CONAKRY — Over the next few months, Guinea’s environment ministry will review an environmental and social impact assessment for an iron ore mine in the country’s Nimba Mountains. The project, named Kon Kweni, is to be carved out of Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Comprising a unique combination of tropical forest and high-elevation savanna, the Nimba highlands are a biodiversity hotspot, home to dozens of endemic species. According to the environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA), these highlands would face “direct and major risks,” “irreversible damage,” and “threat to species survival” if the mining operations go ahead. The impact assessment is an essential step toward securing a mining permit and commencing operations on a project that has been in discussion since 2003, when Guinean mining company SMFG was founded. (The company acquired by U.S. miner Ivanhoe Atlantic in 2019.) Mongabay obtained a copy of the ESIA, a confidential document. The assessment was commissioned by Ivanhoe and carried out by Biotope, a French environmental consultancy, and reveals how Ivanhoe is planning to go about developing the Nimba concession and how the plan is projected to impact Nimba’s ecosystems. In the Mount Nimba Strict Forest Reserve, 2006. Image by Manfred Schweda via Wikicommons (CC BY-SA 4.0) Guinea’s environmental regulator, the AGEE, a branch of the environment ministry, will assess the project’s anticipated environmental impact and the company’s proposed plans to mitigate damage, alongside the precision and comprehensiveness of its assessments. Seydou Cissé, the AGEE director, said the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
DJOUROUTOU, Côte d’Ivoire — After a night of heavy rain, the chimpanzees of Taï Forest, in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire, like to sleep in. Early on a late May morning, chimpanzee guide Evariste Tere led a group of scientists and conservationists to a chimp group’s nesting site that he had marked with his GPS the previous evening. The humans set off at 4:30 a.m., then spent an hour and a half waiting for the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes ssp. verus) to wake up. Eventually, one of them did. Moisture gathered in her nest from the night’s rain gushed down, and then the other trees began to bend and creak as their occupants — one male, four females and a baby — stirred. One of the females, with the baby clinging to her belly, moved through the treetops to a bigger tree, then used the handholds and footholds of a strangler fig snaking its way up the trunk to reach the canopy. This didn’t seem to impress the male, who was already on the ground and, noticing the humans, wanted to get his group moving. He screamed angrily and beat his hands on the buttress root of a large tree so that the sound echoed through the forest like a drum. “He’s angry that they didn’t follow,” Tere said, adding that while Taï’s chimpanzees are used to seeing tourists, a group of five was bigger than normal, and the male did not want to linger. Instead, he would keep his charges moving until…This article was originally published on Mongabay
TAI NATIONAL PARK, Côte d’Ivoire — Environmental scientist Christine Kouman says she has always had a passion to take care of things that are overlooked or neglected. The West African slender-snouted crocodile and its habitat in what remains of the Upper Guinean Forest qualify on both fronts. Kouman, co-founder of a conservation NGO called EBURCO that is collaborating with authorities to protect and raise the profile of Taï National Park — a key stronghold of the slender-snouted crocodile (Mecistops cataphractus), — has studied this species in her native Côte d’Ivoire for more than a decade. Her work, which is supported by Project Mecistops, – has produced insights into this little-known species. The project is part of the Tropical Conservation Institute at Florida International University in the U.S. Mongabay recently accompanied Kouman on a night-time boat trip in Taï National Park, up the Hana River, a place where she has undertaken many hours of grueling fieldwork. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. The slender-snouted crocodile has adapted to its rainforest environment by basking on trees and rocks that protrude from the river. Image courtesy of Christine Kouman. Mongabay: Tell us something about the slender-snouted crocodile. Christine Kouman: I can say it’s a gentle crocodile, because it feeds mainly on fish, and I’ve never heard of the species attacking people. I’ve been working on them for more than 10 years now, and during those 10 years, I touched them, handled them, but I still have all my fingers and my…This article was originally published on Mongabay
