The Lesotho Court of Appeal on Monday confirmed the conviction of the former head of the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority on 13 counts of receiving bribe money from international contractors and consultants.

The recent report on the significant declines in gorilla and chimpanzee populations in Gabon and the Republic of Congo shows that once again the conservation community is forced to rely on a crisis mode to harness international support for the protection of endangered species. We only need recall the outcries over the piles of ivory from elephant poaching outbreaks in the 1980s to recognize this cycle of alarm and reactive intervention. Hopefully this demand for attention will prove as effective for the lowland gorilla and chimpanzee as it did for the African elephant.

Nigeria sits atop 25 billion barrels of high-quality crude. But extracting the oil from the swamps of the Nigerian government can be messy. Nigeria ranks second (after Bangladesh) among the world's most corrupt countries, says Transparency International in Berlin. Cozy ties between oil multinationals and the government (a partner in all ventures via the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corp., or NNPC) make evidence of mischief hard to find. Until a deal goes sour--and the ugly process spills into view.

Tanzania is to start using nuclear power, after the country's parliament enacted a law last week permitting the use of uranium to produce energy. The move could make Tanzania the first country in East and Central Africa to use nuclear technology to generate electricity.

Gorilla, chimpanzee, and elephant will now be off the menu in Cameroon. Authorities in the central African country announced Monday that any restaurant caught serving meat from endangered animals could face up to three years in prison and a fine of more than $16,000.

When government auditors searched the offices of Nigeria's Ministry of Petroleum Resources last July, window blinds, a door curtain and an embossing machine that a civil servant drew N474,350 of public funds to buy were missing. The apparent theft, described in a 290-page annual audit seen by the Financial Times, captures the corruption and opacity that characterises governance in oil-rich western and central African states. It partly explains why exploitation of crude reserves in countries such as Angola, Gabon and Nigeria - the latter has earned more than $300bn from oil since independence in 1960 - has yielded little for ordinary people while officials and elites have become richer.

Concern is mounting in Namibia over continued low rainfall and its impact on the country's subsistence farmers and agro-industry. "In all the regions the rainfall has been below average and there seems to be a drought looming. According to the weather bureau, the forecast is not promising for the next season," says Sakkie Coetzee, executive manager of the Namibia Agriculture Union.

They first took this unique method of farming to the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannesburg, South Africa last year and showed the world how this unique farming system could ensure sustainable food security. Small farmers from Africa and Latin America who advocated restrictions on genetically modified foods at the World Summit fell in love with it, and in a small but very significant way, Lesotho’s small farmers using the Machobane farming system are contributing to the fight against famine and unsustainable food security in their own country.

The communities affected by the construction of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project say an associated compensation policy has been used to further the aims and objectives of the project without taking into consideration the trauma and discomfort they suffered as a result of this resettlement.

There are two planet earths. One of them is the complex, morally challenging world in which we live, threatened by ecological collapse. The other is the one we see on the wildlife programmes. Except for a few shots of animals doing amusing things in people's gardens, and, occasionally, an indigenous person, stripped of his T-shirt, wildlife programmes present the natural world as a pristine wilderness, unaffected by humanity, says this commentary from the Guardian UK.

The Nigerian government and multinational oil companies should take immediate measures to prevent further violence and abuses around Warri in the oil-rich Niger delta, Human Rights Watch has said in letters to President Olusegun Obasanjo and the managing directors of three companies. Since March 13, 2003, clashes between the Ijaw and Itsekiri ethnic groups in the Niger delta have claimed scores of lives. Human Rights Watch has received reports of government security forces firing indiscriminately on Ijaw villages, resulting in dozens of deaths.

This document discusses the importance of wildlife trade for many rural livelihoods and the impact that wildlife trade regulations has on them. The paper begins by outlining trade in wildlife which can occur both nationally and internationally and takes many forms. It can generally be said, however, that the trade remains largely undocumented and under researched but that it is estimated to have a value of US$160 billion and to flow, in the main, from developing to developed countries.

More than half of Africa's chimpanzees and gorillas have disappeared in the past 20 years, a steep decline that has alarmed scientists. One of the most detailed surveys of the primates in their heartland of western equatorial Africa has documented the crash.

Productive land in Botswana is shrinking daily, but a new project aims to arrest the degradation of rangelands and address the deep poverty facing communities that depend on them. Botswana is one of three African countries that will benefit from a US $13.4 million five-year programme aimed at helping rural communities restore local plant life, improve depleted soil and create new job opportunities. Kenya and Mali are the other two countries to benefit.

The Transformation Resource Centre (TRC), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) monitoring the environmental and social aspects of the massive Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), came under heavy fire from the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA) recently during a formal inquiry into the complaints leveled against the Project by the resettled and affected communities. The LHDA officials at the inquiry threw verbal missiles at the TRC accusing it of creating deliberate confusion and misunderstanding about the LHWP's compensation policy in the minds of the communities affected by the project, which sells water to South Africa.

An alleged oil scam involving Nigerian and The Gambia is set to be probed by the newly established Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, set up to curb corruption in the country. This Day newspaper reports that the scam involved the Gambian government carting away petroleum products and illegally diverting them.

Seven elephants have been killed by ivory poachers in Queen Elizabeth National Park, the Uganda Wildlife Authority reports. The six adult elephants and one calf were taken in the first poaching incident in three years, wildlife officials said.

The Sudan Landmine Information & Response Initiative (SLIRI) is the only indigenous cross-conflict mine action entity, working with a civil society network of organisations operating on both sides of the conflict in Sudan. The project aim is to develop an accurate overview of the impact of landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) throughout the current and former combat zones of Sudan.

Humanitarian and human rights conditions for IDPs from oil-rich regions in Sudan's Western Upper Nile state are very disturbing, said a German charity, reports AFP. After visiting the region, the director of Hoffnungszechen voiced concern for IDPs in southern Sudan uprooted to make way for oil exploration, adding that many IDP children were malnourished.

Changes in sea surface temperatures were the main cause of shifting rainforest patterns in southern Africa in the past, according to new research. The study looked at marine deposits dating from 450,000 to 1.2 million years ago, and suggests that fluctuations in sea temperature in the tropical Atlantic determined the expansion and shrinkage of rainforests and dry savanna belts in southern Africa over that period.