The seaside town of Pringle Bay in the Western Cape is outraged at a National Geographic documentary that used food to lure baboons to a specially modified and fully furnished cottage in the area. The cottage is part of the Cape Hangklip Hotel, and the television series, Big Baboon House, raises ethical questions.
The Department of Environmental Affairs (read: the South African government) has welcomed (obviously?) the Council of the Global Environment Facility’s approval of R25 million worth of funding aimed at strengthening the current wildlife forensic capabilities in South Africa. The donation will help combat wildlife crimes like rhino poaching.
The issue of the construction of a luxury hotel development in the Kruger National Park was discussed at length on 2oceansVibe last year when the weighty issue of hotel development in the Kruger National Park became public knowledge. The first of these developments, to be built near the Malelane Gate, the most convenient entrance from Johannesburg and the airport in nearby Nelspruit, is finally about to get underway.
More than a year after 2oceasnVibe first covered the story about South Africa’s only ski resort going under the hammer, the resort will finally be sold in a “no reserve” auction on July 12 this year. Now you can really own it. Auction Alliance didn’t crack the nod for this one, so expect everything to be above board.
Chad’s father passed away last year. He had suffered from Alzheimer’s, and his deterioration into dementia was quick and incredibly painful. Chad’s father spent the last six weeks of his life in hospital, and Chad spent every one of those days at his side. In the end, he suffered more than any person deserved. Chad’s […]
Fruit and Veg City has been taking a social media lambasting from irate consumers that caught the fresh food retailer selling endangered fish species in a few of their stores. Debate was intense, with both customers and Fruit and Veg City getting in on the action. The retailer has since issued an official statement detailing how they plan to handle the situation of endangered fish “slipping through their nets”.
More than R40 million worth of rhino horn, as well as elephant tusks and leopard skins were seized in two operations in Gauteng last week. Both operations are linked to a 40-year-old KwaZulu-Natal man, who was arrested, along with six foreigners, during the operations.
David Attenborough recently visited the Graham Norton show, and shared the stage with the likes of Cameron Diaz. Norton played a clip of a tortoise making sweet love to a shoe (we won’t mention the brand of the shoe, as we wouldn’t want to offend) and asked David Attenborough to narrate that particular miracle of […]
Vodacom announced a short while ago that their Century City office would from August boast the largest array of solar panels on a single building in Africa. Nearly 2 000 mono crystalline solar panels will cover the 3 600m² roof of the building, it said.
This will surprise you. On Friday and Saturday, German solar power plants produced a record 22 gigawatts of energy – the equivalent output of 20 nuclear plants running at full capacity. The country is already a world-leader in solar power, and hopes to be free of nuclear energy by 2022. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year, Germany decided to abandon nuclear power, and immediately closed eight plants.
Various officials are currently meeting with the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) to establish a salvage operation for the stranded trawler on Clifton’s First Beach. A source familiar with the maritime industry believes it’s quite unlikely that the vessel wouldn’t have known what it was doing, and that fog would not have played a role in the grounding.
Remember last year when Table Mountain was voted in as one of the seven new “wonders of nature” after an extensive international voting competition run by the Swiss New7Wonders Foundation? Well an international audit has just confirmed the award, making the title official, but what does this mean for Slaapstad and our tourism industry?
Late yesterday afternoon, you may have been alerted to the fact that we had found out that Salome the cheetah from the Hoedpsruit Endangered Species Centre was due to give birth to her first litter of cubs at some point during the following 24 hours. Her first cub was born at approximately 19h20 last night. Click through for more.
South Africa’s next poaching epidemic could emanate out of the trade in lion body parts. Lion bones are being used as a replacement for tiger bones to concoct traditional Asian medicines like tiger brew wine because of the demise of the region’s tiger populations. Lion are already being poached in the northern section of the Kruger National Park.
