There’s little as rare as a rere’s egg on Madagascar. So when Chris Ransom, the Director of Field Programmes at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, announces that they’ve had a few eggs hatch it’s huge news. “We got quite excited,” he says. “We haven’t managed to breed them at our Ampijoroa breeding facility since 2017, but this year we managed. That was a real achievement”.
Yves Vanderhaeghen
Can tracking mouse footprints give clues to climate change? Yves Vanderhaeghen speaks to the founders of WildTrack, which is pioneering technology in South Africa to track small mammals so they can tell us about disruptions to ecosystems.
In the midst of political alliances with coal lobbyists, environmentalists are urging strategic voting and active citizenship to address the deepening climate crisis and stave off the collapse of natural systems.
There’s no disguising it; researchers have rumbled the elusive, shapeshifting, mimic octopus off the coast of Mozambique for the first time, thousands of kilometres away from what has up to now been considered its habitat.
The sacred Osun River in Nigeria has recorded the highest measured level of microplastics in a river in the world, and researchers are calling for a ban on single-use plastics.
The ethologist and environmentalist Dr Jane Goodall thinks big and acts small to solve global problems. “If we can’t save the planet, we can’t save Africa,” she told a select audience of scientists at the Wits Origins Centre in Johannesburg.
“Why is Africa not producing more carbon credits?” asked Matthew Child of Rewild Capital during a panel discussion at COP28 in Dubai on restoring ecosystems and boosting wildlife economies.
It’s not just about saving the whales, or hugging a tree, but also about making a robust case for the value of the environment and the benefits that ecosystems provide, said Dipak Patel, the head of climate finance and innovation in the SA Presidential Climate Commission, at COP28.
A panel hosted by the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) on the fourth day of COP28 in Dubai agreed that the risks of energy transition are high if not well managed, and that participation by all stakeholders – civil society, government, communities and the private sector – is needed to make it work.
Kiara Worth, official photographer for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at COP28, refers to climate negotiations as a thing of beauty, and a giveaway that one is dealing with an irrepressible optimist.