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Conservation
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Helicopter Poachers Massacre 22 Elephants In Congo
26 Apr 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
I believe it’s safe to say that animal poaching has now gotten completely out of hand. This is a scene I’d rather not try and picture – a herd of 22 elephants, were swooped on by a helicopter, and massacred.
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Brazil’s Congress Approves Contentious New Forest Laws
26 Apr 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies has approved contentious new legislation that eases rules on how much land farmers must preserve as forest. Environmentalists are up in arms, and say the new forest legislation will be a disaster, and lead to further destruction of the Amazon.
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Cape Town To Hire More Spotters In Wake Of Fatal Shark Attack
25 Apr 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
In the wake of the tragic death of 20-year old Capetonian bodyboarder, David Lillienfeld last Thursday, the City of Cape Town has agreed to implement a shark spotting programme at Kogel Bay, where the young man lost his life.
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13-Year-Old Kenyan Boy Saves Cattle From Lions With Invention
20 Apr 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
Wherever humans and wild animals come into close contact with one another, there will likely be negative consequences for one or the other, or both. 13-year-old Richard Turere, who lives in Empakasi, on the edge of the Nairobi National Park, just south of Nairobi, has invented a system that keeps his family’s cattle safe from lions that had previously sought an easy meal from their herd.
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Despite Two Fracking Earthquakes, UK Expected To Adopt New Widespread Fracking
17 Apr 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Advice from the first official British government report into fracking has been published today. In it, British ministers have been informed that they should allow the controversial process of fracking for shale gas to be extended there, this despite the process having been blamed for causing two earthquakes.
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South Africa Is Home To The World’s First “Strawberry” Leopard
16 Apr 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Recently published photos have revealed what is believed to be the world’s first “strawberry” leopard. The big cat was discovered in South Africa’s Madikwe Game Reserve and is an incredibly rare find.
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49 Former NASA Scientists Ask NASA To Stop Lying
13 Apr 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
A rather large group of former NASA scientists and astronauts have come together to express their distrust at the way NASA thinks about climate change. They’ve written a letter, in which they criticise the Goddard Institute For Space Studies for telling fibs about man-made carbon dioxide.
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Cape Town Petition Opposes False Bay Shark Tagging Show
05 Apr 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 4 Comments
Chris Fischer is an American documentary maker whose program, Shark Men, is in the Cape tagging Great White sharks along our coastline. A group opposed to this have lodged a complaint with the Department of Environmental Affairs, claiming the “research” Fischer conducts might make good TV, but is damaging to the sharks. Both sides of the story, after the jump!
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Rhino Dies After Being Hit By Truck Outside Pretoria [PICS]
02 Apr 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
During a time where we really cannot afford to lose anymore rhinos, another one has passed away – this time after being hit by a lorry outside Pretoria. Pics of the incident can be seen after the jump.
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Final Hours Of Orangutan’s Life Highlighted After Rainforest Destruction
22 Mar 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Green, a female orangutan, is the subject of a powerful new documentary. She was rescued after deforestation in Indonesia left her without a home – and paralysed down her left side. Green’s last couple of hours on earth was filmed and included in a documentary by Patrick Rouxel for Al Jazeera. His aim is to highlight the extent to which deforestation is “raping our planet.”
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Zimbabwe Faces Possible New Famine
19 Mar 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Zimbabweans will be reminded of the previous times the country has declared a state of disaster as food shortages threatened widespread starvation. A third of Zimbabwe’s current maize crop has just been written off due to a prolonged dry spell, according to reports.
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Johannesburg Chooses Owls To Fight Rat Plague In Alexandra Township
15 Mar 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
Before you begin to make fun of the headline used for this article, we must tell you that the vermin extractors will also be serving an educational purpose. Johannesburg’s general owl population has been in decline for years as a result of urbanisation, but new owl projects are helping to combat this.
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Discovery Channel Fires Bear Grylls
14 Mar 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
He’s eaten from a zebra carcass, swum across freezing lakes in just his undies to see what it’d be like, and he once slept in a dead sheep’s carcass for warmth. Sadly, it might be a while before we get to watch any of Bear’s antics again. The Discovery Channel set him free for good yesterday by announcing their relationship is over.
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Large Great White Shark Caught Off Fish Hoek Beach
12 Mar 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 5 Comments
A rather large Great White Shark, measuring 4,3 metres in length, was caught 400 metres behind the breakers of Fish Hoek beach yesterday. Local fishermen from Kalk Bay accidentally caught the large female in fishing nets they had set late on Saturday night.
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Former Policeman And Suspected Rhino Poaching Kingpin Arrested
05 Mar 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
It would appear that authorities are finally starting to make serious inroads into the rhino horn trafficking underworld. A suspected kingpin, and former Mpumalanga police officer, was arrested on Friday in Hazyview. He was found with four rhino horns, and over R60 000 in his possession.
