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.
People – nature relationships
Wildlife crime has many threads. It’s entangled in the very fabric of our society and we must get to grips with its subtleties if we hope to unpick it. Maxcine Kater reports.
Apart from a skeleton at the Durban Natural Science Museum, a mummified head and foot at the Oxford Museum of Natural History in England and no doubt some bits and bobs in other collections, little remains of the dodo.
Environmental scientists should step out of their silos if they want their research to make an impact, says Duncan MacFadyen, head of Oppenheimer Generations Research and Conservation.
Many of South Africa’s cash-strapped and sometimes poorly managed provincial parks risk collapse and new ways must be found to sustain them. We can do this by learning from successes and failures elsewhere on the continent.
Support from wealthy individuals helps conserve our natural spaces and wildlife. But there are limitations …
Four in every five of us worldwide depend on medicinal plants for their primary healthcare. But are Africa’s traditional healers, the source of many of these cures, benefiting? These and other environmental and conservation questions are expected to be raised by Kenyan forest ecologist, Dr Doris Mutta at next week’s Oppenheimer Research Conference (4 to 6 October).
Yves Vanderhaeghen interviews the team spearheading an operation to rid Marion Island of mice which are annihilating seabirds and other life.
Generations of coal miners relied on canaries in cages as an early-warning system to detect toxic or explosive gases. The birds, being more sensitive than humans, would die or get sick first, giving miners a chance to escape or put on protective breathing equipment.
Amid the increasingly bloody poaching conflict, a more nurturing approach is required to further rhino conservation, says a former head of conservation at SA National Parks.