10 new species living in the patches of evergreen forest in the Namba Mountains.
- But pressure from growing human settlements nearby, mainly uncontrolled fires in the grasslands that surround the forests, threatens to overwhelm this unique ecosystem.
- Scientists are calling for the government and international agencies to establish a protected area to preserve this biodiverse hotspot.

‘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.

Conserve wildlands in southern Africa by protecting Indigenous rights (commentary)
- The COP15 agreement and its pledge to preserve 30% of the world’s biodiversity by 2030 (30×30) sounded like a resounding success for conservation, but not if it comes at the expense of Indigenous communities.
- Conservation groups and Indigenous populations both protect biodiversity, but the ‘fortress conservation model’ of the past all too frequently has pitted these groups against each other.
- “In southern Africa [we] have seen the fortress conservation model affect the lives of local stewards of the land, time and time again,” the author of a new op-ed writes.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Namibia’s first peoples struggle to access their traditional lands (commentary)
- Namibia’s internationally acclaimed Community-Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program receives significant backing.
- Two CBNRM land conservancies are sited in the last strongholds for Indigenous communities in southern Africa, the Ju/hoansi San and the !Kung San.
- However, research suggests that the conservancies’ natural resources often benefit traders, herders, and trophy hunting guides more than the Indigenous peoples, who too often are unable to access their traditional lands.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Namibian community protects its rhinos from poaching but could lose them to mining
- After years of decline, rhino poaching figures increased in Namibia in 2022, with the biggest losses occurring in Etosha National Park
- No rhinos were killed on communal land, yet one such successful conservancy is seeing its rhinos driven away by blasting and other activity at a copper mine that the environment minister approved in the area.
- The conservancy says the displacement of the resident black rhinos threatens the conservation program and revenue from tourism, and is planning to sue the environment minister.
- The //Huab Conservancy’s dispute highlights weaknesses in the ministry’s exercise of environmental regulation.

‘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.

Forests & finance: A lawsuit, an import ban, and restoring Zambian forests
- Campaigners sue Ghana’s government to block mining of Atewa Forest biodiversity hotspot.
- Conservationists assist a forest reserve in Zambia to restore itself.
- Forest certification is expanding rapidly across the Congo Basin.
- EU bans imports of products linked to deforestation.

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.

Element Africa: Lead poisoning, polluted rivers, and ‘calamitous’ mining regulation
- More than 100,000 Zambian women and children are filing a class action lawsuit against mining giant Anglo American for decades of lead poisoning at a mine they say it controlled.
- Illegal gold mining in Ghana is polluting rivers that local communities depend on for water for drinking, bathing and farming.
- A legal case against a village head who allegedly sold off the community’s mining license to a Chinese company has highlighted what analysts call the “confusing” state of mining regulation in Nigeria.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the extractives industry across 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.

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.

Forests & Finance: Certification for deforesters, and repression for an evicted community
- A rule change by the Forest Stewardship Council means companies like Hevéa Sudcam, which cleared nearly 60,000 hectares (148,000 acres) of forest in Cameroon since 2011, are now eligible for the world’s leading sustainability certification.
- Two years after announcing an imminent ban on exports of raw timber, governments in the Congo Basin have again delayed its implementation, this time indefinitely, citing the need for more time to prepare for it.
- The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has called on Uganda to end its repression of the Indigenous Benet people, who are fighting for recognition and access to ancestral lands they were evicted from in 1993 for the establishment of a national park.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

Support rangers to protect wildlife & habitats for the future (commentary)
- The average ranger works almost 90 hours a week: over 60% have no access to clean drinking water on patrol or at outpost stations, and over 40% regularly lack overnight shelter when afield.
- Funding can support significant improvements in the working conditions of rangers, enabling them to work more effectively toward reducing the illegal wildlife trade and human-wildlife conflicts.
- The winner of the 2022 Tusk Wildlife Ranger Award shares his thoughts about the situation and how increased support is good for wildlife, people, and habitats in this new op-ed.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Protecting the peatlands and woodlands in Angola’s ‘source of life’
- As negotiations over slowing climate change unfold at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt, a group of scientists and conservationists is pushing for recognition of the Angolan Highlands as a vital carbon sink.
- The network of rivers, lakes and peatlands surrounded by miombo woodland in these highlands together maintain the year-round flow of water into the Okavango River Basin, and ultimately the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta in Botswana.
- Isolated for decades by civil war, in peacetime the Angolan Highlands have increasingly attracted returning populations to log, drain its bogs, and clear forests for agriculture.
- The National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project is pushing for protection of vital parts of the highlands to safeguard their role as a “water tower” for countries in the region — and prevent the peatlands from turning from a carbon sink into a carbon source.

