World Health Organization Ebola virus emergency response team bugged out two days later BENI, DRC––The World Health Organization on November 17, 2018 temporarily evacuated 16 Ebola virus emergency response vaccination staff from the city of Beni in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, after a dud mortar shell hit the WHO staff residence near […]
Bleak future for Kenya donkeys, sold to slaughter or left to go feral
Beasts of burden for 5,000 years, but now out of work NAIROBI, NAIVASHA, Kenya––Donkeys in Kenya, as in much of the rest of the developing world, are rapidly disappearing, but not all in the same direction. Some are trucked to slaughter; others gallop into the bush. Tens of thousands of Kenyan donkeys have already […]
“Undertaker birds” replace street dogs in African cities
Marabou storks eat everything along the roads except the cars NAIROBI, Kenya––Marabou storks have replaced the street dogs. Twenty years ago the drive from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport past Nairobi National Park and into the central city via the Mombasa highway was an exercise in start-and-stop driving and sudden swerves to avoid the […]
Trophy hunting scheme & Chinese-built railway fire debate in Kenya
ANIMALS 24-7 reports from the scene NAIROBI, Kenya––Most of the delegates to the 2018 Africa Animal Welfare Conference, opening on September 3 at the United Nations Complex in Nairobi, will have already seen the second most controversial wildlife-related topic in Kenya, a four-mile Chinese-built railway overpass crossing Nairobi National Park, on their 20-mile ride […]
Who killed ivory trade investigator Esmond Martin, why?
Survived more than 30 years of work in some of the world’s most dangerous places, only to be stabbed in his bed NAIROBI, Kenya––Nairobi police homicide detectives appear to believe that renowned elephant ivory and rhino horn trafficking investigator Esmond Bradley Martin Jr., 75, was murdered on February 5, 2018 in connection with a […]
And the lesson from Harambe’s death is? Well, it’s not to blame mom.
by Barry Kent Mackay Senior Program Associate, Born Free U.S.A. There has been so much written about the shooting of a 17-year-old western lowland gorilla named Harambe at Cincinnati Zoo on May 28, 2016 that it might seem that all views and issues have been amply explored, although too often not necessarily by people who […]
Pigs investigated as possible Ebola vectors
Pigs can get Ebola, but do they spread it? KAMPALA, Uganda; NAIROBI, Kenya––Domestic pigs may already be among the vectors transmitting deadly Ebola viruses to humans, though no one knows for sure yet, warns a five-member International Livestock Research Institute team in a soon-to-be-published edition of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Transboundary and Emerging Diseases. The […]