Africa

Coffee, Ethiopia & Change

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Growing coffee provides income for about 15 percent of Ethiopia’s population and is the country’s top export. Climate change is likely to shrink the land suitable for coffee, thereby also hurting the livelihoods of many people.
Courtesy of Emily Garthwaite

Change is almost never easy. Then there is climate change. Daunting, but we cannot stop considering the implications and the options. The planet may recover in geological time, the underlying logic of those who promote denial of the urgency, but plenty of people are at risk in real time, so no option but to keep focus.

Thanks to the salt, at National Public Radio (USA) for a reminder of coffee‘s relationship with conservation, a reminder of Ethiopia in general, which is always welcome, and especially Ethiopia’s relationship with one of our favorite beverages:

Ethiopia’s Coffee Farmers Are ‘On The Front Lines Of Climate Change’

by Courtney Columbus

Ethiopia gave the world Coffea arabica, the species that produces most of the coffee we drink these days. Today, the country is the largest African producer of Arabica coffee. The crop is the backbone of the country’s economy – some 15 million Ethiopians depend on it for a living. Continue reading →

The Sun Over Africa Is Powerful

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In eighteen months, entrepreneurs brought electricity to hundreds of thousands of people in places that the grid failed to reach. Illustration by Oliver Munday / Photographs courtesy Mathieu Young / Off-Grid Electric

The author has been featured in our pages mainly as an activist, but it is good to see he has returned to the New Yorker as a reporter, writer, and keen observer:

The Race to Solar-Power Africa

American startups are competing to bring electricity to communities that remain off the grid.

By Bill McKibben

The cacao-farming community of Daban, in Ghana, is seven degrees north of the equator, and it’s always hot. In May, I met with several elders there to talk about the electricity that had come to the town a few months earlier, when an American startup installed a solar microgrid nearby. Continue reading →

Droning Over Wetlands

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Thanks to The Nature Conservancy’s Cool Green Science team for helping us realize we almost missed this story:

Flight Over the Bas-Ogooué: Using Drones to Map Gabon’s Wetlands

BY JUSTINE E. HAUSHEER

How do you map a nearly inaccessible 9,000-square-kilometer African wetland that is home to hippos, forest elephants, crocodiles, and the notorious Gaboon viper?

Enter the drones.

Nature Conservancy scientists are using unmanned aerial vehicles to create the first-ever detailed wetlands habitat map of coastal Gabon, in collaboration with scientists from NASA, and other conservation groups working in Gabon. Continue reading →

National Park of the Week: Ruaha National Park, Tanzania

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As Tanzania’s largest national park, Ruaha National Park boasts of untouched and unexplored ecosystems at the center of Tanzania. The 20,226 sq km park is the watershed between the Mzombe and the Great Ruaha rivers, with a distinctive escarpment, above which are large stretches of miombo woodland. Below lie undulating plains of dry bush country to treeless grasslands, swamps and evergreen forests, all with sand rivers intersecting through them. Continue reading →

New Mosquito Trap Tested With Mixed Success

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A mosquito trap that runs on solar electricity and mimics human odor as bait. Credit Alexandra Hiscox via NYTimes

We’ve seen solar power used for many things here, but not yet as a source of power for insect trapping.  On the island of Rusinga in Lake Victoria, Kenya, scientists from the Netherlands, Kenya, and Switzerland tested new traps that use electricity from solar panels to release a chemical similar to the carbon dioxide we exhale (which attracts mosquitos) and a blend of chemicals that mimic human odor (which also draws in the blood-suckers) as bait for the disease-bearing biters. From the New York Times:

Although the traps appeared quite effective at lowering mosquito populations, they had some significant drawbacks.

Because they need power from rooftop solar panels, they are relatively expensive. Still, the panels appealed to residents who could also use them to power a light bulb or charge a cellphone.

