Gum-eating Tanzanian monkey is AWOL, fueling extinction fears
For more than a year, there have been no confirmed sightings of the critically endangered southern patas monkeys in their last known refuge, in western Tanzania. In 2021, fewer than…
Tanzania News
How German government funds are used to dispossess Tanzania’s Maasai in Serengeti land grab
A Tanzanian journalist contributed to this report, but has requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the story. OLOLOSOKWAN, Tanzania — Just days after rangers from Serengeti National Park…
Vulture poisonings in the Serengeti alarm conservationists
In July this year, conservationists from North Carolina Zoo in the U.S. and the Grumeti Fund in Tanzania went searching for a white-backed vulture in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park that…
For Tanzania’s Maasai, adapting to climate change may mean less livestock, more trees
The village of Terrat, a settlement of around 14,000 people in the semiarid grassland and acacia forests of the Maasai Steppe, is one of many across northern Tanzania that has…
Ahead of COP16, groups warn of rights abuses linked to ‘30×30’ goal
Two years since global policymakers agreed on the concept of protecting 30% of the world’s land and waters by 2030, there’s still little clarity on how achieving this goal will…
US govt watchdog: Human rights still at risk in overseas conservation aid
U.S. government agencies responsible for handing out conservation grants overseas still aren’t doing enough to protect human rights, according to an internal review. The review was commissioned by the U.S.…
Maasai women struggle to survive amid forced evictions in conservation area
In 2022, the government of Tanzania began forcibly evicting thousands of Indigenous Maasai from 1,500 square kilometers, nearly 600 square miles, of their ancestral land to make way for elite…
Meet the Miombo, the largest forest you’ve never heard of
Growing up in the village of Domboshava in central Zimbabwe, Edwin Tambara, the African Wildlife Foundation’s director of global leadership, recalls how the surrounding Miombo woodland was a pharmacy, hardware…
Luxury hunting firm linked to decades of poaching in Tanzania, whistleblowers say
LOLIONDO, Tanzania — Whistleblowers speaking to Mongabay have reported instances of poaching over decades in Tanzania linked to a luxury hunting firm catering to the United Arab Emirates’ elites and…
Saving Lake Victoria from plastic: Interview with Kenya’s teenage Muchilwa siblings
In recent years, there has been a significant trend in young people from around the world joining the fight against environmental threats and climate change. These educated youths have played…
Chatterbox chimps converse just like humans (but with more gestures)
For more than 15 years, an international team of researchers intermittently followed five groups of eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) in the jungles of Uganda and Tanzania. With cameras in…
Trophy hunting of Amboseli’s super-tuskers in Tanzania sparks outrage, calls for a ban
Conservationists have called for a halt to trophy hunting of elephants from Kenya’s Amboseli National Park that cross over into neighboring Tanzania, following the killing of at least five males…
‘Extinct’ trees found in Tanzania spark hope for ecosystem recovery
In July 2023, botanist Andrea Bianchi was driving in the Nguru Mountains of eastern Tanzania when the broad pods on a tree growing in a maize field near the road…
African markets tackle food insecurity and climate change — but lack investment
Zimbabwe’s Mbare agricultural market in Harare, the biggest local market in the country’s capital city, opens at 5 a.m. and bustles. Between morning and noon, traders arrive from different parts…
Forced evictions suppress Maasai spirituality & sacred spaces in Tanzania
When the dawn breaks over Kisokon village in Kenya’s Narok county, Maasai herders leave their bomas, tend to their cattle and follow them around as they graze in nearby pastures.…
Study: Female chimps that don’t leave their birth groups can still avoid inbreeding
Puberty comes with its challenges for Homo sapiens, but for female chimpanzees it presents a particular quandary: how to avoid mating with your male kin. It’s not easy, especially on…
UNESCO accused of supporting human rights abuses in African parks
For centuries, Maasai peoples living in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) mostly moved freely over vast savanna rangelands in search of water and available grassland, without any restrictions. But in…
Activists decry latest arrests of East African oil pipeline opponents
Police in northwestern Tanzania have arrested four villagers in Hanang District, after they criticized a controversial oil pipeline being built through the area, in what activists say is just the…
Human rights allegations prompt World Bank to freeze project’s funds in Tanzania
The World Bank has suspended funding for a $150 million tourism project in southern Tanzania in response to allegations of forced evictions, killings and other violations of people’s rights in…
UN puts spotlight on attacks against Indigenous land defenders
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…
