The chilly highland valleys of northern KwaZulu-Natal province, where coal mining and agriculture have coexisted since the late 19th century, have never been a geography of unfolding uncertainty, mystery, and menace like they are today.
Author Archives: EcoImpact
I’m a fisherman who dropped out of high school in 1986 at the age of 14. Over my lifetime, I’ve spent many nights in jail. I’m an epileptic. I’m asthmatic. I don’t even know how to swim. This is my story. It’s a story of ecological redemption.
Morocco has activated what is to be the world’s largest solar power plant in the Sahara desert, near the city of Ouarzazate
The Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA) has embarked on an elephant monitoring project in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in KwaZulu-Natal in a bid to provide essential data to support and strengthen Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife’s management of elephant populations in the park as well as enhance a broader understanding of how best to manage elephant populations in closed systems.
The rhino conservation cyclist Wayne Bolton, who recently completed a 6 000km cycle across the country, will be cycling as part of the SANParks ‘riding for conservation’ team in the upcoming Cape Town Cycle Tour on Sunday, 6 March.
Three miners are unaccounted for after the Lily Mine in Mpumalanga’s Nkomazi area collapsed on Friday morning.
One of the shafts collapsed and trapped about 52 mine workers. At this stage 70% of the workers or 30 have been rescued.
Mineral Resources Minister Mosebenzi Zwane is scheduled to announce mine safety statistics at a press conference in Pretoria today amid concerns that the mining industry has dropped its focus on safety.
President Jacob Zuma has signed the Medicines and Related Substances Amendment Bill 6 of 2014 into law in terms of section 84(2) of the Constitution.
This new Act creates a new legal framework for the Medicines Control Council (MCC) to be scrapped, and for the establishment of a new South African Health Products [sic] Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA), similar to the FDA in the USA. The SAHPRA will no longer be an organ of State, but a self-funded, autonomous, semi-private entity at an arms length from our legislature.
The controversial definition of ‘Complementary Medicine’ (enabling clause) was dropped from the text of the Bill under the instruction of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee for Health during the passage of the Bill through the law-making process. Hence complementary and alternative products (and African Traditional Medicines) are not defined in the framework of new Act.
In 2014, the city replaced over 3,600 manhole covers while almost 3,000 were stolen in 2013.
CAPE TOWN – Over the past three years the City of Cape Town has lost more than R40 million to the theft of fire hydrants, water meters and manhole covers.
The Department of Environmental Affairs has been ordered by the High Court to cease all recreational angling in the Tsitsikamma Marine Protected Area (MPA), with immediate effect.
The DEA confirmed the court order in a statement, saying the South African National Parks (SANParks) and the Tsitsikamma Angling Forum (representatives of the Tsitsikamma fishing community) “have reached a settlement agreement” with the Friends of the Tsitsikamma Association, to stop the pilot recreational angling project in the Tsitsikamma Marine Protected Area (MPA).
The court order was passed by the High Court on Friday, 8 January 2016.
