Conservationists are launching a project to protect dwindling vulture populations in Chad amid a Central Africa-wide decline. Run by the nonprofit Sahara Conservation, the project is part of a larger EU-funded LIFE EV Safe Return program that focuses on protecting the endangered Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus). Egyptian vultures migrate from their breeding sites in the mountains of Southern Europe, North Africa, and Asia, to winter feeding sites in sub-Saharan Africa, including in Chad. Sahara Conservation’s efforts will focus on Chad’s Ouadi Rimé–Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve and Lake Fitri, which Egyptian vultures visit. Meanwhile, critically endangered Rüppell’s vultures (Gyps rueppelli) and endangered lappet-faced vultures (Torgos tracheliotos) use both areas as their breeding grounds. “This project really aims to tackle the main threats to vultures in Chad, with a focus on Egyptian vultures,” Cloé Pourchier, program officer at Sahara Conservation, told Mongabay in an interview. “Any action for vulture conservation will benefit all species as well.” Indications are that vulture populations in Chad are declining. Like those in West Africa, they’re threatened primarily by demand for belief-based use, where people kill vultures believing the birds’ body parts can bring luck or misfortune. Last year alone, poisoning claimed the lives of more than 100 Rüppell’s vultures in Chad in three incidents. Several birds were decapitated, indicating they were killed for belief-based use. Investigations and interviews with locals by the Sahara Conservation team revealed the birds’ parts were destined for markets in Nigeria and Niger. “They were saying that there were people coming from Nigeria, killing the birds, taking the heads, and going back to Nigeria,” Pourchier said. “Such illegal killing is only one of many formidable threats to Egyptian Vultures in Chad, but Sahara Conservation's stepping up to take a leadership role in their protection could be a game-changer,” Nico Arcilla, president of the International Bird Conservation Partnership, which isn’t involved in the new project, told Mongabay by email. Chad’s vultures also die from incidental poisoning. Livestock owners sometimes poison carcasses with the intention of killing jackals or leopards, but end up killing scavenging birds. Pourchier said the Sahara Conservation team plans to conduct training with wildlife and environmental authorities in Chad to strengthen responses and enforcement to poisoning incidents. She added they also hope to conduct investigations into poisoning cases and market surveys to shed light on the belief-based use supply chains operating in the country. Community engagement will also be key, Pourchier said, focused on addressing misconceptions about vultures and sharing their importance in the landscape. They also plan to support livestock owners with low-cost interventions, such as fencing and visual deterrents, to reduce wildlife conflict and deter them from using poison. “We see more and more countries in West Africa where there are no vultures anymore,” Pourchier said. “If we're not acting, at some point, it's just going to go from one country to another.” Banner image: An Egyptian vulture in Chad. Image courtesy of Sahara Conservation.

Founder's Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.

For the first time in the modern history of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a local nongovernmental organization will co-manage a protected area in the country with its wildlife authority, reports Mongabay’s Elodie Toto. Strong Roots Congo will co-manage Itombwe Nature Reserve in South Kivu province with the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) under a public-private partnership. “It is an honor,” Dominique Bikaba, founder of Strong Roots Congo, told Toto. “I think the government chose us because they have observed the work we have done in the biodiversity corridor and the way we have put local communities at the center of conservation.” Strong Roots has secured nearly 600,000 hectares (roughly 1.5 million acres) of community land to create a corridor between Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Itombwe Nature Reserve. It aims to secure 1 million hectares (about 2.5 million acres). The development comes three months after the DRC adopted a National Forest Policy that recognizes the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities to manage forest areas. The measures are significant because many protected areas in the country were created through the eviction of Indigenous populations, exacerbating conflict between local communities and park authorities. Read the full story by Elodie Toto here. Banner image: Critically endangered Grauer’s gorillas live in Itombwe Nature Reserve. Image courtesy of Strong Roots Congo.  

