Tending the dead
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
Agent Orange
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
Blowout
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 in Mongabay.