At the tender age of 18, photographer Shawn Reeder won a trip to Yosemite National Park and promptly fell in love with its “beauty and awe”. Since then he’s been compiling wonderful, high-definition footage which he has finally deemed ready to share with the world.
The Brazilian Chamber of Deputies has approved contentious new legislation that eases rules on how much land farmers must preserve as forest. Environmentalists are up in arms, and say the new forest legislation will be a disaster, and lead to further destruction of the Amazon.
In the wake of the tragic death of 20-year old Capetonian bodyboarder, David Lillienfeld last Thursday, the City of Cape Town has agreed to implement a shark spotting programme at Kogel Bay, where the young man lost his life.
It’s Mount-Everest-climbing season, apparently – with the National Geographic team attempting to recreate the route used in the first American ascent of the mountain, the 1963 NG-sponsored American Mount Everest Expedition. The team is live-updating their progress online, with a live stream of photos, blog posts, and twitter updates. I think one of them’s using Instagram, too.
The City of Cape Town has released its official report on the fatal shark attack that claimed the life of bodyboarder, David Lilienfeld, 20, on Thursday at Kogel Bay, “Caves”, near Gordons Bay. In it, the City concluded that the tagging of False Bay sharks for a documentary could not be directly linked to the attack.
Wherever humans and wild animals come into close contact with one another, there will likely be negative consequences for one or the other, or both. 13-year-old Richard Turere, who lives in Empakasi, on the edge of the Nairobi National Park, just south of Nairobi, has invented a system that keeps his family’s cattle safe from lions that had previously sought an easy meal from their herd.
Advice from the first official British government report into fracking has been published today. In it, British ministers have been informed that they should allow the controversial process of fracking for shale gas to be extended there, this despite the process having been blamed for causing two earthquakes.
Recently published photos have revealed what is believed to be the world’s first “strawberry” leopard. The big cat was discovered in South Africa’s Madikwe Game Reserve and is an incredibly rare find.
King Juan Carlos of Spain is no stranger to controversial hunting. Six years ago, it was asserted that the 74-year-old shot a drunken Russian bear that had been lured with honey and vodka. Officials dismissed the allegations as ridiculous. The Spanish media have just had another field day though, after they learned he’d broken his hip hunting in Botswana recently.
Paintball guns were the weapons of choice for eight Scarborough residents who were among a group of 35 individuals that battled two troops of baboons in and around the sleepy coastal Cape village on Easter Monday. They fought for hours, but the baboons had the last laugh by returning later in the evening.
The owners and employees of Lombardini Game Lodge near Jeffrey’s Bay in the Eastern Cape were left somewhere between surprise, anger and hilarity when they arrived at work yesterday to discover that one of the lodge’s precious (though not living) inhabitants had been brutally attacked overnight.
By now, most of you would be aware of what wingsuit flying is, thanks to Jeb Corliss. But, quietly over the years, others have joined in on the rather crazy hobby too. Take Roberta Mancino, for instance. She’s an Italian model and has skydived naked a few times. Then she met Jeb. She absolutely kills it in this video.
Before you begin to make fun of the headline used for this article, we must tell you that the vermin extractors will also be serving an educational purpose. Johannesburg’s general owl population has been in decline for years as a result of urbanisation, but new owl projects are helping to combat this.
He’s eaten from a zebra carcass, swum across freezing lakes in just his undies to see what it’d be like, and he once slept in a dead sheep’s carcass for warmth. Sadly, it might be a while before we get to watch any of Bear’s antics again. The Discovery Channel set him free for good yesterday by announcing their relationship is over.
The debate around re-opening the international rhino horn trade is still raging. While government has not given any indication yet of whether it will support the proposal to lift the ban, the demand for rhino horn from Chinese medicine practitioners is not going away.
A rather large Great White Shark, measuring 4,3 metres in length, was caught 400 metres behind the breakers of Fish Hoek beach yesterday. Local fishermen from Kalk Bay accidentally caught the large female in fishing nets they had set late on Saturday night.