Blowout - a photo essay
A nasty wind rips across Cornell’s Kop one afternoon in the spring of 2024, driving emeritus professor Timm Hoffman and his team to abandon the hilly study site a few clicks west of the |Ai-|Ais Richtersveld Transfrontier Park that straddles the South Africa-Namibia border along the Orange River.
Coming soon, at Mongabay.
Agent Orange - a photo essay
The foothills of south-western Lesotho are like a burn victim who has barely survived their injuries. It’s as if they’ve been doused with napalm. The once plump, glowing skin of soil and grass is reduced to scar tissue, drum-tight over the jutting sandstone bones beneath. The wound is trying to heal, but the keloid scars of erosion gullies can’t close.
27 February 2025
Tending the Dead - a photo essay
The maiden’s quiver tree is the Cinderella of three tree aloe sister species that grace the Richtersveld’s gravelly moonscape. Maybe she’s outshone by the towering charisma of the giant and common quiver trees— she’s stocky and stout — but her future is as uncertain as her siblings’, as the desert’s climate ratchets up from hellishly hot to unbearable.
16 February 2025
Here Come the Dunes
As Earth’s average temperature slips beyond 1.5°C of average warming and threatens to lurch the climate outside of its safe zone, a visit to the Richtersveld shows what happens locally when a region crosses a tipping point, threatening conservation and livelihoods.
28 January 2025, Daily Maverick
Farmers Fight Back Against Reckless Mining Practices
Farmers are holding the line against a surge in new mining prospectors, but are overwhelmed by the volume, and are challenging the state’s ability to manage the region’s development as the climate emergency escalates.
28 January 2025, Daily Maverick
Drought-Battered Richtersveld Farmers Fear Destructive Creep of Mining
Farming remains the most viable livelihood. But as the region’s climate tips towards hotter, drier conditions, Karoo researchers fear this sparsely-populated region will become a sacrifice zone for the rest of the country’s development, and that only a powerful few will benefit.
29 January 2025, Daily Maverick
Poachers target South Africa’s ‘miracle’ plant with near impunity
A year ago, single plants of a rare South African lily were fetching eye-watering prices at auctions in China. Since then, poaching syndicates have tracked the wild population to its place of endemism in a single gorge in the south-west of the country. Northern Cape conservation authorities are ill equipped to protect it.
20 December 2024, Mongabay
Bleak future for Karoo Succulents as Desert Expands in South Africa
Recent population surveys show continued decline in two desert-adapted succulent tree aloe species, with conservationists fearing for the state of an understudied third species. A years-long drought has accelerated spreading dust-bowl conditions following decades of mining and heavy grazing, with grave consequences for endemic succulents.
20 March 2025, Mongabay
Story Ark is a year-long journalistic project where science journalist and author Leonie Joubert is on the road, visiting remote and often ‘invisible’ locations around southern Africa, documenting the untold stories as the climate crisis unfolds on our doorstep, in our lifetime.
The name Story Ark draws on the importance of storytelling and for journalism to bring our attention to the need for a Noah’s ark in ecological, cultural and social conservation.
Story Ark is a collaboration with the School for Climate Studies at Stellenbosch University and has support from the Henry Nxumalo Foundation which enables investigative reporting.