Historically, fire has played an important role in shaping landscapes' flora and fauna

By Mark Kinwer – Environment reporter, BBC News

A model has helped shed light on how human-started fires shaped Africa's landscape, researchers report.

Read the complete article at BBC News

Before human activity became widespread, most fires were caused by lightning strikes during the continent's wet seasons, they said.

Wild chimpanzees monitor the information available to other chimpanzees and inform their ignorant group members of danger

Read the complete article at AlphaGalileo Foundation

By Brian Vastagg

Read the complete article in The Washington Post

The National Institutes of Health has placed a temporary moratorium on new studies using chimpanzees, it announced Thursday in response to a report that marks nearly all medical research on the great apes as scientifically unjustified.

Zookeepers have been warned to increase security after a conservation group declared Africa’s Western Black Rhino extinct and two subspecies at high risk.

By Alice Klein, Nairobi

Read the complete article in The Telegraph

Photo: Lynsey Adario for The New York Times – Sare Harouna, in southern Senegal, is one of more than 5,000 villages where female genital cutting has been abandoned.

By CELlA W. DUGGER

Read the complete article in the New York Times

SARE HAROUNA, Senegal — When Aissatou Kande was a little girl, her family followed a tradition considered essential to her suitability to marry. Her clitoris was sliced off with nothing to dull the pain.

IBM hosts roundtable discussion to address some of Nairobi’s biggest urban challenges

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NAIROBI, Kenya - 06 Oct 2011: Leaders from across public and private sector and civil society organizations came together in Nairobi today to discuss how advanced technologies can help the city to deal with some of the most pressing issues of urbanization – such as traffic congestion, parking, emergency response and the reliability of energy and water supplies.

Kenyan social activist and environmental crusader who founded the Green Belt Movement has died of cancer

Xan Rice in Nairobi
guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 September 2011

Read the complete article at The Guardian

Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel peace prize, died on Sunday night of cancer. She was 71.

by Daniel Strain on 22 September 2011, 2:01 PM

Read the complete article at Science

Climb to the top of a hill along one of the few remaining undisturbed grasslands in East Africa, pull out the binoculars, and you may spy a black-and-white zebra herd. You may also see a few gazelles, buffaloes, and elephants. "Natural selection has favored that mix," says Johan du Toit, an ecologist at Utah State University in Logan. Natural selection, maybe, but not people. Convinced that other grass-chomping animals will drive their herds to starvation, ranchers in Kenya and elsewhere tend to keep their cattle separate from wildlife. But a new study suggests that thinking may be wrong. Wildlife, particularly zebras, can actually help a ranch thrive.

New study reveals that wildlife numbers in Kenya's world famous Masai Mara game reserve are falling drastically

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Wild animal numbers in Kenya’s world famous Masai Mara game reserve have declined massively over the last 30-years according to a study published in the Journal of Zoology.

The new research shows that numbers of many wild animals have dropped by as much as 70%.

I wonder if any of the devices described below could be used for research purposes in Africa.

A BBC photo essay on using GPS to track hedgehogs in New Zealand:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9469000/9469456.stm

This paper (not on hedgehog tracking) identifies the equipment maker as Sirtrack:

http://www.nzes.org.nz/nzje/new_issues/NZJEcol35_1_114.pdf

The GPS tracker in Image 6 on the BBC site appears to be the Sirtrack G1G 132A or 134A:

http://www.sirtrack.com/documents/suites/microGPS_G1G_&_G1H_Suitesheet.pdf