Forests & Finance: From logging in Cameroon to cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire
- Conservationists have flagged logging activity by a company in Cameroon that’s clearing forest near a national park in apparent breach of its permits.
- A campaign since 2017 to convince farmers in Côte d’Ivoire not to clear forests for new cocoa plantations is bearing fruit, with deforestation in the country falling by 47% in 2021.
- In Malawi, a replanting effort aims to revive populations of the endemic and threatened Mulanje cyad, an ancient tree species that grows on the mountain of the same name.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

Broken houses and promises: residents still in poverty near massive diamond project
- More than 14 years since the discovery of the Marange diamond fields, one of the world’s largest diamond-producing projects, relocated residents and locals living near the mines are still living in poverty.
- The government and mining companies promised homes, electricity, water, employment, social services and compensation, but residents and civil society organizations say they have still not received many of these promises since Mongabay last reported on the project in 2016.
- Rivers, which residents rely on for their livestock, vegetable plots and cleaning, are polluted and silted by artisanal miners seeking additional income and opportunities to escape poverty.
- Previously, foreign companies in Zimbabwe had to either give the majority of their shares to locals or divest money into community trusts. However, this promise has fallen short since current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, reversed the law.

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.

Forests & Finance: A road project, food baskets, and unique wildlife
- An environmental impact study warns that a planned highway between the Senegal cities of Dakar and Saint Louis would lead to nearly 400,000 trees being cut down in two forest reserves along the route.
- In Zambia, a study shows that households are heavily reliant on forest foods, which leaves them vulnerable to food insecurity as forest loss increases in the country.
- Researchers hoping to create a new protected area for southwest Ethiopia’s Gura Ferda forest, have highlighted a rich and unique biodiversity following an expedition to the area.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

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.

Australian oil and gas firm Invictus awarded carbon offset project in Zimbabwe
- The REDD+ project covers three national forest reserves near Hwange National Park and comes as Invictus has begun to drill for oil and gas in the north of the country
- Invictus says based on estimates still to be verified, the offset project could sequester 1 million metric tons of carbon per year, making its oil and gas drilling carbon neutral.
- Conservationists question the logic behind leveraging state forest reserves for REDD+ projects, saying they favor instead a “wildlife economy approach” to restoring landscapes.

Forests & Finance: Sit-ins, seeds over seedlings, and fuel-saving cookstoves
- Liberian communities affected by logging have staged a sit-in protest in front of the country’s ministry of finance, demanding unpaid royalties.
- Cookstoves and woodlots are the first step in a plan to halt deforestation in southern Zimbabwe.
- And a reforestation initiative experiments with providing Zimbabwean farmers seeds from indigenous trees rather than seedlings.
- Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.

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.

As poachers poison wildlife, Zimbabwe finds an antidote in tougher laws
- Poisons like cyanide can be a deadly weapon for poachers, allowing them to kill dozens of animals without needing access to firearms or the backing of criminal syndicates.
- Wildlife poisoning is on the rise across Africa, targeting elephants as well as pushing endangered vultures toward extinction.
- A new study says Zimbabwe, which a decade ago witnessed some of the deadliest mass poisonings of elephants, has developed a sound basis for curbing poisonings by tightening laws to criminalize intent to use poison to kill wildlife.
- In addition to laws and renewed efforts to improve intelligence gathering, private players are pushing to ensure better law enforcement, resulting in more prosecutions and deterrent sentences.

Human pressures strain Lake Tanganyika’s biodiversity and water quality
- As fishing pressure has increased on Lake Tanganyika, its level has also been rising, inundating shoreline communities.
- Sedimentation as a result of farming, infrastructure projects and deforestation is causing the water level to rise and the lake to expand.
- This has not led to an increase in fish populations, however, and what little data exist suggest that the lake’s overall biodiversity–probably including hippos and Nile crocodiles–is declining.
- An EU-funded plan to coordinate management of the lake by all countries that share it aims to address some of the knowledge gaps, but is itself hobbled by budget constraints.