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Honeyguide Relationship can Include Talking

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Greater Honeyguide specimen used in Cornell’s Ornithology course (photo and handling by a teaching assistant)

When I took Cornell’s course in ornithology, we learned about all the bird families in the world to varying extent, often based on the number of species within each family or how interesting they were to our professor. One family that we did not cover with great depth, but which was considered a “cool” example of evolution that could either make for a fascinating science experiment or just good cocktail-party chatting––we were gently reminded that the latter shouldn’t always revolve around weird bird things––was Indicatoridae, or the honeyguides.

While not all members of this family are literally guides to honey, one species in particular, the Greater Honeyguide, is well known for actually showing (or indicating) the way to beehives, where humans can harvest honey and the birds can eat larvae and wax. In this week’s edition of Science, researchers from Cambridge University and University of Cape Town published a paper revealing that the wild birds can actually be better guides when they receive a certain signal from the human honey-hunters. Nicola Davis reports:  Continue reading →

Kenya Burns Over 100 Tons of Illegal Ivory

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Kenya will burn about 105 tonnes of elephant ivory and 1.5 tonnes of rhino horn in 11 large pyres, about seven times the amount previously burned in a single event. Photograph: Ben Curtis/AP via The Guardian

We featured poaching a few weeks ago here, in the case of primates, and we have discussed the illegal ivory trade and other endangered wildlife on the black market before. This weekend, Fiona Harvey reports for the Guardian, Kenya burned a massive amount of tusks from poached elephants, in a symbolic act of destruction that presumably cost the black market millions of dollars, and thousands of elephants their lives:

Tusks from more than 6,000 illegally killed elephants will be burned in Kenya on Saturday, the biggest ever destruction of an ivory stockpile and the most striking symbol yet of the plight of one of nature’s last great beasts.

The ceremonial burning in Nairobi national park at noon will be attended by Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, heads of state including Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, high-ranking United Nations and US officials, and charities. A wide network of conservation groups around the world have sent messages applauding the work.

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New Mouse Lemur Species Found

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Microcebus ganzhorni is named in honor of the Hamburg ecologist Prof. Jörg Ganzhorn who has worked on ecology and conservation in Madagascar for more than thirty years. Photo by G. Donati via Mongabay.

Madagascar is a place of wonder and near-fantastical wildlife, though sadly many of their ecosystems are at risk, as referenced in this UNESCO World Heritage Site post. So it’s no surprise to read that new species are being found there. Mike Garowecki reports for Mongabay:

There are now 24 known species of mouse lemur, all of them found in Madagascar.

Scientists with the German Primate Center (DPZ), the University of Kentucky, the American Duke Lemur Center, and Madagascar’s Université d’Antananarivo have found three new species of mouse lemurs that live in the South and East of Madagascar. They described the new species — Microcebus boraha, Microcebus ganzhorni, and Microcebus manitatra — in the journal Molecular Ecology.

Though their name and appearance might suggest that they are rodents, mouse lemurs are in fact primates. What’s more, all mouse lemur species look extremely similar: they are small, nocturnal animals with brown fur and large eyes. It was only through the use of advanced methods that allow for more precise measurements of genetic differences that the team of researchers was able to establish the three new species.

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WWF Reports Half of World Heritage Sites Put at Risk by Development

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Ambatotsondrona cliffs, in the Marojejy National Park of Madagascar. This park is one of several included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site named Rainforests of the Atsinanana, which has been declared In Danger. Photo by Jeff Gibbs via WikiMedia Commons

We deeply care about UNESCO World Heritage Sites anywhere on the globe, and believe they can be a great conservation tool, so reading that the World Wildlife Fund thinks almost three times more of the Sites are threatened than UNESCO lists as “In Danger” is worrisome, to say the least. Fiona Harvey reports for the Guardian:

Close to half of the sites around the world designated for special protection as areas of outstanding importance for nature are now being threatened by industrial development, a new survey has shown.

