For the first time in its 77-year history a British animal welfare organisation has awarded a gold medal for honorable service to a rat, an African Giant Pouched Rat named Magawa working to detect landmines in Cambodia. UPDATE JANUARY 2022: Landmine detection hero rat Magawa has sadly died.   In 2016, the same medal, also […]

In May 2017 we (GroundUp) took photos of Cape Town’s dam levels at the height of the drought. This is what the Berg River looked like then: And this is what it looked like on Saturday: And below is what Theewaterskloof, which can hold more than half of Cape Town’s water at capacity, looked like […]

The Zimbabwean government has banned mining inside national parks, after reports surfaced that two Chinese companies had been granted rights to mine for coal in Hwange National Park and conservationists and lawyers kicked into gear to stop it. “Mining on areas held by National Parks is banned with immediate effect. Steps are being undertaken to […]

The Vaal Dam has continued to fall this week, hitting levels unseen since the beginning of 2017, when large parts of the country were in the grip of a devastating drought. But other dams feeding the north of the country have kept good levels. “As the Vaal Dam persists to drop week-on-week, it now hovers […]

When conservationist Menzi Nxumalo spoke to people in rural KwaZulu-Natal, he struggled to communicate with them, even though they were speaking the same language. “We’d go to communities and try to communicate to them about the impact of invasive species, but we failed to deliver the message because of the communication failure,” he explains. Government […]

Between July and August 2020, 10 critically endangered African White-Backed Vultures have tragically been discovered dead in four separate incidents in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Thanks to special GPS tracking units, these are helping identify what the threats to the species are… which unfortunately appear to be man-made threats. Of the 10 deceased birds, four […]

Today is a big day for vulture conservation, with Wildlife Act and Raptor Rescue in South Africa, as they will be releasing three rehabilitated African White-backed vulture back into the wild after they were poisoned in Zululand last year. (Watch video at bottom of page of a vulture being released.) In spite of lockdown, conservation […]

South African youth from various formations have called on the Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries, Barbara Creecy, to ensure that economic recovery from Covid-19 is just, green, inclusive and youth and gender-responsive. Creecy today hosted a virtual Youth Environment and Sustainability Dialogue, where young South Africans presented a wide range of ideas and suggestions […]

In celebration of World Oceans Day yesterday, Shark Attack reached out to members of the public to get their views on the “bather safety nets” – aka shark nets – in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. There are currently 37 beaches along the KZN coastline that have “shark safety” gear installed. This shark safety gear is […]

Every year, the world produces about 300 million tonnes of plastic. Somewhere between 5 million and 12 million tonnes of it finds its way into the oceans, according to a 2015 study by Jenna Jambeck and colleagues. But only a tiny fraction of that is estimated to be floating at sea – around 200,000 to […]

At least 139 cases of fraud, corruption and irregular expenditure have been found in the Department of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation, which has found wasteful expenditure of R16.5 billion during Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s tenure. In a meeting today, Sisulu, who was appointed a year ago, said that there was a “huge backlog” in investigations […]

Appeals against plans for a huge new wind farm on the West Coast have been dismissed by environment minister Barbara Creecy, paving the way for the addition of up to 140 megawatts of renewable energy into the national grid. John Yeld reports. This is the Juno Wind Energy Facility, planned for a farm in the […]

Cape Town, South Africa, has been buzzing this week with the arrival in Hout Bay of another super pod of dolphins. (In April, local residents under lockdown were entertained by thousands of dolphins swimming in the bay.) UPDATE: Super pod of dolphins swims into Hout Bay, South Africa on 23 April 2021. Cape Town resident […]

On New Year’s Eve 2018, an arsonist started a fire in Betty’s Bay, a small town in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The fire consumed more than 12 000 hectares of vegetation, most of it mountain fynbos. Fynbos is a type of species-rich vegetation characterised by the presence of restios, ericas (heaths) and proteas. In […]

A conservation biologist from South Africa has won a prestigious Whitley Award worth £40,000 to support her quest to save threatened amphibians… in a “giant leap for amphibian conservation”. Jeanne Tarrant, known locally as the “Frog Lady”, works for the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), where she manages the Threatened Amphibian Programme. EWT is the only […]

An abundance of snow fell again last night in southern Africa, turning mountain slopes in Lesotho into a winter wonderland. Check out the gorgeous photos and videos below by Martin Schultz at Afriski Mountain Resort. Afriski Director, Peter Peyper, said “we have received more snow during April this year than we did in the past […]

An intense hail storm on farms in the vicinity of Uhlenhorst in the Kalahari Desert last week, to the south-east of Rehoboth, covered a large swathe of land with a thick layer of ice and turned the countryside into an instant winter wonderland… writes Niël Terblanché from Informanté. The huge amount of falling ice flayed […]

The earth’s oceans are under grave threat, writes Kira Erwin. Scientists in many fields have pointed to the large-scale negative shifts brought about by human-made pollutants, mining and overfishing. How people now choose to behave, make collective decisions and build solidarity around the health of oceans has an impact not just on our own species […]

South African-based Blood Lions and the Humane Society International are two of the 241 conservation bodies around the world that have appealed to the World Health Organisation to publicly confirm the serious threat of live wildlife markets to human health, as evidenced by the Coronavirus pandemic. In a joint interview this week, some of them […]

Two Saturdays ago, while most of us were sleeping, a group of South African Water Warriors headed across the country to deliver food, fodder, water and hope to desperate strangers they’ve never met in the Northern Cape town of Kenhardt, one of many places in South Africa still gripped by drought and despair that’s so […]

Heritage Western Cape has slammed the study on which the developers based their proposed R4-billion property development at the River Club in Observatory, Cape Town. The Heritage Impact Assessment conducted by Liesbeek Leisure Properties Trust, which owns the land, is inadequate, flawed, unsubstantiated, problematic, and fails to address the requirements of the Heritage Resources Act, […]

An existing wind farm is crying foul after the government last month gave the conditional go-ahead for a massive new wind farm project on an adjoining property on the West Coast Peninsula near Vredenburg. The West Coast One wind farm, that has been operating since 2015, says the huge turbines of the recently approved Boulders Wind Energy […]

Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) has demanded that the City of Cape Town take immediate action against the sewage pollution in Milnerton lagoon. OUTA announced on 11 February that it had sent a letter to the City to ask for a meeting. The objective of the meeting is to present residents’ solutions to the pollution […]

Western Cape YouTuber Adam Spires posted a video last week appearing to expose the pollution being washed into the Atlantic Ocean in iconic Cape Town. Spire’s aerial footage (which he calls “shocking”) seems to show sewage pouring into the ocean of one of the most popular holiday destinations in the world… BUT, according to the […]

In listing 32 wild animal species as farm animals under the Animal Improvement Act in 2019, the Department of Agriculture went against the recommendations of the government’s own scientific authority. The scientific report on wildlife breeding was called for by the former Minister of Environmental Affairs (DEFF) and authored by 14 of the country’s top wildlife scientists. […]