Chris Fischer is an American documentary maker whose program, Shark Men, is in the Cape tagging Great White sharks along our coastline. A group opposed to this have lodged a complaint with the Department of Environmental Affairs, claiming the “research” Fischer conducts might make good TV, but is damaging to the sharks. Both sides of the story, after the jump!
Over the weekend, roughly 300 dogs were rescued from secret woodland kennels just south of Manila. They were part of an illegal online gambling operation in which players outside the Philippines bet on dogs fighting at a clandestine compound. But this is not the animals’ happy ending, as many of them are too injured or too wild to rehabilitate.
Yesterday, between six and 12 tornadoes hit Dallas County, Texas, throughout the day. That estimate alone is enough reason to rejoice that twisters are not a regular phenomenon in South Africa. Add to the equation that they’re powerful enough to fling 18-wheeler trucks like toys, and you’ve got a legitimate reason to break into song and dance down the main street.
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.
During a time where we really cannot afford to lose anymore rhinos, another one has passed away – this time after being hit by a lorry outside Pretoria. Pics of the incident can be seen after the jump.
A Joburg woman was sliced in half on Monday when a light aircraft struck her at a small airfield in Ermelo. Three woman, who improperly gained access to the airfield, were running across the runway as the plane came in to land. The Central Aviation Authority is busy looking into the matter.
It seems the debate surrounding the ability to properly domesticate all kinds of dogs is far from over. A three-year-old girl in London had her ponytail ripped off her head after a South African Boerboel dog in a public park mauled her. The dog in question has since been put down and its owner reported to the procurator fiscal.
Here’s some great news for the swimmers amongst you. The City of Cape Town is about to launch a first-of-its-kind initiative to clean up the water running into three popular bathing areas. The project aims to improve the quality of storm water at two outlet sites in Three Anchor Bay and another at Rocklands, between Sea Point and Mouille Point.
Green, a female orangutan, is the subject of a powerful new documentary. She was rescued after deforestation in Indonesia left her without a home – and paralysed down her left side. Green’s last couple of hours on earth was filmed and included in a documentary by Patrick Rouxel for Al Jazeera. His aim is to highlight the extent to which deforestation is “raping our planet.”
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.
Zimbabweans will be reminded of the previous times the country has declared a state of disaster as food shortages threatened widespread starvation. A third of Zimbabwe’s current maize crop has just been written off due to a prolonged dry spell, according to reports.
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.
Yesterday fury broke out across social networks over surfaced photos of Donald Trump’s sons on a safari killing spree in Zimbabwe. Taken last year, the pictures show Eric and Donald Trump proudly posing next to animals they’ve killed. The list include an elephant, leopard, crocodile, kudu, civet cat and water buck. Full gallery of the boys’ hunting achievements – after the jump.
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.
Hectique. This is not the way you want to end your school skiing trip. A bus full of kids, travelling through a Swiss tunnel, hit a kerb and crashed face first into a wall inside the tunnel. A full gallery of the disaster is inside.
While the rest of Cape Town took part in yesterday’s Argus, a group of hipsters understandably felt that this event was way too commercial. So 100 of them shed their clothes instead, and cycled naked around the Prestwich Memorial. They raising awareness of the fact that the city has one of the highest carbon emissions per capita ratings in the world. Pictures taken of all the…action…after the jump.
Last week, director James Cameron found the one spot where people wouldn’t ask him about the Avatar sequel – 8km beneath the ocean, off the coast of Papua New Guinea, in a specially designed submarine. He’ll be repeating the trick later this month at the ocean’s deepest point to shoot footage for a couple of documentaries.
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.
Humans and animals don’t always get along. But on occasion one species helps the other out in a remarkable way. When it comes to dolphins, it’s often the animal coming to the rescue of the human, but in this dramatic video, it is beachgoers in Brazil who lend a hand to the dolphins. Heartwarming stuff.
Our local wildlife can be very… independent minded. A giraffe and a baboon have made separate headlines today for their remarkably free-thinking behaviour.
You may have heard about the massive storm that hit KZN over the weekend, disrupting pretty much everything. Over 250mm of rain fell on the KZN coast this weekend – causing the Palmiet River to overflow its banks. Residents of Quarry Heights also faced evacuations. Guess what? She’s coming back.
It would appear that authorities are finally starting to make serious inroads into the rhino horn trafficking underworld. A suspected kingpin, and former Mpumalanga police officer, was arrested on Friday in Hazyview. He was found with four rhino horns, and over R60 000 in his possession.
At least six people have reportedly died as a result of tropical storm Irina, which struck the KwaZulu-Natal coast over the weekend. Rescue teams, emergency workers, and the police worked continuously yesterday to help KwaZulu-Natal residents through the worst of the storm. Durban surfers, however, enjoyed themselves.
Port Elizabeth’s windswept landscape already features one wind farm, and the building of a second farm on the other side of the city is currently under debate. Hearings are underway today in PE, to test opinion on the development of a new wind farm at Blue Horizon Bay. Many residents are opposed to this – basically, because wind farms are ugly.
The Hout Bay Residents’ Association will apply for a court interdict to stop construction on the Chapman’s Peak toll plaza in Cape Town, it has been confirmed. Construction has begun at the site, and lawyers representing the movement have been drawing up the interdict to halt the R54 million project.
Environmental planning authorities in sleepy Fish Hoek on the False Bay coast are reconsidering the installation of an exclusion net across the bay adjacent to the town, to try stave off the regular loitering of Great White sharks near the popular beach front.
These pictures were taken in February at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya. An elephant was giving birth when a group of lions and hyenas mistook her newborn for a potential breakfast. But watch as the rest of the herd comes to the female’s aid by huddling around her until she delivers her calf.
Right on the back of the news that four SANParks employees have been arrested in relation to rhino posting, comes the news that three veterinarians have appeared in court for the wrongful possession of drugs used in rhino poaching. Does this mean that something is finally being done about the poaching crisis in the country?
It’s difficult to act surprised at the announcement from SANParks this morning, stating that four Kruger National Park wildlife officials were arrested yesterday in connection with rhino poaching activities. There are such large amounts of money involved with the rhino poaching syndicates, and just too many closely related coincidences, for there not to have been someone involved on the inside.