To collect native seeds, Ugandan botanists are climbing forest giants
The mvule (Milicia excelsa) is a giant of a tree, up to 50 meters (165 feet) tall, with a trunk 6 m (20 ft) around. To collect seeds from such…
Uganda News
Rwanda’s Olivier Nsengimana inspires protection for gray crowned cranes in East Africa
Just 10 years ago, spotting a gray crowned crane in Rwanda’s wetlands had become a rarity. These elegant birds — tall and statuesque, with golden plumes fanning from their heads…
The colonial ghosts of Uganda’s ‘Queen Elizabeth’ park
KATWE, Uganda — In 1889, the British journalist Henry Morton Stanley stumbled out of the forests of Central Africa into the town of Katwe, a settlement on the shore of…
Africa’s last tropical glaciers are melting away along with local livelihoods
Africa’s remaining tropical glaciers are rapidly disappearing as greenhouse gas emissions drive global warming. In the Rwenzori Mountains, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the border between the Democratic Republic…
Ugandan researcher wins ‘Emerging Conservationist’ award for work on golden cats
The Indianapolis Prize, a prestigious award that recognizes leaders in wildlife conservation, has awarded its second Emerging Conservationist Award to Mwezi Badru Mugerwa. A Ugandan researcher and conservationist who combines…
Uganda community group restores shea groves and livelihoods
PADER DISTRICT, Uganda — As the early morning mist lifts over the plains of northern Uganda, women gather at the Pader Shea Nut and Agro-processing Society's nursery. Grown from seeds…
Shea’s silent guardians restore Uganda’s traditional parklands
PADER DISTRICT, Uganda — In northern Uganda's Pader district, farmers are working to preserve agricultural landscapes that have fed their communities for generations. These shea parklands, where carefully maintained trees…
Uganda’s tree-climbing lions grow scarce amid nationwide decline of the big cat
NAIROBI ― Poisoning, poaching and loss of habitat have significantly reduced populations of lion prides in Uganda, signaling the need for long-term commitments to conservation action, researchers write in a…
In Uganda, a women-led reforestation initiative fights flooding, erosion
KASESE DISTRICT, Uganda — In western Uganda’s Kasese district, where the Rwenzori Mountains meet the sprawling plains of Queen Elizabeth National Park, Janet Nyakairu Abwoli is on a mission to…
For Ugandan farmers, good fences make good neighbors — of elephants
KIKORONGO, Uganda — What do you do if you’re neighbors with an elephant? In western Uganda, the answer is: You build a fence. And not just any fence. One that…
‘Killed while poaching’: When wildlife enforcement blurs into violence
KITABU, Uganda — It’s mid-afternoon in Kitabu, a small town nestled in the hills of western Uganda at the foot of the Rwenzori mountains. Neatly manicured plots of beans and…
‘Like you, I fear the demise of the elephants’
On June 13, 1959, the Waata hunter Galogalo Kafonde surrendered himself to colonial Kenya’s “Field Force,” Africa’s first militarized antipoaching unit. For centuries, the ethnic Waata had hunted elephants. Killing…
Africa’s little-known golden cat gets a conservation boost, with community help
It was mid-2008. Mwezi “Badru” Mugerwa was almost done with his bachelor's degree in forestry, an academic field that had trained him to view forests as a resource for extraction.…
WWF report offers glimmer of conservation hope — yet warns of a planet in peril
With recent conservation efforts and the involvement of Indigenous peoples and local communities in managing protected areas, forest elephant populations are on the verge of stabilizing,in at least one national…
Global ‘Slow Food’ movement embraces agroecology (commentary)
I have spent more than 20 years visiting communities and working with farmers around Uganda and across East and southern Africa. I have come to realize that there are many…
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…
Advocacy group links Uganda oil infrastructure to human-elephant conflict
Oil drilling by French oil and gas giant TotalEnergies is disturbing wildlife in Murchison Falls National Park, Uganda’s largest and most-visited protected area. This is according to a briefing by…
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…
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…
Ugandan chimps are eating bat guano, raising concerns over human epidemics
“Finish your yogurt, sweetheart, it’s good for your bones. And take a few almonds, so you’ll stay healthy.” You may have heard this before, and rightly so. Minerals, such as…
Africa’s great ape sanctuaries are feeling the heat from climate change
In April 2024, above-average rainfall caused Kenya’s Ewaso Nyiro River to burst its banks, flooding the area and wreaking havoc for residents, including more than two dozen rescued chimpanzees at…
Study: A third of Africa’s great apes at risk from mining of transition metals
Scientists have warned that mining of the metals needed for the global clean energy transition could threaten Africa’s already beleaguered great apes unless strong conservation measures are implemented. Nearly 180,000…
Sick chimps seek out medicinal plants to heal themselves, study finds
Wild chimpanzees actively seek out plants with medicinal properties to treat themselves for specific ailments,a new study has found. While most animals consume foods with medicinal properties as part of…
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…
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…
In climate-related flooding, a Ugandan river turns poisonous
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…
Climate change brings a river’s wrath down on western Uganda
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…
Nile Basin farmers grow food forests to restore wetlands and bring back a turtle
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…
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…
Are flame retardants about to burn a hole in biodiversity? (commentary)
It started with monkey poop. A few years ago we analyzed the feces of wild baboons, chimpanzees, red-tailed monkeys, and red colobus in Uganda and found unexpectedly high levels of…
Gorilla permit fraud dents community-led conservation efforts in Uganda
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…
Conservationists work to restore last remnant of a once-great Ugandan forest
Conservationists are working to restore Uganda’s threatened Mabira Central Forest Reserve, a refuge for hundreds of species of birds, mammals and plants in the center of the country. In April,…
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
- Samoa’s new marine spatial plan protects 30% of the country’s ocean
- Tuna fishing devices drift through a third of oceans, harming corals, coasts: Study
- Indigenous Bajo suffer child deaths & toxic sludge amid green energy push
- Southeast Asia’s fisheries thrive despite decades of overfishing warnings: Study
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
- Indigenous Bajo suffer child deaths & toxic sludge amid green energy push
- ‘Colombia’s Amazon peoples provide solutions’: Interview with José Homero Mutumbajoy
- Should mining companies consider no-go zones where isolated Indigenous peoples live? (Commentary)
- Brazil sets a date to remove illegal miners from Munduruku land, more details await
Endangered Environmentalists
- Environmental & rights activists flee and hide as M23 captures DRC’s cities
- Environmental journalist in Cambodia shot and killed by suspected logger
- Vietnam sentences yet another energy expert over renewables research
- Mother Nature Cambodia activists sentenced to prison — again
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
