MINAWAO, Cameroon — On market day in the Minawao refugee camp, every necessity is spread out beneath the mid-morning sun: vegetables, dried fish, soap, new and used clothes, farm implements.…
MINAWAO, Cameroon — The refugee camp comes to life soon after dawn, some residents shouldering tools and exchanging greetings as they head out to the small farms they've established on…
Lazarus Nwobegai, who holds a government permit to harvest timber around Mount Cameroon National Park, knows perfectly well it's illegal to hunt the chimpanzees and other threatened primates that live…
Today we look at two new studies of African wildlife using bioacoustics and take a listen to some of the recordings informing that research. Listen here: Bioacoustics combines biology and…
In Gribe, a village located in southeastern Cameroon, the Indigenous Baka of Dimgba are one of dozens of hunter-gatherer groups of the Congo basin diversifying their food sources to maintain…
CROSS RIVER STATE, Nigeria — Sampson Akoba's long career as a ranger has left him with a wealth of assorted memories: hunters’ revolts, the death of his nephew in a…
On October 6, Cameroon's minister of forestry and wildlife, Jules Doret Ndongo, will appear at a one-day conference focused on protecting the richly biodiverse forests of Central Africa. Yet his…
When a towering African zebrawood tree falls in the forest, it certainly makes a sound. During a survey of the Ebo forest from August 2020 to March 2021, Eric Nana…
On today's episode of the Mongabay Newscast we’re discussing great ape conservation in Africa and how that goes hand-in-hand with efforts to protect the second-largest rainforest in the world. Listen…
For the past four years Marie-Cresence Ngobo has travelled between the scattered villages bordering the giant oil palm plantations run by Socapalm (Société Camerounaise des Palmeraies), which are located in Cameroon’s rural coastal…
The Cameroon prime minister’s office recently announced it was suspending plans to log Ebo Forest, a large intact forest system in southwestern Cameroon that spans 200,000 hectares (about 500,000 acres),…
Fifteen years ago, Ekwoge Abwe was trekking through Ebo Forest in Cameroon when he heard something cracking in the distance. He scanned the forest, searching for the source of the…
Over recent years there have been high profile legal challenges, investigative articles in the media, and important reports on the relationship between conservationists and Indigenous peoples. In the latest of…
Using the customizable app ForestLink, traditional forest guardians (people living within and around the forest) can send near-real-time, geo-tagged alerts about illegal logging and mining activities to authorities and other…
There are only about 300 Cross River gorillas left in the world, making them the rarest subspecies of gorilla, or indeed any great ape. But in late June, a camera…
MBONJO, Cameroon — The first time Emmanuel Elong wrote a letter to Vincent Bolloré was in 2013. “The impact of the group that you are controlling on our lives is…
Between 1885 and 1908, Belgium’s King Leopold II exerted control over a vast area of Africa that would later become the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His rule was characterized…
In mid-December 2019, a team of veterinarians and caregivers looked on as a gorilla named Freedom quickly disappeared out of sight, the pounding of his feet on the forest floor…
2019 closed out a "lost decade" for the world's tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments,…
KRIBI, Cameroon — Alarm flashed through Cameroon's conservation community in mid-September, when images of untidy rows of black polythene bags in a freshly bulldozed gash in the rainforest made the…
On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we speak with Katie Baker, a reporter for Buzzfeed News investigating allegations of human rights violations and other abuses committed against local indigenous…
It was the “next new frontier” for palm oil. A “mutually beneficial relationship” that would be a win-win for struggling nations in Africa and multinational producers running out of land…
The world’s largest known living frog species doesn’t build ordinary nests. It does a lot of heavy lifting, sometimes moving large stones and rocks weighing more than half its weight…
Earlier this year, the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet and Health published its version of a sustainable diet that could feed the nearly 10 billion people expected to inhabit the…
Halcyon Agri Corp, the world’s largest rubber processor, is taking steps toward a more sustainable and transparent natural rubber supply chain following vocal public outcries from environmental NGOs last year.…
This week, Norway released the 2018 investment holdings of its massive government pension fund. Notably absent were four plantation companies previously listed in the portfolio: Olam International, Halcyon Agri Corp,…
DJOUM, Cameroon — “This right there used to be hell.” It’s early February 2019, deep in the tropical rainforest in southeastern Cameroon, the day after a night of heavy downpour.…
Africa’s Congo Basin is home to the second-largest rainforest on the planet. But according to a new study, this may soon not be the case. It finds that at current…
Nearly 70 years ago, Edwin Ujor of the Nigerian Forestry Service collected a specimen of a tree from a forest high up in the Bamenda highlands in Cameroon. The specimen…
Southern Cameroon is home to some of the most biodiverse areas of African rainforest. It’s also home to a massive area of deforestation destined for rubber cultivation – right across…
