In 2008 I was picked as a volunteer for a 12 week programme based in Madagascar. Three of us were selected to live amongst the villagers of Tsilamaha in the south, an area known for its spiny forest, listed as a special eco-region by WWF. Volunteers were required to help a local NGO that partnered [...]
Finding a hotel with a dive centre is an important preoccupation mostly reserved for scuba divers. Some travellers will prioritise a spa, swimming pool or kids’ club. But if you want to dive, all day, every day of your holiday — like I do — then finding a dive resort that revolves around surface intervals [...]
Antarctica, the last ‘great wilderness on earth’, has changed those that get the opportunity to go there. Taryam Al Subaihi, old friend, ex-colleague, and Emirati based in Abu Dhabi was chosen by his company to go on Robert Swan’s Inspire Antarctic Expedition 2011 last month to study climate change, making me, and everybody around him incredibly [...]
The Arabian leopard remains elusive in the Arabian peninsula and estimates put the current population at less than 200 cats from Yemen to Oman. Despite these low numbers and lack of any recent sightings, dozens of holidaymakers with a keen interest in pushing research forward on this vulnerable species are drawn to the mountains of [...]
Next stop Salalah. I’m heading to southern Oman tomorrow to check out what the Biosphere Expedition guys are doing to track the uber vulnerable Arabian Leopard. It is so vulnerable in fact that the chances of seeing one, as outlined on the official trip document, is close to nil. But that doesn’t stop eager young [...]
Illegal trade in wildlife products like ivory and rhino horn must be treated as a serious crime in order to end the devastating poaching of protected species, the head of UN wildlife trade regulator CITES said last week. “This is serious crime, and you need serious resources and serious penalties” to address it, said CITES [...]
South African authorities have been rounding up thousands of escaped crocodiles since Friday after floods gave them an escape route from a crocodile farm. Authorities attempted to reassure the public everything was under control. “A large number” of 15,000 reptiles at the Rakwena Crocodile Farm in the far north of the country had escaped last Sunday [...]
Brazil will undertake the massive task of cataloging the trees of the Amazon, in an effort to better monitor and protect the world’s largest tropical forest, the environment ministry announced Friday. The planned tree census, set to take four years, “will allow us to have a broad panorama of the quality and the conditions in [...]
Recycling entrepreneur Tom Szaky is stubbing out the world’s cigarette problem — one butt at a time. The 30-year-old who dropped out of Princeton University to start his innovative company TerraCycle in Trenton, New Jersey, says there’s no such thing as trash, even when you’re talking about the contents of ashtrays. In a program started [...]
