Organised crime with a link to the illegal harvesting, processing and trading of fish and seafood globally is so huge that it is in effect a parallel economic system that is undermining sustainable economic growth. “Countries are being deprived of taxes; citizens of jobs, food and income; and fisheries and environments are being destroyed. Africa [...]
Only one elephant remains in the Knysna forest and surrounding fynbos: a mature female. There is enormous pathos and tragedy in this finding as she is the last truly wild, free roaming elephant in South Africa and the southernmost in the world. The finding was recently published in a scientific article titled And Then There [...]
“India is rapidly gearing up its blue economy and its ocean sciences research,” says Hyderabad-based Dr Satheesh Shenoi, director of the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services, and co-chairperson of the IIOE-2 steering committee. “We are building more ports and harbours so that many more goods can be transported by ship, which is far [...]
Bottlenose and common dolphins, the endangered Indian Ocean humpback dolphin, southern right, humpback and Bryde’s whales, South Africa has them all, and people come from all over the world to experience them up close in the oceans off our south-east coastline, where boat-based whale-watching operators offer up close encounters with our dolphins and whales. Over [...]
From 3 to 7 December 2018, experts from all over the world are meeting in Geneva to develop a globally binding agreement on marine plastic pollution and to stop the deluge of plastics in all natural environments. Globally, WWF is one of the key actors driving the plastic initiative to convince governments to endorse a global [...]
In September, Afrikan Farms (Pty) Ltd, situated in Amersfoort, Mpumalanga, was announced the winner of the Agricultural Research Council’s National Commercial Beef Producer of the Year for 2018. In October Afrikan farms received the Pick n Pay Rudd Award for The Producer With The Most Progress Shown Over The Last Decade. The founder and Chairperson [...]
By Heather Dugmore Africa’s unique megaherbivores - elephants, rhinos and hippos - could potentially play a major role in mitigating climate change, says Distinguished Professor Graham Kerley, Director of the Centre for African Conservation Ecology at Nelson Mandela University. He is one of six authors of a paper attracting global attention that was published on [...]
Stocks of some of our iconic angling fish species – such as red and white steenbras, black musselcracker, dageraad, kabeljou (kob) and seventy-four – are now so overexploited that they fall within the red list of threatened species as tracked by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Professor Nadine Strydom a marine [...]
Algoa Bay in South Africa’s Eastern Cape has unusually large group sizes of common and bottlenose dolphins. The reason for this is being researched by dolphin and whale (cetacean) specialist, Dr Stephanie Plön, an ocean health researcher from the Earth Stewardship Science Research Institute at Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth. “My research team and [...]
A plant with perfectly shaped silver-green baubles, called silver brunia, that is endemic to South Africa’s Cape Floral Kingdom has been dubbed ‘white gold’ because of its escalating market demand in the East. This plant is focusing attention on the more than 9 000 indigenous plant species in the Cape Floral Kingdom. Broadly known as fynbos, [...]