TAÏ NATIONAL PARK, Côte d’Ivoire — The path that leads through the rainforest towards a nesting site for one of its most curious inhabitants is not made by humans but by animals. “It might be half a million years old, this animal path,” says Michele Menegon, a herpetologist and regular visitor to Taï National Park, in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire. It could of course be younger, he adds, but such a clear trail through the forest, following the contour of a ridge, is likely to be an ancient one — maintained by the passage of both Taï’s great and small, from forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) to diminutive antelopes like the Maxwell’s duiker (Philantomba maxwellii), whose piles of tiny black droppings are visible beside the path. The forest floor here is relatively clear of undergrowth. Dominant trees, supported by huge buttress roots, hold their canopies out of sight above; they restrict the sunlight and curtail the growth below. “I’ve never been in a forest with this density of giant forest trees,” Menegon says. The guide, Gliman Hyacinthe, a ranger with the Ivorian Office of Parks and Reserves (OIPR), identifies one of the tree giants as kosipo — Entandrophragma candollei — one of the mahoganies. This part of the forest is boulder-strewn, situated as it is on the slope beneath a large dome of granite whose summit breaks through the canopy of trees but is barely visible from within the forest. OIPR ranger Gliman Hyachinthe, University of Pavia student Caterina Danielon and herpetologist Michele…This article was originally published on Mongabay
ROOIELS, South Africa — Baboons aren’t exactly punctual, but Gavin Lundie still expected them to appear in the village around 9 a.m. “They’re coming!” his wife Lesley called. Members of the Rooiels baboon troop had begun to make their way down. Lesley made her way to the sliding doors on their patio and secured it with two shoelaces attached to a hook. She remained on the balcony and watched as the troop entered into the village a few properties away. The Lundies live in Rooiels, a small, affluent village on False Bay, approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Cape Town’s city center. The village, scattered from the coastal flats up the slopes of the Klein Hangklip mountain, is part of the Kogelberg Biosphere Reserve. The mountain’s cliff faces offer sleeping baboons (Papio ursinus) protection from leopards, their natural predator, but the sparse vegetation doesn’t offer enough for them to eat or drink. In contrast, the lower slopes, where the village has grown up, is still covered with dense fynbos scrub on undeveloped plots, in gardens and along unpaved verges. The baboons forage on a range of flowers, seeds and berries in the warmer months; in winter, when the fynbos is dormant, the baboons eat kikuyu grass from lawns in the village. They also eat limpets in the intertidal zone, and the Rooiels River is a year-round source of freshwater. A juvenile baboon clings to its mother’s back as she forages in fynbos on the roadside in Rooi Els. Image by…This article was originally published on Mongabay
NIGRE, Côte d’Ivoire — The village of Nigré in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire sits — like much of this part of West Africa — in a landscape of rice and cassava fields, oil palm plantations and stands of rubber trees that have replaced the forests that once clothed the landscape. Chief Djahi Bertin and his attendants offer a traditional welcome to a group of scientists, conservationists and park rangers in an open-sided building in the chief’s yard. The guests are served slices of radish-red kola nut, together with a teaspoon of ginger-colored spices, and a choice of wine, beer, spirits or soda. Bertin takes a glass of wine, half full, and empties it on the concrete floor. The splash resembles the palm of a hand, fingers splayed out. Both the palm and the digits form a unified whole, he says. “We are of one mind.” Chief Djahi Bertin, left, and his advisers meet with conservationists and scientists at his residence in the village of Nigré to discuss the creation of an ecological corridor linking the nearby Taï National Park, with Grebo National Park just 4 kilometers away in neighboring Liberia. Image by Ryan Truscott for Mongabay. The village is not far from the western edge of Taï Forest. At 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles), it’s the largest intact remnant of Upper Guinean Rainforest, which once stretched east from Liberia, across Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, to Togo. During a two-day road trip from the commercial hub of Abidjan to Taï, Mongabay…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Up until 10 years ago, large sections of the road linking Malawi and Zambia to the Indian Ocean port of Nacala would become nearly impassable during the rainy season, with potholes, damaged bridges and traffic bottlenecks causing long delays along this regional transport artery across northern Mozambique. The Mozambique government has carried out major upgrades to transport infrastructure, but this may have come at the cost of accelerating deforestation across the region. Between 2017 and 2022, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the World Bank financed major transportation upgrades along the Nacala Corridor, centered on the 912-kilometer (565-mile) rail line linking coal mines in western Mozambique with ports on the Indian Ocean, as well as road