Wildlife News

[Seychelles News Agency] Seychelles has become a member of the Ocean Panel, an initiative that allows world leaders to work towards a sustainable ocean economy among others.

[Capital FM] Nairobi -- Naivasha Water and Sewerage Company (NAIVAWASCO) employees are calling for a relocation of the hippos from Lake Naivasha following the death of their colleague after a hippo attacked him.

[Daily Maverick] A draft government policy proposes to end the keeping of lions for commercial purposes, as well as phasing out intensive commercial breeding of rhinos and regulating leopard hunting.

[The Conversation Africa] Everybody who visits Kasanka National Park in Zambia during "bat season" agrees that the evening emergence of African straw-coloured fruit bats from their roost site is one of the wildlife wonders of the world. The bats (Eidolon helvum) arrive at Kasanka every year around October. The numbers swell rapidly until they peak in November. By January they are gone again.

[VOA] Gaborone, Botswana -- Southern African countries that allow trophy hunting are relieved after a bill seeking to ban the import of legally obtained wildlife trophies from Africa into the United Kingdom was blocked in the House of Lords this week.

[VOA] Blantyre, Malawi -- Residents in areas surrounding Malawi's Kasungu National Park are criticizing two wildlife organizations for allegedly enabling deadly elephant incursions.

[RFI] Conservationists have confirmed the number of rhinos across Africa increased last year, hailing the first bit of "good news" in a decade for an animal heavily threatened by poaching.

[Independent (Kampala)] Kampala, Uganda -- It is about 6am on a cool early morning when Sam Mwandha, the executive director of the Uganda Wildlife Authority flags off 18 teams comprising four members each from the tail-end of the Pakuba Airstrip runway in the northern sector of Murchison Falls National Park.

[Botswana Daily News] New York -- Innovative solutions are necessary to address human/wildlife conflict in the Kavango Zambezi (KAZA) Transfrontier Conservation Area, inadvertently caused in part by good conservation policies of governments in the area, including that of Botswana.

[SAnews.gov.za] Members of the public are invited to submit their comments on the draft Policy Position on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Elephant, Lion, Leopard and Rhinoceros.

[The Conversation Africa] With all the terrible news on climate change, it's easy to lose track of what's happening with particular species. So, in case you missed it, a new report has bad news for Earth's five surviving species of rhino.

[The Conversation Africa] Invertebrates are often described by experts as the "little things that run the world", and ants are certainly one of the top contenders for this role. Ants help ecosystems to function normally and the total weight of all ants on Earth is roughly equivalent to 1.4 billion people, or 33 Empire State Buildings.

[New Times] The Rwanda Forestry Authority has initiated a study to investigate the factors contributing to the withering of forests in Southern Province, specifically in the region referred to as Amayaga.

[VOA] Gaborone, Botswana -- Botswana has put restrictions on the movement of cloven-hoofed animals in the northeast of the country after an incursion of buffalo from Zimbabwe put cattle at risk of contracting possible foot-and-mouth disease.

[The Conversation Africa] The world is losing animals at an alarming rate due to habitat degradation, climate change and illegal human activities in the wildlife protected areas. In fact, it is estimated that, by 2100, more than half of Africa's bird and mammal species could be lost.

[New Times] Comedian and television icon Ellen DeGeneres is set to return to the silver screen nearly one year and a half after she announced her retirement from her talk show. But this time, she returns to debut her documentary on her conservation work in Rwanda.

[Capital FM] Nairobi -- Deputy President William Ruto has gaffed again, this time telling Columbian investors that there are Tigers in Kenya.

[VOA] Gaborone, Botswana -- The Botswana government responded to criticism from an anti-hunting activist, saying the number of elephants legally killed by hunters since the lifting of a hunting ban in 2019 is negligible.

[Daily Maverick] When two orcas arrived in False Bay, Cape Town, great white shark sightings dropped dramatically. Eight years later, the sharks still haven't returned.

[Daily Maverick] In what will likely be the world's largest mass translocation of rhinos, conservation groups are planning to move 300 rhinos a year for the next 10 years to locations across South Africa and elsewhere on the rest of the continent.

[Daily Maverick] The purchase of pachyderm patriarch John Hume's 2,000 white rhinos and his breeding project by African Parks for an undisclosed sum was likely just the tip of the expenditure iceberg. Maintaining the project and gradually translocating the animals over the next decade could conceivably cost up to or even more than R1bn.

[allAfrica] Harare -- The Tanzanian airports regulator denied permitting the smuggling of wildlife from a park in the northern part of the country to Middle Eastern countries, BBC reports.

[Independent (Kampala)] Special Report -- After a failed rhino farming business left 2000 southern white rhinos in danger, an African game park specialist has stepped in to assist. African Parks will "re-wild" the rhinos, according to Peter Fearnhead, the organisation's CEO.

[AIM] Mabote -- Mozambique's Zinave National Park (PNZ), in the southern province of Inhambane, which is part of the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park, is now successfully breeding rhinoceros.

[Daily Maverick] The unusual cargo of 18 giraffes that landed in Brazil in 2021 has resulted in a years-long scandal, shrouded in police investigations and allegations of animal mistreatment after four of them died.

[The Conversation Africa] South Africa is renowned for having one of the world's biggest populations of great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias). Substantial declines have been observed, however, in places where the sharks normally gather on the coast of the Western Cape province. Sharks congregate at these locations to feed, interact socially, or rest.

[Daily Maverick] When John Hume put his 2,000 rhino up for auction in April, he didn't receive a single bid. On Monday night, the NGO African Parks announced it would purchase the world's largest population of privately owned white rhinos, which will be 'rewilded' over 10 years.

[DW] Conservation activists hope to return 2,000 white rhinos to the wild in the coming decade after purchasing the "Platinum Rhino" breeding operation.

[African Parks] Johannesburg -- African Parks has purchased the world's largest captive rhino breeding operation in a bid to rescue and rewild the rhino to safe and well-managed protected areas across Africa.

[Ghanaian Times] The Forestry Commission (FC) will arrest and prosecute persons who would flout the closed season on hunting of wild animals in the country.