标签： Africa

A landmark large-scale animal rescue mission launched Friday in Luján, Argentina, as teams of animal welfare specialists began moving 30 malnourished, neglected lions and tigers out of the abandoned Luján Zoo, where they had spent years confined in cramped, unsanitary concrete enclosures. The big cats will travel thousands of miles to purpose-built wildlife sanctuaries in South Africa and the United States, marking one of the largest coordinated captive big cat relocations in global history.\n\nThe shuttered zoo sits roughly 43 miles northwest of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, and the big cats’ fates have hung in uncertainty since the facility was forced to close in 2020. Argentine regulators shuttered the attraction after repeated safety violations and widespread animal abuse reports, as the zoo was once notorious for allowing visitors to directly handle big cats and pose for photos with them. At the time of closure, nearly 200 big cats were held at the site. When international animal welfare organization Four Paws, which is leading the current rescue, first arrived to coordinate a long-term solution in 2023, only 112 animals remained, and that number dropped to 62 by 2025 when the group gained full control of the property.\n\nDecades of improper care have left many of the surviving big cats with severe chronic health conditions. Many struggle to walk due to obesity, extreme muscle atrophy, and years of unbalanced, inadequate nutrition. Others live with untreated dental disease, chronic kidney illness, lifelong complications from invasive declawing procedures, and old injuries that never received proper medical care. “That alone shows the level of overcrowding and the conditions in which these animals have endured,” noted Luciana D’Abramo, Four Paws’ program director for the operation. “We are putting everything into making this go as smoothly as possible so we can celebrate that 30 lives have improved because of this effort.”\n\nIn preparation for the transfer, Four Paws staff worked for months to train most of the big cats to enter the reinforced jumbo transport crates voluntarily to reduce stress during the move. For animals that could not be acclimated, veterinarians administered gentle sedation to keep them calm. On the first day of operations, two sedated tigers were carefully lifted in padded canvas slings and carried by hand to their crates to prepare for departure.\n\nOnce loaded, the big cats will be separated into two groups for their long-distance journeys. Fifteen cats – nine tigers and six lions – will be flown to Lionsrock, Four Paws’ purpose-built big cat sanctuary in South Africa. The site spans 148 acres of natural, open enclosure and is already home to more than 80 rescued big cats from across the globe. The remaining 15 animals, eight tigers and seven lions, will travel to The Wild Animal Sanctuary, a vast grassland refuge located northeast of Denver, Colorado, where hundreds of rescued exotic animals roam free in large, natural habitats.\n\nThe intercontinental journey presents significant logistical challenges. The group bound for Colorado will route through Chile before continuing to the United States, while the South Africa-bound cats will fly to Johannesburg via either Frankfurt or Amsterdam, followed by a four-hour overland drive to the Lionsrock sanctuary.\n\nBefore this first wave of transfers, Four Paws already began improving conditions for the big cats remaining at the former zoo: the organization retrained the site’s former staff in modern, humane animal welfare practices, upgraded the cats’ diets to meet their nutritional needs, and implemented consistent, high-quality veterinary care for sick and injured animals. More than 30 big cats will remain at the Luján site temporarily as the organization continues to arrange permanent sanctuary placement for every remaining animal.

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Communities across Zimbabwe are in mourning this week after a devastating capsizing incident on Lake Kariba, the world’s largest man-made reservoir by water volume, left at least 46 people dead and dozens more unaccounted for. On Thursday, hundreds of mourners including senior national cabinet ministers assembled at Nyamhunga Stadium in the lakeside town of Kariba to pay their final respects to the victims, with plain wooden coffins arranged in rows across the stadium’s central pitch under large canvas tents.

The tragedy unfolded on Tuesday, when the overloaded, aging ferry set out from Kariba town bound for remote rural shoreline communities and isolated fishing camps scattered along the lake’s banks. For residents of these outlying areas, the ferry serves as a critical lifeline: years of underinvestment have left regional roads heavily damaged, and formal public road transport is either extremely limited or entirely non-existent for many local families. Many residents rely on the vessel both for daily travel and to move goods for small local businesses that support fishing communities.