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Occupy Chapman’s Peak Going To Court
02 Mar 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The Hout Bay Residents’ Association will apply for a court interdict to stop construction on the Chapman’s Peak toll plaza in Cape Town, it has been confirmed. Construction has begun at the site, and lawyers representing the movement have been drawing up the interdict to halt the R54 million project.
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As The World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Opens, Check Out This Eco Radvertising Featuring The Cape Town Towers Demolition
10 Feb 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
The 102 turbine Walney Offshore wind farm located approximately 15 kilometres off Walney Island, Cumbria, in the Irish Sea in the UK, is about to start harvesting the wind. It will provide electricity for 320 000 homes and the project has cost £1 billion.
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EPIC FAIL: Rhino Dies In Anti-Poaching Demo By Conservationists
10 Feb 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 9 Comments
I just had to look up the words “EPIC” and “FAIL” in the dictionary, and would you know, this story was listed underneath each description. A South African conservation group demonstrating an anti-poaching method for reporters accidentally killed the rhinoceros they were using in the demonstration.
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Scientists Retrieve Sample From Freshwater Lake Buried Under Ice For 20 Million Years
09 Feb 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
Scientists have done something they have been working on for over two decades: successfully drilled more than three kilometres through sheer Antarctic ice into a freshwater lake to take a sample. All they really know now is that Lake Vostok has had no contact with atmospheric pollutants for millions of years.
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Finally: SA And Mozambique Hold Urgent Rhino Poaching Meeting
08 Feb 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
On Monday, the Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs in South Africa, Edna Molewa, met with the Minister of Tourism in Mozambique, Fernando Sumbana Junior. They met in Pretoria to discuss solutions to the rhino poaching epidemic occurring in the Kruger National Park. This is what they’ve concluded so far.
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Rare Pictures Of Amazonian Tribe First Sighted Last Year Released
03 Feb 2012 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Last year we reported about a tribe in western Brazil that had, until then, not been contacted by modern man. But they were a bit shy and even fired arrows at tourists in passing boats, resulting in the death of one man. Check out these rare images of them, taken from 120m away using a telescope mounted on a camera.
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Elephant Goes For A Surf
02 Feb 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
This does not happen, but it has: an elephant has decided it would like to go for a few waves and has been spotted surfing the beach breaks in Nuarro bay, just off the coast of northern Mozambique. Elephants don’t go into the sea, period, so this is definitely a rare sighting.
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Fire Services To The Rescue
10 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
The Cape Town City Bowl has, luckily, had a fairly quiet fire season. Just before midday today, a fire started on Signal Hill, and drew the attention of two helicopters, which brought it under control rapidly. Pictured is the yellow Working on Fire, chopper dropping water from its Bambi Bucket.
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Uproar Over Chapman’s Peak Office Development
10 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 1 Comment
Hout Bay residents are furious about a R54 million office development along Chapman’s Peak that will be used by Entilini, the company that operates the Chapman’s Peak toll road. It goes without saying that the development would be one of the most exclusive offices to work at in the country, but is it legal?
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Rhino Hunting Permits Are Common Practice In South Africa
04 Jan 2012 by Jasmine Stone / 3 Comments
A public and media outcry followed the release of information that a KZN businessman, who has not been identified, made a winning bid of R969 150 for the right to hunt a male white rhino in Mkuze Game Reserve. Rhino hunting permits are actually issued far more often than you might think.
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Shell Announces Huge Oil Spill Off Nigerian Coast, Worst In A Decade
23 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Shell has just alerted Nigerian coastal communities that up to 40 000 barrels of crude oil was spilled on Wednesday off the coast of the Niger delta while it was being transferred to a tanker about 120 kilometres off the coast. The spill is likely to be the biggest in a decade.
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Scientists Invent Solar Paint
23 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
A team of scientists has finished developing a cheaply manufactured paint-like product prototype that they hope you will eventually be able to put on the outside of your home. The paint will generate electricity from light – electricity that can then be captured and used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside of your home.
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Taxidermist Behind Bars For Importing Exotic Animal Parts [PICS]
22 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
Miami taxidermist, Enrique Gomez De Molina, is facing five years of jail time and a quarter million US$ in fines for importing body parts of rare and exotic animals to build a series of bizarre hybrid taxidermy sculptures.
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BREAKING: Massive Animal Horn Bust In Tableview [UPDATED]
20 Dec 2011 by Jasmine Stone / 13 Comments
Aquila Game Reserve posted the following at 13h43 on their Facebook page: Saving Private Rhino – An Aquila Private Game Reserve Initiative have just received information about a “burning hair” smell and the sound of grinding coming from a garage at an apartment block in Tableview. Suspecting it could involve rhino horn, owner of Aquila […]
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Japan’s Eco-Friendly Christmas Lights [PICS]
18 Nov 2011 by Jasmine Stone / No Comments
It’s the Year of Setsuden in Japan, which Google tells me means “saving electricity'”; this means that the lavish Christmas illuminations that Tokyo usually sets up are a little hard to justify. Minna no Illumi has found a pretty neat solution to the problem, though, with an entirely biodiesel-powered display.
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