The sites, which include Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon in the US, and China’s giant panda sanctuaries in Szechuan, are all supposed to be protected under the United Nations’ designated world heritage status. But encroachments from industries, including fossil fuel exploration and illegal logging, are threatening to destroy the valuable habitats, the conservation charity WWF said on Wednesday.

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The Nechisar Nightjar

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Cover Art © Pegasus Books

Although I haven’t read this book yet, I do know what it’s like to be on an expedition to find a bird that hasn’t been seen in several decades, which is the subject of Vernon Head’s book, freshly published in the US this month. “The Rarest Bird in the World” tells the story of the search for a bird related to potoos called the Nechisar Nightjar, which had been identified as a new species in the 1990s by Cambridge scientists who found a single wing of the bird in a remote area of Ethiopia.

The publisher blurb makes it sound pretty engaging:

Part detective story, part love affair, and pure adventure storytelling at its best, a celebration of the thrill of exploration and the lure of wild places during the search for the elusive Nechisar Nightjar. In 1990 an expedition of Cambridge scientists arrived at the Plains of Nechisar, tucked between the hills of the Great Rift Valley in the Gamo Gofa province in the country of Ethiopia. On that expedition they found three hundred and fifteen species of birds; sixty one species of mammal and sixty nine species of butterfly were identified; twenty species of dragonflies and damselflies; seventeen reptile species were recorded; three frog species were filed; plants were listed. And the wing of a road-killed bird was packed into a brown paper bag. It was to become the most famous wing in the world.

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To Keep The Mountain Gorillas Alive

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In November 2008, conservation authorities in the DRC had their first sighting of a mountain gorilla in more than 15 months. Because of the commitment and bravery of its rangers, the gorilla population is now estimated to be 880. PHOTO: BRENT STIRTON, GETTY

In November 2008, conservation authorities in the DRC had their first sighting of a mountain gorilla in more than 15 months. Because of the commitment and bravery of its rangers, the gorilla population is now estimated to be 880. PHOTO: BRENT STIRTON, GETTY

The Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the world’s deadliest parks. It’s also home to some 300 mountain gorillas—more than a quarter of those that remain on the planet. Beneath Virunga’s surface lies a wealth of minerals and oil, coveted by multinational companies. Deadliest park because since 1996, more than 150 Virunga rangers have been killed in the line of duty. Emmanuel de Merode, director of Virunga National Park and a National Geographic Society Explorer of the Year, was nearly killed in 2014 for protecting the park and its mountain gorillas.

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As Wild As It Gets

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Greg Carr says Gorongosa is a “human development and conservation project". PHOTO: BBC

Greg Carr says Gorongosa is a “human development and conservation project”. PHOTO: BBC

What does it take to restore a wildlife hotspot? To put some animals back in, develop and sustain the environment so more animals return, and hold up the model as a means to uplift communities, and thereby the nation? The answer is Gorongosa National Park – a Mozambican safari paradise.

In 1962, six-year-old Vasco Galante was treated to his first cinema trip – to see Charlton Heston in the Hollywood epic, The Ten Commandments. But despite the blockbuster’s eye-popping sequences, the images that most impressed young Vasco came from a short advert shown before the film, which showcased the elephants, lions and buffalo in the verdant floodplains of Gorongosa National Park – a Mozambican safari paradise once marketed as “the place where Noah left his Ark”.

As he left the Lisbon picture house, young Vasco vowed to visit the park one day, and more than 40 years later, he finally got the chance. But the park he encountered was a far cry from the Gorongosa of ’60s showreels that once attracted the likes of John Wayne, Joan Crawford and Gregory Peck. A brutal 15-year civil war in the aftermath of Mozambique’s independence from Portugal in 1975 had devastated much of the province, and Gorongosa, one of its key battle grounds, was almost destroyed.