When researchers mapped almost 100,000 square kilometers of South Africa, or nearly 40,000 square miles, they only found 83 mature adults. They called their project the Free-Roaming Cheetah Census, and it’s the most comprehensive survey of cheetahs ever conducted in the region. The cheetahs that inhabit the unprotected areas here move naturally across borders, going between South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. But farming, construction, development, and fences are making it harder for them to move around. Cheetahs need vast connected landscapes to survive. If they don’t mix with other cheetah groups, their genetic pool can be lost. There’s another big challenge for these animals: farmers. They sometimes kill cheetahs, because they believe cheetahs kill their livestock. But the researchers found that cheetahs hunt mostly wild prey. The species is currently listed as vulnerable, but the census suggests they should be reclassified as endangered in South Africa.

A new-to-science species of egg-eating snake has been documented in the forested mountains of southern Ethiopia, according to a recent study. The snake, which has an ink-black body, bluish skin between its scales, and stark-white throat and belly, has been named the white-throated egg-eater (Dasypeltis albigularis). It’s nonvenomous, feeding entirely on bird eggs, which it cracks using specially adapted vertebrae in its throat before swallowing, the authors say. Arthur Tiutenko of Germany’s University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and his colleagues, first encountered a population of this snake in 2019 in the Harenna Forest, in the Bale Mountains. They collected a young female for identification and initially thought it was an African egg-eating snake (Dasypeltis atra), a similar black, nonvenomous species. But the team also noticed the juvenile had some unusual scales and coloration that differed from the known D. atra. These observations prompted captive-breeding trials, where the researchers mated the female with a male African egg-eating snake, and saw that their offspring showed a mix of traits from both parents. Further genetic analysis and examination of more individuals seen on future field trips confirmed the snake in the Harenna Forest was indeed new to science. “In the case of D. albigularis, it was a classic discovery, like in previous centuries, when one encounters an animal in a place previously not visited by researchers and recognizes it as something new,” Tiutenko told Mongabay by email. To formally describe a new species, researchers would typically have to deposit a dead, preserved physical specimen, known as the holotype, in a museum collection. For Tiutenko’s team, though, this posed an ethical dilemma. Some recent studies have relied on photos and videos alone to describe a species, but Tiutenko said this too has been criticized by the scientific community. He added that using a live individual to represent a species in a collection is also a bad idea, because such a specimen can escape, and its features can change over time as it ages. “And such values of an old animal that died years later and finally became preserved would almost certainly differ from those stated in the paper.” Tiutenko said he didn’t want to euthanize a snake for the purpose of describing the species. So he waited for several years, until a dead snake showed up. "As soon as I found a dead specimen killed by local villagers, I could designate it as holotype and proceed with the publication,” he said. Their analysis showed the white-throated egg-eater is likely endemic to the southern slope of the Somalian Plateau, frequenting natural forest, agricultural clearings, and village settlements. Tiutenko added it’s not yet confirmed whether the species is present in Bale Mountains National Park. Human persecution remains the primary danger to the snake, Tiutenko noted. “Although no dangerous snakes live in this area, people fear or disgust any snakes and kill them,” he said. Banner image of Dasypeltis albigularis, by Tiutenko et al., 2026 (CC BY 4.0).