upgrades, to lower costs and improve regional trade connections with Malawi and Zambia. “This project reduces the ‘penalty of remoteness’ that poorer households pay,” Romulo Cunha Correa, Mozambique country manager for the African Development Bank, told Mongabay in an interview. The AfDB has prioritized improvements to road and rail infrastructure across the continent, also backing projects linking Cameroon to the cities of Brazzaville and Kinshasa on the Congo River, and South Sudan to Indian Ocean ports in Kenya. But researchers studying this expansion of infrastructure have warned that the road upgrades can intensify deforestation and habitat loss. Women walk past a fish pond in Moatize, in Mozambique’s western province of Tete, in 2011. Image by Peter Fredenburg via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Manuel Mario Nazare, a conservationist with…This article was originally published on Mongabay
An undercover operation by Guinean authorities in the capital Conakry caught four men in possession of more than 2,000 dried seahorses and 26 kg (57 lbs) of shark and ray fins on May 22, 2026. According to a press release, the seizure was supported by the Guinea branch of the anti-wildlife trafficking NGO Eco Activists for Governance and Law Enforcement (EAGLE). EAGLE identified the arrested men as Daouda Camara, Thierno Sadou Bah, Sekou Soumah, and Abdoulaye Camara, all Guinean nationals aged between 20 and 55 years old. The NGO told Mongabay they are believed to be part of a transnational criminal network operating across West Africa. The network has been involved in smuggling wildlife for more than four decades, but none of those arrested were previously known to law enforcement authorities. Antonia Gustafsson, coordinator of EAGLE Guinée, said the alleged traffickers were trying to sell dried seahorses to Chinese nationals in the country, who would then illegally ship them to China. When authorities searched a storage facility linked to the traffickers, they found the stashed shark and ray fins. Shark and ray fins are key ingredients in shark fin soup, a delicacy in much of China and Southeast Asia. Dried seahorses are in high demand in China as they are used in traditional Chinese medicine preparations. Both products are high-value seafood and a highly lucrative trade: Prices for dried seahorses have peaked as high as $600/kg. Seized shark and ray fins, which were destined for export to China, where they…This article was originally published on Mongabay
CHIRADZULU, Malawi — In Chiradzulu district in southern Malawi, 60 women who are members of the Rural Women’s Assembly grow fruits and vegetables alongside their staple crop, maize. In recent years, there’s been growing demand for their organically produced crops from buyers in the nearby city of Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial capital. The assembly’s chair in Chiradzulu, Diana Sitima, runs a 3.5-hectare (8.6-acre) organic farm here. She says when she started the farm in 1993, she used to take the produce to consumers in Blantyre. “Now they are coming to us. They say our produce has a good taste,” Sitima says. According to the women, the biggest obstacles they face as farmers is that they lack land titles and capital to invest in their farming. As members of the RWA, these are the issues they discuss at their meetings and bring to their local council and central government for solutions. Ester Samuel spreads maize to dry in Balaka, Malawi. Image by CIMMYT via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) In 1998, not long after she got married, RWA member Lonely Kholowa’s parents gave her a piece of land to cultivate. But after her father passed away in 2009 — her mother had died seven years earlier — her father’s older brother grabbed the land, arguing that according to their culture, she belonged to the family of her mother who came from Machinga district in the east of the country. Today, Kholowa farms land in her husband’s village elsewhere in Chiradzulu. “I don’t have…This article was originally published on Mongabay
A North Korean man is set to face trial in Tanzania this week following his arrest in April while in possession of 500 elephant tusks. Un Hyok Ra was arrested April 19 at a hotel in Dar es Salaam, and is scheduled on June 9 to answer to charges of unlawful possession of the ivory and intent to trade it. Tanzania is a signatory to CITES, the global wildlife trade convention, which requires parties to conduct forensic analysis of ivory seizures of 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) or more to determine where it came from. This is intended to support investigations that go beyond the typically low-level traffickers who are caught in possession. Tanzanian police did not respond to questions from Mongabay about the origins of the seized ivory or who Ra allegedly planned to sell it to. During an administrative hearing on May 28, prosecutor Florida Wancelaus told the court only that investigations are ongoing. Chris Morris, founder of wildlife crime monitoring group Saving Elephants through Education and Justice (SEEJ), based in neighboring Kenya, estimated that 504 tusks would weigh roughly 2,500 kg (about 5,500 lbs). In an email to Mongabay, he said law enforcement in the region does not always meet the CITES requirement to conduct DNA analysis on confiscated ivory. “It remains to be seen if Tanzania will comply with this directive,” Morris wrote. Morris, a former war crimes investigator, said Tanzanian authorities have often withheld information that would help sister agencies in the region and beyond trace…This article was originally published on Mongabay
