South Africa announced its first decrease in rhino poaching since 2007, but an increase in the number of rhinos killed in neighboring countries offsets this slight improvement. The South African government confirmed 1,175 rhinos were lost in the country in 2015—slightly down from 1,215 in the previous year.
In a groundbreaking study, a WWF-led team discovered Africa’s longest land mammal migration. The migration of Plains (or Burchell's) Zebra stretches from Namibia to Botswana—a distance of more than 300 miles roundtrip.
The maize harvest is a crucial source of food for the Kakwenga family in but erratic rains and raids by elephants make a good harvest problematic. Farmers can’t guard their crops twenty-four hours a day so they have started using chili bombs—a mixture of ingredients which give off a spicy, pungent smell that offends elephants’ sensitive trunks and drives them away from crops.
The people of Namibia possess a hard-to-grasp reverence for their landscape. No matter how little rain falls on the southern African country, or how strongly an unforgiving sun bakes the earth, or how swirly dust devils get when they whip across dry river beds, Namibians still respect the natural assets that surround them.
Tracking animals by satellite may seem extreme, but it has become a regular part of conservation science. The work is typically done with GPS collars that provide the geographic coordinates of an animal’s location so scientists can observe and analyze its movements.
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