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Despite the country’s globally significant biodiversity, ecosystems across terrestrial, freshwater, estuarine and marine environments are under escalating pressure.
30X30 TARGET

SA’s biodiversity plan under fire for lacking ambition

WWF South Africa has criticised proposed biodiversity targets, warning they fall short of global 30×30 commitments despite worsening ecological decline

  • Sheree Bega
5 min read
The vision of the Pro Elephant Network (PREN) is a future in which all elephants can thrive in freedom and dignity in their protected natural habitats as part of naturally functioning and evolving ecosystems. Photo: Godong/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
CONSERVATION

Elephants do not belong in zoos

The Pro Elephant Network’s mission is to stop the capture of elephants and to advocate for the release of captive elephants into the wild

  • The Pro Elephant Network
10 min read
Kruger National Park
30X30

SA needs ‘Kruger Park and a bit’ annually to meet global conservation target

The country needs more than “paper parks”, says conservation NGO

  • Sheree Bega
6 min read
Defenders: The Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has more than 680 rangers from local villages. They are employed by the Congolese National Park Authority to protect it from poachers and logging but militia groups have killed more than 200 rangers since 1925. Photo: Alexis Huguet/AFP
AFRICA

Save Africa from conservationists

Indigenous peoples know how to conserve biodiversity far better than any so-called experts in the capitalist Global North

  • Aby L Sène
6 min read
Proposed developments imperil the area’s threatened birds including a colony of Cape vultures, bearded vultures, cranes and secretary birds. (Carina Pienaar)
DRAKENSBERG

Safety net thrown over Free State grasslands

The declaration of the Upper Wilge Protected Environment benefits nature, landowners and the broader society

  • Sheree Bega
5 min read
Steadfast: The Xolobeni residents have, for more than a decade and with deadly consequences for them, fought off an Australian company wanting to mine their land. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)
CAPITALIST

We don’t have to ‘sell nature to save it’

Although South Africa no longer practices ‘fortress conservation’, the shift to to protecting resources for people is criticised for incorporating nature in a neoliberal…

  • Neil Overy
  • Catherine Horsfield
8 min read
Squeezed: Chris Arendse fixes his fishing net at his home in Strandfontein Pavilion in Cape Town. Small-scale fishers say the odds are stacked against them. Photos: Bongani Siziba
CAPE WATERS

Fishing subsidies in the W. Cape: ‘Illegal fishing is our only option’

Fishers claim they are forced into illegal trawling because subsidies only benefit big vessels

  • Bongani Siziba
9 min read
In danger: The giant monitor lizard, called the Komodo dragon, is found in the wild only in the Komodo National Park’s islands in Indonesia. (Prisma Bildagentur/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
CLIMATE CHANGE

Earth’s last ‘dragons’ under threat from climate change

The world’s largest monitor lizard has moved up the red list for threatened species, with fewer than 4 000 of the species left

  • Tunicia Phillips
2 min read