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4,000 Years of Shared History

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The African baobab, though, is most widely distributed both in its home continent and in the neo-tropics where enslaved Africans were brought to work. PHOTO: Gavin Evans

The African baobab, though, is most widely distributed both in its home continent and in the neo-tropics where enslaved Africans were brought to work. PHOTO: Gavin Evans

The Baobab tree is a native African tree with numerous valuable advantages including food, shelter, clothing, medicines, hunting, fishing, water storage, etc. It is considered sacred and immortal and its species is as old as 5000 years.And some of this is heritage is shared with India as well.
In the French novella The Little Prince, the titular prince comes from a very small asteroid planet called B612 where soil is full of baobab seeds. He tells the author that if left to grow, the baobabs would become so numerous and huge that they could make the little planet explode.On Earth, though, baobabs are quite the opposite. Anyone living in Africa where baobabs grow to enormous sizes would be able to tell you about the numerous benefits the trees provide for humans and animals.They would probably describe the marvellous generosity of its trunk and its hospitality to many creatures, and extol the hardy and light fruit pod with its deliciously powdery pulp and nutritious seeds that remain fresh and edible over long periods of time.
But there is a mystery to baobabs, as they are also found in India. How did they get there?

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Cleaning Kenya’s Slums Through a Toilet Franchise

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Sanergy builds healthy, prosperous communities by making hygienic sanitation affordable and accessible throughout Africa's informal settlements.

Sanergy builds healthy, prosperous communities by making hygienic sanitation affordable and accessible throughout Africa’s informal settlements.

Innovations are intriguing, ones with the power to change lives more so. Add development of communities, better health and dignity of life to the equation and you can’t say no to knowing more. We are talking toilets. Do you know Caltech engineers and Kohler designers are testing a self-cleaning, solar-powered toilet that turns human waste into hydrogen and fertilizer? Then there’s Peepoople making ‘toilet bags’. Inside are chemicals that break down human waste into fertilizer, offering alternative sanitation in slums and refugee camps. Then there’s what Sanergy is doing in Kenya.

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Who Are You in the Wild?

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The Okavango Delta is home to the largest-remaining elephant population and keystone populations of lion, hyena, giraffe and lechwe antelopes. It’s the size of Texas, and visible from space. PHOTO: James Kydd

The Okavango Delta is home to the largest-remaining elephant population and keystone populations of lion, hyena, giraffe and lechwe antelopes. It’s the size of Texas, and visible from space. PHOTO: James Kydd

What can one man do towards protecting the wild? For starters, your efforts could center around saving Africa’s last remaining wetland wilderness. Then, you could be so relentless in your mission that UNESCO includes your ‘battleground’ in its World Heritage List. Then, you keep at your preservation project until you meet the Minister of Environment and get him to sign a pact on protecting the river system. If that all sounds good to you, allow us to introduce explorer Steve Boyes who has done all of the above and pledged his life to the conservation of the Okavango River Delta.

Located in northern Botswana, this untouched 18,000 square kilometer alluvial fan is the largest of its kind, and is supplied by the world’s largest undeveloped river catchment — the mighty Kavango Basin. The Okavango Delta is home to the largest-remaining elephant population and keystone populations of lion, hyena, giraffe and lechwe antelopes. It’s the size of Texas, and visible from space.

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What’s That You Hear on Uganda’s Streets?

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Uganda has the world’s youngest population, with over 78% below 30 years of age. PHOTO: campustimesug.com

Uganda has the world’s youngest population, with over 78% below 30 years of age. PHOTO: campustimesug.com

Uganda is a ‘young’ country if the above numbers are anything go by. And that makes the nation’s present population one that is acclimatized to he ways of the English language. A consequence of it is the development of a new language  – Luyaaye. Designated an Urban Youth Language (informal varieties, the new variant is a combination of mostly English, Sheng (a Swahili-based cant, originating among the urban underclass of Nairobi, Kenya), and other Sudanese languages. Now, why should anybody pay attention to this nascent dialect, that is less rigid than traditional languages and mainly involves word play? And should its dark past be forgotten, the one about the language helping criminals do their business?

