When around 70,000 Indigenous Maasai were expelled from their lands in northern Tanzania in 2022, it didn’t happen in a vacuum. For years, the Tanzanian government has systematically attacked Maasai…
BLANTYRE — Police and wildlife department officials in Malawi have arrested two men suspected of having killed an elephant in Kasungu National Park in the country’s west. In July 2022,…
MASVINGO, Zimbabwe — At the end of November last year, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Sinomine Resource Group chair Wang Pingwei walked into a lithium processing plant, construction hats firmly…
Scientists have recently described six new species of millipedes, including one from an entirely new genus, in Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains. This brings the number of new species found in…
Blantyre, MALAWI — When Cyclone Idai stormed Mozambique in 2019, researchers at Gorongosa National Park rode the current to test a long-held theory that the vulnerability of wildlife species to…
ANTANANARIVO — Madagascar recently released its first fisheries transparency report, part of an effort to open up, democratize, and improve the sustainability of its fisheries sector. The report is a…
This is the second of a two-part series on climate-related disasters in western Uganda. Read Part One here. KASESE, Uganda — Right as the Nyamwamba River emerges from the foothills…
This is the first of a two-part series on climate-related disasters in western Uganda. Part Two will be published next week. KASESE, Uganda — In March 2020, right as the…
WESTERN PROVINCE, Kenya — In the 44 years Naomi Rita Sitati has lived in Bukirimo village in western Kenya, she has known only one system of farming, which her community…
Twenty-one critically endangered black rhinos have been safely delivered to Loisaba Conservancy in northern Kenya from other parts of the country, part of a wider mission to secure the long-term…
As the sun rises over the wetlands on the shores of Lake Victoria, papyrus harvesters set out into the swamps to harvest stalks of papyrus. At the docks, fishermen returning…
MUNJE, Kenya — From the middle of 2023, a favored octopus fishing ground just offshore from the village of Munje was strangely empty. Members of the village’s beach management unit…
As 2023 draws to a close, so, too, does the first full year of Mongabay’s Conservation Reporting Fellowships. Launched at a time of unprecedented planetary upheaval, the program aims to…
The remarkable partnership between East Africa’s whistling thorn trees and their resident ants is well known, but now a new study brings to light the trees’ relationship with birds. Acacia…
SASIMWANI, Kenya — On a cold November afternoon, Esther Norparua and two of her daughters sat on the ground outside her homestead facing the forest. Dark clouds gathered, but the…
Eight years ago, a research team from the National Museums of Kenya stumbled upon an unfamiliar frog on the eastern flanks of Mount Kenya. The small green toad has now…
'Wabi-sabi' is a world view about finding beauty in nature’s imperfections. It perfectly describes pastoralism in northern Kenya – where nomadic livestock herders scrape out a living by moving their…
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Camera trap footage from national parks in Madagascar shows dogs roaming the forest either in bands or with their owners, barking at the base of trees where…
It’s been called a “new scramble for Africa”: a modern incarnation of European powers’ 19th century imperial seizure of vast swathes of Africa. Under the guise of fighting the climate…
A new report by GreenFaith, an international, multifaith climate justice organization, alleges that the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) will disturb at least 2,000 graves along its route from…
On Nov. 2, the Kenyan government began demolishing houses and destroying property belonging to Indigenous Ogiek living in the Mau Forest. The Ogiek had won a landmark case in 2017…
In 2023, Mongabay is officially expanding its coverage of environmental and conservation news in Africa by launching a news bureau dedicated to producing our renowned and award-winning brand of journalism…
New satellite data analysis reveals that Mau Forest in Kenya, the largest montane forest in East Africa, is continuing to lose tree cover, likely due to illegal logging and agricultural…
ENONKISHU, Kenya — Bernard Leshinga, a Maasai pastoralist from southern Kenya, likes an easy day running his herding business. But until recently, Leshinga hadn’t figured out how to help his…
Fire, illegal logging and invasive species have claimed 20% of the forests on the southwestern slopes of Mount Kenya in the last 20 years. The 700 members of the Chehe…
GOBA, Ethiopia — Nestled in the heart of Bale Mountains National Park in Ethiopia's highlands is an isolated village surrounded by lush natural forest — one of the few left…
Tourists from around the world pay top dollar for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hobnob with gorilla families in Uganda’s montane forests. Part of the rationale for the steep prices is…
On a fateful day in 2019 that is etched into the memories of local residents, the tranquility along Kenya’s Lake Victoria shores was shattered by an overwhelming surge of water.…
Tanzania’s Eastern Arc Mountains, home to nearly 5,000 different plant species and dozens of amphibians unique to each isolated massif, provide the world with ecosystem services worth more than $8…
The leaf-tailed geckos of the genus Uroplatus aren't easy to find. In the jungles of their native Madagascar, this is certainly true, owing to their remarkable ability to meld into…