ELEPHANT MARSH, Malawi — At 5:30 am, trader Flora Kumilai is squatting before a heap of smoked catfish at Sorjin Market in southern Malawi’s Elephant Marsh, haggling with sellers over the price. “I found gold in fish,” she chuckles as she fills a third cardboard box. “And Elephant Marsh is the mine.” Kumilai, who has traveled here from Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre, will spend a week in the area, visiting other fish markets around the marsh until she has 12 of these boxes, around 900 kilograms (1,990 pounds) of smoked fish. Then she will band together with other traders to hire a truck to transport their goods back to Blantyre, 140 kilometers (87 miles) to the north. But for Kumilai, the final destination for her goods is more than 1,500 km (930 mi) away, at a market in Kasumbalesa on the border between Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She’s been in business for more than a decade now, mostly trading in produce within Malawi and sometimes importing clothes from Tanzania and South Africa for customers in the city. In October 2024, she changed course, when fellow traders introduced her to the cross-border trade in fish. In Kasumbalesa, most of Kumilai’s customers are from the DRC, she tells Mongabay in Chichewa. “They pay in [U.S.] dollars. When we change it on the black market to Malawi kwacha, it gives us a lot of money. That’s how I’m able to pay for my son’s education [at Chandigarh University in India].”…This article was originally published on Mongabay
CHIRADZULU, Malawi — Diana Sitima’s farm on the outskirts of Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre, is both example and an exception. Where neighboring farmers have planted mostly maize for food and for sale in nearby markets, people drive out to buy sweet potato, pigeon peas and vegetables, bananas and avocado, and eggs produced on Sitima’s 3.5-hectare (8.6-acre) property. Sitima started farming in 1993. Unlike her neighbors, farming was a side hustle to begin with: she worked as an office assistant in Blantyre and her husband had a good job with a bank. Over the next seven years, she and her husband took out a series of micro-loans, renting small parcels of land and hiring people from the village to grow tomatoes for sale in the city. Sitima’s efforts went well, and because her family did not have to rely on their harvest for food or an income at that time, she was able to save the money she earned to take a next step. She quit her office job and acquired a farm of her own in Chiradzulu district, 15 kilometers (9 miles) east of the city. “That’s how I made money to be able to buy this land when it was put up for sale in 2006,” she says. While she was still a part-time farmer, Sitima attended several workshops, where she picked up ideas about agroecological farming — an approach combining crops, agroforestry, fish ponds, poultry and livestock, in a self-reinforcing system that protects soil health and reduces the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The 2026 Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in Central and East Africa has already left at least 49 people dead, with health authorities racing to stop the spread of the disease. What if they could have known ahead of time where it would begin? That’s the question behind a study published last year by Carson Telford and a group of researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). They wanted to know whether it would be possible to predict where Ebola outbreaks might start by looking at the characteristics of areas where the virus had already “spilled over” from an animal host into a human. Telford and his colleagues analyzed 24 outbreaks between 2001 and 2022, using variables like population density and forest cover to train their model. When they ran the analysis of where those outbreaks occurred, they found a high correlation with forest loss and fragmentation. The model they built with that data was strikingly accurate. It put a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo in its top 0.1% of risk areas — just a few months before an outbreak happened there in 2022. Another that followed in Uganda was in a district it had identified as being in the top 6% for that country. Mongabay’s Ashoka Mukpo spoke to Telford about the link between Ebola and deforestation, and how understanding it could help stop outbreaks early on. Medical staff carry an Ebola patient to a treatment center. Image by Moses Sawasawa via Associated Press. Mongabay: How would…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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