Outraged by the rampant land grabs and neocolonialism of REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest degradation), Africans at the World Social Forum in Tunisia took the historic decision to launch the No REDD in Africa Network and join the global movement against REDD.

A recent study conducted on lion hunting behaviour suggests there is gender equality despite being a strongly sexually dimorphic species. The results help to redefine the long held belief that lionesses do most of the hunting while their male counterparts stay close to the pride.  They are, in fact, equally successful hunters, using vastly different predation strategies.

The fight against rhino poaching was given a further shot in the arm this week with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between South Africa and the People’s Republic of China on cooperation in the fields of Wetland and Desert Ecosystems and Wildlife Conservation.

Nanyuki, Kenya - As the triennial Conference of Parties of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) drew to a close last week in Bangkok, and after conservationists all around the world sounded the alarm on rhino poaching, the Ol Pejeta Conservancy lost a female black rhino to poachers.

A male Cross River Gorilla has been shot earlier this month in the Lebialem Highlands near Pinyin in the Santa Sub Division of North West Cameroon. The presence of this silverback gorilla was reported by a local teacher who was going to her farm very early in the morning on March 1st 2013 at about 1 km away from the village. Pinyin is about 33 km from the proposed Tofala Hill Wildlife Sanctuary.

Without intervention elephant poaching in the Congo may lead to more devastating effects than the extinction of one of the last megafauna on earth, with researchers predicting widespread implications for biodiversity in the region.

The diminishing forest elephant population in Salonga National Park, a World Heritage listed site since 1999 located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is at the centre of new scientific research which remonstrates many tree species are dependent on elephants for survival.

Protecting a dwindling species, increasing income for a poor community and raising awareness for environmental issues – these are the ambitious objectives of a proposed Indian Ocean Sea Park near Mombasa, Kenya. Will a marine enclosure designed to keep whale sharks inside attract tourists and benefit this endangered species?

Eighty-six elephants were killed in the last week close to Fianga, an area in Chad nearby the Cameroon border; the latest devastating elephant massacre. Wildlife officials said armed gangs killed the elephants, including 33 pregnant females, and their tusks were hacked out. First investigations reveal that the group of poachers was from Sudan, moving along the Chad -Cameroon border in the Mayo-Kebbi East Region.

Though the presidential election still remains in dispute in Kenya, with the opposition charging fraudulent and erroneous voting, the left hand of the government is busy pushing forward the multi-billion dollar project to build a second national port. The process is being so quickly moved that the recent Environmental Impact Assessment for the port has been completed, published and the public comment period expired, all before it was made public or local stakeholders were given opportunity to review it - in contravention of Kenyan law.

Countries of the Congo Basin now face a new threat to biodiversity. Crimes across national borders within the Central African Forest Commission (COMIFAC) are seriously undermining conservation efforts, creating the necessity to merge vital economic growth with social and environmental considerations.

Claudine André, President of Les Amis des Bonobos du Congo (ABC) and Founding Director of Lola ya Bonobo, the world’s only sanctuary for the endangered bonobo, will be honored with a $50,000 prize from the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium at their first-ever Commitment to Conservation Award ceremony in Columbus Ohio, on April 6th 2012. The ceremony in April will launch the biennial event. Recipients of the award are long-term partners of the Zoo who receive support for their work through the Zoo’s Conservation Fund. The award is made possible through proceeds from the Zoo’s annual Wine for Wildlife event.

Half a million hectares of industrial oil palm expansion projects are getting underway in the Congo Basin rainforest, which will result in a fivefold increase in the area of active large-scale palm plantations in the region, according to Seeds of Destruction, a new report issued today by The Rainforest Foundation UK (RFUK).

Illegal logging is refusing to die in some parts of Tanzania while flourishing in others mainly owing to corruption among dishonest forest officials and loopholes at checkpoints, a recent survey by this paper shows.

Bangkok, Thailand - A critical wildlife trade meeting closed Thursday with decisions from world governments to regulate the international trade in several species of sharks and timber, and to start taking action against countries doing little or nothing to stop the illegal ivory and rhino horn trades.

Environmentalists are today calling for trade sanctions against Vietnam for its failure to take action against its massive illegal trade in rhino horn. The 177 nations currently Party to the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting in Bangkok are discussing measures to counter the intensive poaching of rhinos around the world, but particularly in South Africa where nearly 1,500 rhinos have been poached in the past three years.

Conservation Justice worked with the Gabon Judicial Police to arrest elephant poachers based on their investigations in Gabon. 15 traffickers and elephant poachers in the Woleu-Ntem province and 3 in Nyanga province were arrested in February and are currently behind bars in the Woleu-Ntem locality and in Nyanga respectively. As a result of these arrests, remaining elephants may actually have a chance to survive. A bit of hope in an otherwise very grim picture.

The first ever wildlife conservancy managed by a learning institution in Kenya has been launched in Nyeri. Kimathi University College of Technology, a constituent of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), has opened Kimathi Wildlife Conservancy to the public.

The pace of events has increased dramatically since the last SOS No. 12 in July where we communicated the fact that the DAEA (Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs) had authorised the mine in terms of NEMA (National Environment Management Act).

Kenya's premier safari destination, Masai Mara national reserve has been the pillar of the Sh100 billion tourism sector for decades. But the national reserve that is famed for its annual wildebeest's migration could soon be just pale shadow of itself, as the effects of an imbalance between the expansion of tourism and continued natural degradation put it at the crossroads of history.

Some senior Zanu-PF and Government officials who received hunting licences and quotas for the Save Valley Conservancy have continued with the activities in defiance of the Politburo's decision to stop them. Observers believe the officials are taking advantage of a vacuum created after the Politburo's resolution to form a committee to look at disturbances at the conservancy.

A quarter of Liberia's total landmass has been granted to logging companies in just two years, following an explosion in the use of secretive and often illegal logging permits, an investigation by Global Witness, Save My Future Foundation (SAMFU) and Sustainable Development Institute (SDI) shows. Unless this crisis is tackled immediately, the country's forests could suffer widespread devastation, leaving the people who depend upon them stranded and undoing the country's fragile progress following the resource-fuelled conflicts of 1989 to 2003.