Tanzania’s ‘mountain of millipedes’ yields six new species
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…
Photos: Top species discoveries from 2023
Scientists named hundreds of new to science species this year, including an electric blue tarantula, two pygmy squids, a silent frog, and some thumb-sized chameleons. These newly uncovered creatures give…
Control of Africa’s forests must not be sold to carbon offset companies (commentary)
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…
Disturbing graves is latest violation attributed to East African oil pipeline
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…
World Bank accused of supporting evictions, rights abuses at Tanzanian park
Farmers and herders in southern Tanzania say rangers at Ruaha National Park have committed extrajudicial killings and livestock theft in a bid to drive them off their land to make…
World owes it to Tanzania to keep Eastern Arc forests standing, study shows
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…
Road upgrade through remote Tanzanian park threatens wildlife (commentary)
Katavi National Park is one of the great East African parks. It's great in the sense of being an enormous, 4,471 km2 area of miombo woodland, having a high diversity…
From cardamom to carbon: Bold new Tanzanian project is regrowing a rainforest
DISANGA, Tanzania — Michele Menegon creeps stealthily through short grass before pouncing. Gently, the scientist holds up his prize: an unnamed species of forest agama. He shows the reptile to…
The value of mountains: Q&A with Tanzanian herpetologist John Lyakurwa
Tanzanian herpetologist John Lyakurwa was born and raised in a village at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro. The chameleons he and his family encountered on their coffee farm sparked his…
Meet the kipunji: A rare primate success story in Tanzania
In January 2003, when Wildlife Conservation Society researchers working in Tanzania’s Southern Highlands heard from local hunters that there was a monkey called the kipunji living on the slopes of…
Forests & finance: communities turn to tree-planting, zero-logging, and mushrooms to protect forests
Forests & Finance is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin of briefs about Africa’s forests.
Maasai conservationist strives to protect Indigenous rights because ‘land is life’ (commentary)
The idea that ‘land is life’ has been at the core of what I do since I began my journey in grassroots conservation. I was born in the Loliondo district…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Narco airstrips beset Indigenous communities in Peruvian Amazon
- 15 illegal narco-trafficking airstrips found near Peru Indigenous communities
- Satellite data show bursts of deforestation continue in Indonesian national park
- Fires rip through Indigenous territories in Brazilian Amazon
Oceans
- Coral reefs could survive climate change, but in altered state, study says
- Conservationists see progress for swordfish, problems for sharks at Atlantic fisheries summit
- As tidal power rides a wave of clean energy optimism, pitfalls persist
- Plan for close season rings alarm bells for Liberia’s artisanal fishers
Amazon Conservation
- ‘World’s largest’ carbon credit deal in the Amazon faces bumpy road ahead
- New conservation model calls for protecting Amazon for its archaeological riches
- Brazil dredges Amazon rivers to ease drought isolation, raising environmental concerns
- ‘We need white men on our side to save the Amazon from destruction,’ 92-year-old Indigenous Chief Raoni says
Land rights and extractives
- Brazil sets a date to remove illegal miners from Munduruku land, more details await
- Peruvian logger loses FSC label after latest clash with isolated Mashco Piro
- A national park and its rangers in Bolivia endure persisting road construction, illegal mining
- Can nations ever get artisanal gold mining right?
Endangered Environmentalists
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
- Mother Nature Cambodia activists sentenced to prison — again
- Mongabay video screening at Chile’s Supreme Court expected to help landmark verdict in Brazil
- Indonesian activist freed in hate speech case after flagging illegal shrimp farms
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- On a Borneo mountainside, Indigenous Dayak women hold fire and defend forest
- Fenced in by Sulawesi national park, Indigenous women make forestry breakout
- In Borneo, the ‘Power of Mama’ fight Indonesia’s wildfires with all-woman crew
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
Conservation Effectiveness
- How effective is the EU’s marquee policy to reduce the illegal timber trade?
- How sharing and learning from failures can transform conservation (commentary)
- Is planting trees as good for the Earth as everyone says?
- Failure in conservation projects: Everyone experiences it, few record it
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- An ‘ocean grab’ for a property megaproject leaves Jakarta fishers grounded
- Study: Indonesia’s new capital city threatens stable proboscis monkey population
- Indonesia’s new capital ‘won’t sacrifice the environment’: Q&A with Nusantara’s Myrna Asnawati Safitri
- Small farmers in limbo as Cambodia wavers on Tonle Sap conservation rules