Authorities have not yet released an official final count of how many passengers were aboard the vessel when it overturned, nor a confirmed number of those still missing. Independent estimates suggest as many as 153 people were on board, far exceeding the ferry’s official maximum capacity of 90 passengers. As of Thursday, disaster management teams confirmed that 77 people have been rescued from the lake, with the death toll climbing by two to reach 46 since initial counts were released on Wednesday.

The disaster has left countless families shattered, with some households losing multiple generations and multiple members. Collen Ndandalika, one grieving resident interviewed by state broadcaster ZBC News, lost his wife and three children in the sinking. “My wife and children all drowned. Two children have been recovered, but my wife and the other child are still missing. I still can’t believe this is a real world I am living in,” Ndandalika said. His wife had been traveling to rural camps to sell goods purchased in Kariba town, and had brought the couple’s children along to help with the business during school holiday breaks. “I have my brothers who are checking on the bodies to see if they can identify my wife and child. I am too traumatized to keep looking at dead bodies,” he added.

The tragedy has already sparked growing public criticism over the continued operation of the outdated, overcapacity vessel, as well as allegations of a slow initial rescue response. Multiple survivors have come forward to report that they begged the ferry’s captain to turn back to shore as strong winds built large waves shortly before the boat capsized, but their pleas were ignored.

In an official condolence message, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa acknowledged the systemic failures that allowed the disaster to occur. The president admitted the tragedy had “exposed serious deficiencies in our maritime capabilities which we have to address immediately so that our places of recreation do not become death traps to the innocent.” Following the statement, Mnangagwa declared a national state of disaster, ordering all relevant government agencies to redirect available resources to support affected families and speed up ongoing search and recovery operations.

Located on the Zambezi River along Zimbabwe’s northern border, Lake Kariba was created between the late 1950s and early 1960s with the construction of the Kariba Dam. Stretching more than 200 kilometers in length and reaching up to 40 kilometers wide in some sections, it remains the largest artificial lake on Earth by total water volume, and is a key economic and transportation hub for northern Zimbabwe.

A fatal incident in northern Tanzania’s high-profile Ngorongoro Conservation Area has sparked renewed scrutiny of harsh conservation enforcement practices, after local police took three park rangers into custody following the death of one civilian and the severe injury of two others who authorities say entered the protected zone without formal authorization.

The confrontation unfolded on a Wednesday morning, when the rangers detained the three travelers who had mistakenly strayed into the conservation area. Police reports confirm the group was en route from the regional hub of Arusha to a funeral in Babati, a destination roughly 103 miles from their starting point, when they veered off the main road and into the protected park boundaries.

According to statements to local media from Abdallah Nuru, the only traveler who avoided prolonged medical detention, the group realized their misdirection shortly after passing through the Ngorongoro park gate and immediately turned back to exit. Even after explaining they had lost their way and were traveling to a family funeral, Nuru says rangers accused the three men of being poachers and detained them immediately.

Nuru described a brutal ordeal of abuse at the hands of the rangers: the three were ordered to remove all their clothing, roll across ground covered in sharp thorny shrubs, and were beaten repeatedly while officers poured water over them during the assault. Both 25-year-old Sefu Musa and the third traveler, Salimu Haji, lost consciousness during the attack. An injured Nuru managed to transport his two colleagues to a nearby hospital, where Musa was pronounced dead on arrival. Haji remains hospitalized in critical condition for treatment of his injuries, while Nuru returned to Arusha to speak with reporters and authorities.

Police have confirmed the three rangers have been taken into custody as part of an ongoing formal investigation into the circumstances of Musa’s death. The incident is not an isolated case, however: human rights organizations and local indigenous communities have for years documented widespread allegations of excessive force, arbitrary detainment, and harassment targeting civilians during routine conservation enforcement operations across the Ngorongoro Conservation Area.

Long-standing tensions over conservation policy in the region center on repeated forced relocation efforts targeting the Maasai people, an indigenous community that has coexisted with wildlife in the Ngorongoro ecosystem for centuries. Tanzanian government authorities have repeatedly defended these relocation and enforcement measures, framing them as critical necessary steps to protect the ecologically sensitive protected zone and enforce national conservation regulations.

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