Africa Content

Study Predicts Poor Survival Rates if Ebola Infects Endangered Mountain Gorillas

Katherine E Kerlin — April 12, 2023 - 1:26pm

If infected with the Ebola virus, less than 20 percent of Africa's endangered mountain gorillas would be expected to survive more than 100 days, finds a study from Smithsonian Institution, the �ٺ��Ƶ-based Gorilla Doctors and others.

Chew On This: Personalized Health Care for Mountain Gorillas

Katherine E Kerlin — October 20, 2022 - 7:00am

Chewed plants are helping Gorilla Doctors and �ٺ��Ƶ veterinarians provide personalized health care to wild, endangered mountain gorillas in East Africa.

Genomics by Africans for Africans

Andy Fell — March 15, 2022 - 11:49am

The African BioGenome Project (AfricaBP) has published a position paper in Nature highlighting the goals, priorities, and roadmap of the Africa-led effort to sequence the genomes of 105,000 species of plants, animals, fungi and protists that are endemic to the continent.

Carbon Payments Play Pivotal Role in Forest Protection Program

Katherine E Kerlin — February 23, 2022 - 8:00am

When pay-to-conserve programs don’t come through with payments, they don’t conserve, indicates a case study by the University of California, Davis, of a REDD+ Readiness program on the island of Pemba, off the coast of Tanzania.

Unfold Podcast, Episode 9: How Climate Change Is Punishing the World’s Poor

Katherine E Kerlin — November 17, 2020 - 9:00am

In Kenya, climate change is threatening a way of life for pastoralists. It’s driving families deeper into poverty. When drought hits, men travel for weeks in search of water and greener pastures for their livestock herds. The women and children are left behind with no stable source of food or income.

Scientists Find Ebola Virus Antibodies in People Before 2018 DRC Outbreak

Katherine E Kerlin — November 04, 2020 - 8:00am

Scientists found antibodies to Ebola virus in people up to a year before the 2018 Ebola virus disease outbreak began in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC. This suggests that either early cases may have been missed or that exposure occurs more commonly than previously thought, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis.

$9M to Preempt Zoonotic Spillover Threats, Protect Military and Local Communities

Katherine E Kerlin — February 19, 2019 - 10:40am

Predicting the emergence of highly pathogenic viruses in animals and preventing them from spilling over to humans is the goal of a multimillion-dollar cooperative agreement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, with collaborating researchers at the University of California, Davis; the University of Idaho; and Plymouth University in England.

Learning From Gorillas to Save Killer Whales

Katherine E Kerlin — November 07, 2018 - 2:45pm

In 2018, the southern resident killer whale population in the Pacific Northwest’s Salish Sea was at its lowest ever. The world watched in September as an orca named Scarlet, or J50, wasted away and died, leaving just 74 of her kind left. Some wondered if this was “What extinction looks like.”

Scientists Discover New Ebolavirus in Bats in Sierra Leone

Katherine E Kerlin — July 27, 2018 - 12:23pm

Scientists have identified a novel ebolavirus in free-tailed bats in Sierra Leone, providing the strongest evidence to date that bats are the natural hosts of these viruses. The new virus, called Bombali virus, was found in insectivorous bats roosting inside people’s houses.

Dozens of New Wildlife Corridors Identified for African Mammals

Katherine E Kerlin — November 07, 2017 - 12:44pm

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have identified 52 potential wildlife corridors linking protected areas across Tanzania. Using a cost-effective combination of interviews with local residents and a land conversion dataset for East Africa, they found an additional 23 corridors over those previously identified by Tanzanian government reports.