It’s time to center African people in the conservation agenda (commentary)
- The African Protected Areas Congress was launched to position African protected and conserved areas within the broader goals of economic development and community well being.
- As the first Congress of its kind, APAC is an important step away from ‘fortress conservation’ approaches and towards African-driven biodiversity conservation.
- Developing a unified African voice and vision is key to influencing global conventions relating to climate change, biodiversity conservation and wildlife trade: now that the congress is over, it is up to us to make this new African vision for protected and conserved areas a reality, a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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.

White rhino conservation project attempts paradigm shift by including local community
- A project to reintroduce white rhinos in western Zimbabwe has been launched for the first time on community-owned land.
- Two rhinos have so far been released in a small sanctuary comprising grazing land voluntarily donated by villages located near the southern boundary of Hwange National Park.
- A key pillar of the rhino protection strategy has been to recruit scouts from the local community and compensate them fairly.
- As it grows, it’s hoped the sanctuary will raise tourism dollars for community development, and also create a buffer zone to protect farmers’ crops and livestock from Hwange’s elephants, lions and hyenas.

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.

Twenty years since a massive ivory seizure, what lessons were learned? (commentary)
- In late June 2002, a container ship docked in Singapore with a massive shipment of ivory, which was seized.
- It was the largest seizure of its kind since an international ban on the ivory trade had come into force in 1989, and the lessons learned from it would change the way the illegal wildlife trade was investigated and tackled.
- But it’s unfortunate that some of the biggest lessons from that event still have not been put into practice, a new op-ed argues.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

World is losing ‘magical’ tradition of human-animal mutualism, study warns
- Honey gatherers working with birds to find wild bees’ nests; fishers working with dolphins to trap fish — these are examples of what’s known as mutualism, a practice that’s fast dying out, a new study warns.
- This human-wildlife cooperation was once much more widespread, but is being lost as younger generations in the often Indigenous communities that have long practiced it now eschew it for formal education and farming.
- In losing these age-old practices, conservationists say, we may be losing more than just the material benefits, “but in fact important aspects of the reverence and deep connection with nature.”

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.

Rehabilitation research returns orphaned cheetahs to the wild
- A long-running program in Namibia has shown how orphaned cheetahs can be successfully rewilded, presenting a rehabilitation template for wild-born, captive-bred individuals of other species.
- The program by the Cheetah Conservation Fund took in 86 young cheetahs orphaned due to human-wildlife conflict, and eventually released 36 of them between 2004 and 2018.
- Twenty-seven of the cheetahs eventually became independent in the wild, while one female went on to raise two cubs — the “pinnacle of success” for any wildlife reintroduction effort.
- The study authors and independent experts agree that having safe release sites — where the newly reintroduced animals won’t run the risk of conflict with humans or other predators — and rigorous post-release monitoring are key to rehabilitation success.

Cash-strapped Zimbabwe pushes to be allowed to sell its ivory stockpile
- Zimbabwe is continuing to push for international support for selling off its stockpile of elephant ivory and rhino horn, saying the revenue is needed to fund conservation efforts.
- Funding for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority comes largely from tourism-related activity, which has virtually evaporated during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the authority with shortages of staff, equipment, and funds for communities living adjacent to wildlife.
- But critics say allowing the sale of the 136 metric tons of elephant ivory and rhino horn that Zimbabwe is holding (mostly from animals that died of natural causes) will only stoke demand and lead to a surge in poaching.
- They point to similar surges following other one-off sales in 1999 and 2008, but some observers say these were unusual circumstances (the latter sale coincided with the global recession), and that a poaching spike won’t necessarily follow this time around.

‘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.

Malawi steps up action against illegal charcoal trade (analysis)
- New forestry laws and improved capacity in Malawi’s courts have improved law enforcement’s ability to fight forestry-related crimes, like illegal charcoal production.
- Under a new amendment to the country’s Forestry Act, which treats charcoal as a forest product, the government now has the authority to issue stronger penalties, fines and jail sentences.
- The USAID and UKAID-funded Modern Cooking for Healthy Forests (MCHF) program supports the government in improving its capacity to investigate and prosecute these activities.
- This post is an analysis of the situation by a MCHF contractor. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

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.

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