Vulture poaching networks reach Central Africa.
Researchers counted roughly 113 hooded vultures across 11 waste sites near N’Djamena, Chad’s capital—a figure marking the birds’ near absence from more than half the surveyed locations. The study, published in Frontiers in Bird Science, found vulture numbers lower at sites with higher human density and absent where slaughterhouse offal should have drawn dozens. Interviews with 93 residents revealed that 47 per cent knew of recent poisoning incidents, while 37 per cent reported foreign poachers—chiefly from Nigeria, Niger, Benin and Cameroon—using poison to trap vultures for international trade in belief-based ritual materials.
The hooded vulture, listed as critically endangered, commands high prices in West African markets for use in vodun and related practices promising protection or success. Earlier surveys documented live birds and parts sourced from as far as Gabon and Sudan. Co-author Abiola Sylvestre Chaffra recounted a Chadian man offering to help capture vultures by leaving poisoned donkey carcasses in the open, a method he claimed to have used repeatedly.
Study lead Nico Arcilla of the International Bird Conservation Partnership said the absence of vultures at food-rich sites “doesn’t really make sense” without the pressure of deliberate killing. The team called for cross-border enforcement and awareness campaigns to halt the trade before Central African populations collapse.
Source: Frontiers in Bird Science.
US halts dismantling of ocean sensor network.
The National Science Foundation announced on 18 June that it will preserve and maintain the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a $368 million array of more than 900 instruments collecting real-time data on currents, temperature and marine life off the coasts of North Carolina, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Greenland. The agency had begun removing equipment from the Endurance Array off Oregon and Washington; it now plans to service and redeploy those sensors while continuing planned maintenance across all five sites.
The reversal followed bipartisan Senate passage of the Saving the OOI Act, introduced by Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The two-page bill bars federal funds from decommissioning the network until a review with stakeholder input is complete. Scientists and fishery managers had warned that losing the data would cripple storm forecasts, fisheries disaster predictions and climate research tracking ocean heat.
NSF will now issue a call for public comment and convene an expert panel to assess observational needs and chart a sustainable path forward. The agency said it “appreciates the concerns raised by the range of stakeholders” who depend on the initiative’s publicly available feeds.
Source: National Science Foundation.
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Tree-climbing crocodile tracked through Ivorian rainforest.
Christine Kouman has spent more than a decade on night-time boat surveys of the Hana River in Taï National Park, tagging 26 individual West African slender-snouted crocodiles and mapping their movements through radio telemetry. The species, listed as critically endangered, feeds chiefly on fish and rarely conflicts with humans; Kouman reports handling specimens up to 2.85 metres long without injury. Her doctoral research, supported by Project Mecistops at Florida International University, found the reptiles occupy smaller home ranges than saltwater or Nile crocodiles but share core stretches of river peacefully, timing their use to avoid confrontation.
The crocodiles bask on rocks and fallen trees protruding from the water—adaptations to a closed-canopy environment with no open banks—and shelter beneath overhanging vegetation where fruit drops attract fish. Kouman observed that slender-snouted crocodiles favour main rivers, leaving smaller swampy streams to the sympatric dwarf crocodile. Since 2019, however, the Hana has turned turbid; water once clear enough to drink now runs muddy, a shift Kouman attributes to encroaching disturbance upstream.
Kouman, co-founder of the conservation NGO EBURCO, is working with park authorities to protect the forest that sustains the species. “Taï is a paradise for slender-snouted crocodiles,” she told Mongabay. “If you want them to thrive, you need to keep the forest as it is—well protected.”
Source: Project Mecistops, Florida International University.