In Africa, high-quality seeds can produce improved crops with enhanced nutrition, pest-resistance, and drought tolerance. However, such seeds for maize, vegetables, and cereal crops can be indistinguishable from counterfeit, or “fake” seeds. That’s creating a massive potential for fraud in seed quality that can potentially deprive farmers of access to climate-resilient seeds while putting their harvests and incomes at risk. A group of researchers analyzed the efforts of 50 African countries to combat counterfeit seeds. They found a wide range of penalties for selling them across different governments, and concluded that a significant gap exists between government policy commitments and implementation, largely due to limited capacity. Study lead author Ed Mabaya, a professor of global development at Cornell University in the U.S., told Mongabay, “For most smallholder farmers in Africa, planting happens once a season, often timed to the first rains. A farmer who buys counterfeit seed usually finds out only after planting, when the seed fails to germinate or the crop grows poorly. By then it is usually too late to replant, so the loss is not a slightly smaller harvest but potentially the whole season's food and income.” That can lead to food insecurity for the individual farmer and local markets more broadly. Counterfeiters can dye or repackage grain and sell it as branded, certified seed, Mabaya said. “The problem arises because certified seed looks exactly like ordinary grain but sells for a much higher price, in some cases several times more for hybrid maize. That price gap creates a strong incentive for fraud.” Counterfeit seed can also erode trust in the benefits of high-quality seeds; a farmer burned once may stop buying enhanced seed altogether, which slows the adoption of climate-adapted crop varieties. Farmers can then miss out on drought tolerance, disease resistance, and better nutrition through crops like vitamin A-fortified maize and iron-rich beans. Mabaya said a multipronged approach is needed to combat counterfeit seeds including routine surveillance, inspection, and market sampling by regulators. Seed companies also need to report suspect products. Mabaya recommended that governments develop public awareness programs to teach farmers how to recognize certified seed, where to buy it, and how to report seeds that may be counterfeit. He said governments also need clear penalties for counterfeit seeds, which are kept up to date and enforced, so that counterfeiting carries real costs. Travis Lybbert, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis, in the U.S., who works on seed quality issues in Africa but wasn’t involved in the recent study, agreed that seed quality in general is a major issue in much of Africa. “Counterfeit seeds are a part of this problem — in some countries they are a big part of the problem, but not in all. The paper seems to capture this reality pretty well,” he said in an email to Mongabay. Banner image: Bean market in Kampala, Uganda. Image © 2009 CIAT/Neil Palmer via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The Zambian government is investigating a chemical spill in its Copperbelt Province allegedly linked to Konkola Copper Mines (KCM), owned by U.K.-based multinational Vedanta Resources. Residents in Chingola district told Mongabay they observed discoloration of the Kafue River and fish die-off on Sept. 28, raising fresh concerns about the environmental and social impacts of mining operations in one of Zambia’s most important copper-producing regions. According to a statement by Gilbert Siame, Zambia’s minister of Green Economy and Environment (MGEE), the incident was caused by a leaking pipe at KCM’s tailings leach plant and an overflow from the company’s pollution control dam outside Chingola. “The pollution control dam was full, that's why it spilled,” Eugene Mulenga, Chingola-based human rights activist and coordinator for caritas, told Mongabay. “The [chemical] discharge happens all the time, mostly at night, and the local residents consume this water because they don’t have another option.” Following the Sept. 28 spill, tests conducted by the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA), KCM and local water utility Mulonga Water Supply and Sanitation Company showed elevated levels of turbidity and conductivity downstream along the Kafue River. In a statement issued Oct. 1, KCM contested its responsibility in the spillage, saying that company officials reported the incident to ZEMA and asked for a fact-based investigation. Mongabay reached out to the company but did not receive a response by the time of publication. Siame noted in the statement shared with Mongabay that authorities are still testing water samples to confirm heavy metals and other contaminants. He added the ministry has ordered KCM to conduct a comprehensive assessment of its pollution control dams, tailings pipelines and related infrastructure to determine whether other facilities could pose environmental risks. “The Ministry is consulting with relevant stakeholders on the appropriate penal sanctions against the polluter in accordance with the provisions of the Environmental Management Act,” he wrote in the statement. Under this law, major toxic discharges or hazardous waste violations can result in penalties of up to 280,000 Kwacha ($14,000). The Sept. 28 incident adds to a long history of environmental concerns surrounding KCM and other mining companies operating in Zambia’s Copperbelt. KCM was previously at the center of a major legal case in the U.K. following a 2008 pollution incident. The case was settled out of court in 2021, with the company paying compensation to around 2,500 affected villagers “without admission of liability.” KCM, one of Zambia’s largest copper producers, is expanding and recapitalizing mining and processing operations in the country as the government seeks to more than triple national copper output in the coming years. Vedanta Resources owns 80% stake in KCM. The Zambian government had placed KCM into liquidation in 2019, citing concerns including tax evasion, unpaid debts, inadequate investment and environmental pollution, but the company picked up operations again in 2024. Banner image: Dead fish at Hippo Pool, north of Chingola, where the Kafue River narrows into a shallow valley. Image by Victoria Schneider for Mongabay.