In the heart of the Congo Basin’s Cuvette Centrale, a large depression hosting the world’s biggest tropical wetland complex, lie two vast, shallow blackwater lakes, Lake Tumba and Lake Mai Ndombe. Together they are roughly the size of 420,000 football fields.
CyberTracker’s international evaluator community is gathering this week (24–31 August) for the first time in the organisation’s 30-plus year history – hosted outside Hoedspruit. This was all made possible thanks to the organisers, Kersey Lawrence and Lee Gutteridge.
Hidden beneath the water’s surface is a botanical world that is among nature’s most innovative and ecologically important.
We were treading a game trail parallel to the N’watindlopfu River in southern Kruger Park, mid-morning on a sweltering March day and we were nearing the Bushman rock paintings the river was named for. My mind was on finding a shady spot there for a short “tea break,” before heading back to our vehicle some 4km to the south behind us.
Hearing that a new primate species has been named is exciting news for scientists because primates across the world are in decline. According to the IUCN Red list, a global inventory of animal extinction risk, 44.4% of primate species are classed as endangered or critically endangered (versus 13.2% of all mammals).
There is something almost magical about watching a bird meticulously preen itself. A White-browed Robin-Chat pauses between bursts of its melodic song to carefully draw each feather through its bill. A Hamerkop stretches a wing impossibly wide, inspecting every feather with deliberate precision. Even the most energetic swifts and swallows, seemingly forever on the wing, somehow find time to maintain their plumage. To the casual observer, it might seem like little more than avian vanity, when in reality, it is far more; in fact, it is a matter of survival.
Every August, the night sky puts on one of its most reliable and spectacular performances: the Perseid meteor shower. Peaking around the second week of the month, and coinciding with New Moon, observers may see dozens of meteors per hour streaking across the heavens, leaving brief trails of silver, green, or gold.
Long before humans spoke their first words, birds were communicating through song. For millions of years, forests, grasslands, wetlands, and deserts across the globe have been filled with whistles, trills, warbles, and an array of complex songs, creating one of the most sophisticated communication systems in the natural world.
