Terna Gyuse

An NGO working with Maasai pastoralists in northern Tanzania says its efforts to restore tree cover in the semiarid region and offer alternative forms of livelihood in the face of climate change impacts are bearing fruit.

A local community has taken over protecting and managing patches of small evergreen forests, known as mushitu forests, that have recently been subject to illegal logging.

Cattle and conservation don't typically mix. For centuries, East African pastoralists like the Maasai trudged across the region's savannas with their herds, passing by elephants and lions in their search for life-giving grasses. But times have changed. Today, landscapes that were once a no-man's-land are a bordered maze of ranches, farms and national parks. Cattle are especially unwelcome in the latter.

Researchers say carbon credit projects involving private companies, NGOs and logging companies have proliferated in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Long-running evictions of Indigenous Ogiek communities from Kenya's Mau Forest, whom the government blames for deforestation, haven't led to any letup in rates of forest loss, satellite data show.

A critical legal case filed by four East African NGOs against a controversial oil pipeline is facing yet another delay, but the NGOs say they remain hopeful. “What we need is for the court to hear the case on its merit, and we believe we have presented good evidence,” Dickens Kamugisha, CEO of the Africa […]

Erratic rainfall and rising temperatures have hit farmers in Ghana's semiarid Upper East region hard in recent years

For more than a year, there have been no confirmed sightings of the critically endangered southern patas monkeys in their last known refuge, in western Tanzania. In 2021, fewer than 200 of these lithe-limbed primates, Erythrocebus baumstarki, were thought to remain in the open woodlands of this region, and scientists now fear the species is […]

On June 13, 1959, the Watha hunter Galogalo Kafonde surrendered himself to colonial Kenya’s “Field Force,” Africa’s first militarized antipoaching unit. For centuries, the ethnic Watha had hunted elephants. Killing one was a rite of passage; unlike their neighbors, who raised and kept cows, the Watha lived off game meat and wore elephant skins. Ivory […]

KITABU, Uganda — It’s mid-afternoon in Kitabu, a small town nestled in the hills of western Uganda at the foot of the Rwenzori mountains. Neatly manicured plots of beans and cassava line the road that leads toward it. Women and young children carry bundles of firewood on their heads under the hot October sun. Far […]