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…
Uganda News
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,…
Communities not the true threat to Mabira Forest: Q&A with Ugandan conservationist Achilles Byaruhanga
Conservation groups in Uganda are working to protect Mabira Central Forest Reserve, a 30,000-hectare (74,000-acre) forest in the center of the country, close to Lake Victoria. Mabira is a surviving…
Element Africa: A ‘disaster’ pipeline, an oil-field spill, and a mining pit tragedy
TotalEnergies’ East African pipeline a ‘disaster’ for local communities The oil pipeline being built by French oil major TotalEnergies from Uganda’s Alberrtine Rift to the port of Tanga in Tanzania…
Forests & Finance: Wood export bans and short-staffed regulators
Uganda announces ban on timber exports KAMPALA — The Ugandan government has banned the export of timber from the East African country. In a directive issued at the end of…
As banks fund oil pipeline, campaigners question their environmental pledges
Activists have accused an association of banks claiming to adhere to principles safeguarding people and the environment of “greenwashing.” Two signatories of the Equator Principles are currently advising East African…
East Africa should promote renewable energy, not oil pipelines (commentary)
On October 18, 2022, Ugandan President H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni delivered a keynote address during African Energy Week which took place in Cape Town, South Africa between October 18 and…
Easygoing bonobos accepting of outsiders, study says
Bonobos, sometimes referred to as the "hippies" of the ape kingdom, have long been known for their relatively peaceful relations within core family groups. But there’s been less consensus about…
‘Disclose the deal,’ East Africa pipeline opponents say (commentary)
The East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) will have vast consequences for Uganda’s people and biodiversity – as well as the planet. But ordinary citizens are being kept in the…
Chimps digging wells shows learned behavior that may help amid climate change
There are moments in researchers’ lives when they realize the significance of something they hadn’t paid much thought to in the past. For primatologist Catherine Hobaiter and her team, one…
Ugandan court hands Congolese parrot trafficker seven-year jail sentence
On May 12, a judge in Uganda's specialized court for wildlife crimes sentenced Bob Mbaya Kabongo to a seven year jail term for smuggling 122 African grey parrots into the…
Tropical mammals under rising chemical pollution pressure, study warns
Primates and other tropical wildlife are increasingly being exposed to pesticides pharmaceuticals, plastics, nanoparticles and other synthetic materials, but adverse impacts on these animals have been little studied.
Road projects threaten integrity of Uganda’s mountain gorilla stronghold
Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park is a sanctuary for half of the world’s remaining population of endangered mountain gorillas, alongside forest elephants and many other species. But two road projects…
Patrols work, but community-based conservation needs a rethink, study shows
Uganda’s Kibale National Park is a primate haven, home to 13 primate species, including chimpanzees. And while these great apes and monkey species are frequently ensnared in traps laid out…
Cold case: Half-hearted prosecution lets ivory traffickers escape in Uganda
In January 2019, authorities in Uganda intercepted a shipment of nearly 4 tons of elephant ivory and pangolin scales on its way to the capital, Kampala, from the neighboring Democratic…
Call for COVID rules that reduced infections in gorilla parks to remain
Stricter measures implemented to protect endangered mountain gorillas from COVID-19 should be made permanent long after the pandemic has passed, conservationists say, citing a significant drop in respiratory infections among…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- In Brazil’s Amazon, land invasions — and fires — threaten a protected reserve
- A Guatemalan reserve turns from civil war refuge to deforestation hotspot
- Narco activity takes heavy toll on Colombia’s protected forests, satellite data show
- Photos confirm narcotraffickers operating in Peru’s Kakataibo Indigenous Reserve
Oceans
- Plan for close season rings alarm bells for Liberia’s artisanal fishers
- Lab-grown corals resisted bleaching during Caribbean’s worst marine heat wave
- Six months after first Houthi ship sinking, attacks slick Red Sea with oil
- $35m debt-for-nature deal aims to protect Indonesia’s coral reefs
Amazon Conservation
- 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
- Extreme drought pushes Amazon’s main rivers to lowest-ever levels
Land rights and extractives
- Peruvian logger loses FSC label after latest clash with isolated Mashco Piro
- In the DRC, a government commission is taking funds owed to people relocated by mines
- 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
- 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
- To build its ‘green’ capital city, Indonesia runs a road through a biodiverse forest
