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 Nigeria’s last savannah elephants

Purple starlings flit overhead. Verdant tumbles of vegetation whisper in the mid-afternoon breeze. As our rifle-toting convoy snakes along a game trail through Yankari National Park in North-eastern Nigeria, it’s a picture of tranquillity. Until we’re flanked by a stampeding herd of cattle…

Blog, Forest restoration, Mongabay writing

How much should tree plantations count towards global reforestation commitments?

It’s as if a professional cleaner has been let loose in the rainforest. The whistles of birds and croaks of frogs have been vacuumed up, the messy understory cleared away. Where once chaotic tangles of vines and saplings wrestled over flecks of sunlight beneath a shady canopy, now trees of the same height stand tidy and organized in neatly spaced rows beneath the scorching sun.

forestation project. But something has gone very wrong.