“Programmes have been carried out to spread information about AIDS but even with increased dissemination there was a decrease in the take-up of that information,” she said. “When asked what would help, people said ‘speak our language’.

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Rosario Dawson, When You Come Back To Ghana, Come To Zaina Lodge!

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t-logo-190We are still a few months away from opening the doors, but every day we see the progress. This post is to share with our Raxa Collective and Zaina Lodge colleagues a welcome love letter from a celebrity who manages to put Ghana in the glossiest pages of the New York Times:

13dawson-pang-slide-GTZL-thumbWide-v2Rosario Dawson’s Adventures in Ghana, Celebrating Women and Her First Clothing Collection

By JEANINE CELESTE PANG

The actress shares with T the friendly faces behind Studio One Eighty Nine — and the many friends she encountered on a recent trip to Africa.

Jane Goodall, Journey On

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Michael Christopher Brown/Magnum, for The New York Times. Jane Goodall on Lake Tanganyika, offshore from Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.

Michael Christopher Brown/Magnum, for The New York Times. Jane Goodall on Lake Tanganyika, offshore from Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.

A journey to Greece in 1969 planted a seed in me that grew into my life’s ambition. Another in 1983 led to meeting Amie, and fusing our life’s ambitions together. Together we went to Costa Rica in 1995, which led to continuing our joint life’s journey abroad.

Jane Goodall Is Still Wild at Heart

By PAUL TULLIS

Half a century ago, she journeyed into the Tanzanian jungle to change how the world saw chimpanzees. Today the world’s most famous conservationist is on a mission to save their lives.

I believe in the power of a journey to change one’s life path. In the story that follows, this woman’s singular life’s journey is just one more example, albeit an extreme and heroic one, of why we believe in the power of a journey. She visited Cornell while I was a graduate student, and Amie and I were deeply moved by what she came to say. Seth was a one year old and Milo was not yet a “twinkle in the eye.”

The child-sized t-shirt we bought to support the Jane Goodall Institute with our limited graduate student funds was passed from older brother to younger until neither of them could fit into it any more, by which time we were well into our new lives in the emerging field of entrepreneurial conservation in Costa Rica.  In no small part, our family’s dedication to conservation is an unexpected outcome of a short journey across campus that Amie and I made to listen to Jane Goodall talk about her long life’s journey. Continue reading →

Food To Come Home To, Ghana Edition

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A joint expedition made up of two Zaina Lodge and two of our team members just concluded two weeks in Ethiopia sampling the best national parks, scouting for new locations in which to collaborate, and tasting foodways evolved over millennia. The Zaina duo at this moment are headed back to Ghana, and we can imagine they will appreciate this:

01mag-01eat.t_CA0-thumbStandardA Spicy Spinach Stew From Ghana

By FRANCIS LAM

Ghanaians living within bunting distance of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx can have a taste of home with this dish.

Ghana, One Of Our “It” Places For 2015 Discovery

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Jane Hahn for The New York Times. Jasir Robert Ryan-Lee, a descendant of Venture Smith, on the roof of the fort in Anomabo, Ghana, where his ancestor was held as a slave.

As Amie promised we will have much more to say as the countdown to the opening of Zaina Lodge continues apace since our first mention on this blog a couple years back. In fact, we are behind on stories from Ghana. Doug, where are you?

As we post this article from the current Travel section of the New York Times, a Raxa Collective team is preparing for an extended camping expedition in the Mole National Park, in the interest of discovering guest experiences that will be on offer when the Lodge opens. So, if Mr. Ryan-Lee and his mom choos to return to Ghana mid-2015 or later, and makes a visit to the wild interiors of the country, he will have another kind of life experience in store; meanwhile we appreciate his story and hope it will encourage others to follow in his footsteps to discover this hidden gem of a country:

On Slavery’s Doorstep in Ghana

By RUSSELL SHORTO

Descendants of Venture Smith, a famous slave who won freedom and success in America, return to the roots of his captivity.