Uncategorized Archive

It’s serious: lots of oil and a new scramble for (east) Africa.
We’ve known for about a month that China had found serious oil and gas reserves in northern Kenya. And we’ve known for about that same amount of time China had found new oil reserves in Uganda. And we’ve presumed for wont of [...]

The closest African relative to the groundhog never appears.
Well, fact-check first. The truly closest relative to the groundhog is the giant forest squirrel (Protoxerus stangeri mayensis) but it may be extinct. I’ve never seen it, no one seems to care very much about it, and the only picture I could find was of [...]

There have been 236 great white shark attacks on humans recorded since 1876. Oh, sorry, that’s now 237.
That statement above was a part of a lengthy June, 2008, article in the Smithsonian entitled “Forget Jaws, Now it’s . . . Brains!” which also claimed that Great White approaches to humans were mostly out [...]

The current deluge in Kenya is a real human tragedy, and I sympathize with many Kenyans who are furious that their official meteorological department said the rains were going to end, not continue.
I wrote a blog about it on December 11, explaining that data available from satellites which I then published as maps, suggested otherwise: [...]

Activist Member of Parliament in Tanzania decries sorcery being used against her in the current election. This is tongue-in-cheek, but not even google knows this.
A report in one of Dar-es-Salaam’s major newspapers this morning was picked up by literally thousands if not hundreds of thousands of other media, probably for what was presumed as [...]

Baboon Thanksgiving
Thank you, humans, for all your friendship. On this day of American Thanksgiving we are specially thankful for human Americans.
Thank you for your heart-felt concern for our well-being,
Thank you for your careful attention to our seeing
That you’re coming to observe us conquering the wild jungle.
Thank you for your massive support of our jungles,
Thank [...]

Jim Heck has worked and lived in Africa since the early 1970s, has owned and headed several companies promoting and selling African travel and has several guide books. His companies have organized safaris into East Africa for more than 10,000 visitors including most of the country’s major zoos and conservation organizations. He has [...]