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Guest blogger: Hannah Chisholm, education volunteer in the Gola Rainforest National Park Since arriving in Sierra Leone in January, I’ve mostly been working on an educational road show for forest edge communities around Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP) to show them the breadth of our work...

I've just got back from the Gola Rainforest National Park (GRNP) in Sierra Leone, where I had the exciting job of introducing an intrepid young explorer to the GRNP team and partners. Will Millard is planning to travel down the Mano-Moro rivers on the international border between Sierra Leone and...

The expansion of palm oil plantations on São Tomé and Príncipe is threatening species that are only found on these beautiful oceanic islands. Alice Ward-Francis tells us more on the latest post over on the Saving Species blog .

Guest blogger: Sarah Sanders, Head of Partner Development Unit - Africa, Asia and UK Overseas Territories At the beginning of October, my boss had to give a presentation at Kew on the tropical rainforest work we’re supporting around the world. He wanted to speak about the Uluguru mountains because...

I’ve been working in Harapan Rainforest for three years. I’m a biodiversity officer, which means I keep an eye out for and monitor the wide variety of amazing species that call this rainforest home. From sun bears and hornbills to gibbons and pangolins, I keep an eye out for all of them,...

I love Fridays – it’s the end of the working week, the start of the weekend, and there’s even a chocolate bar dedicated to that wonderful Friday feeling. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to channel that feeling and make it do something for nature? Well this week you can! FSC Friday...

Rainforest Alliance have produced a brilliant film showing that "you don't have to go to the ends of the earth to protect the planet - just follow the frog". It's well worth a watch, so click here .

In the latest posts from the Together For Trees Rainforest Reporter, Gareth meets Gola Rainforest National Park's very own Dr Doolittle and some local heroes , whilst "enjoying" some unexpected sounds of the rainforest . To take a look, head over to the Rainforest Reporter blog .

Guest blogger: Heather G I loved reading Annika’s pygmy hippo diary from Gola last week. From the outset I was hooked. It had everything that’s needed for a great story. First, there’s the setting. It really is another world, one of adventure and wonder (and somewhere I’d...

2 June Last night was our last night all together so we threw a little party for the team, though I wasn’t really in the party mood and have to admit to shedding a tear or two. We’ve come so close so many times, but still haven’t managed to catch a pygmy hippo. And what would...

27 May I’m starting to think that I’m just not meant to see a pygmy hippo in the wild. I came back to Kenema today, promising some new colleagues a lift back with me as they had spent the night on the island. When I arrived at the campsite where they’ve been staying on the island...

23 May Another close call over the weekend, but still no pygmy hippo. I wish they could understand it’s for their own good! It’s become worryingly quiet over the last couple of days and frustration levels amongst the team are growing. What are we doing wrong? It started so well, but we...

18 May Quite an exciting day today. Ok so we didn’t actually catch a hippo, but we’re getting closer! Kenewa heard hippo noises whilst out checking his traps this morning. The locals think it’s a pregnant female looking for somewhere to give birth, but Michele thinks it’s...

8 May No luck so far. There haven’t been many signs of hippos around the traps, but a couple of them have feeding sites nearby. The team are busy improving their radio telemetry skills ready so that if we do catch a hippo we’ll be able to track where it goes. Unfortunately, I have to...

5 May The whole team have been on Tiwai for two days now and yesterday we started opening the traps. We’ve removed the strong cover materials that, for the last month, have allowed the pygmy hippos to walk over the traps without falling in and replaced them with partly broken rattan mats on...

2 May 2012 The team are starting to assemble in Tiwai. Michele, the vet from Palm Beach Zoo who is an expert in wildlife immobilisation (or anaesthetics to you and me) arrived yesterday after travelling from South Africa where she’s working on another project involved rhinos and lions. Today...

31 March Success! We now have 20 finished traps. I may be biased, but I’m sure these are the most beautiful pitfall traps I’ve ever seen. I’m really proud of the team – it was hard work, but we got there in the end. We’ve covered the traps in strong material so that...

24 March 2012 I arrived on Tiwai Island last night along with Mohammed, one of my assistants from Gola . It’s just a couple of hours drive from our HQ in Kenema and luckily, since it’s the end of the dry season, the mud roads are still ok to drive on. The journey may have been a little...

When people think of hippos they tend to think of the big kind, frequently seen patrolling African rivers in natural history programmes on the TV(or perhaps the brightly coloured, rather hungry plastic variety from a well known children’s game?). What about the little guy? Who thinks about the...

Last week at Rio+20, everyone from Prime Ministers to Amazonian Indians spoke of the importance of protecting tropical rainforests. The UK even announced a new initiative, aimed at capacity building in rainforest restoration. By an unusual coincidence (and unfortunate as far as my body clock is concerned...

(Written on Saturday) If you've seen the film by the same name, then you’ll know it’s about the catastrophic consequences of climate change, and they're depicted as spectacularly and fatally catastrophic. As I write this, at 31000 feet over the Atlantic, the day after tomorrow...

(Written on Friday) The Rio conference is over. Tim and I are sitting in the tropical heat of our little flat overlooking the conference centre with the noise of the 20 diesel generators powering the vast halls coming through the door. Since yesterday’s rain, a new range of mountains has been...

Walking into the aircraft hangar-sized food hall on Wednesday morning the giant screen was relaying, live from the main Rio chamber, the speech from a Prime Minister. He was talking about the development and environmental problems of his country. When we left the conference centre last night, a strikingly...

As the sun broke the skyline behind Rio Centro - the location of the global Summit on sustainable development - several black vultures flew out across the city. It didn’t seem like a good sign. Sacha and I arrived at the venue, a 10 min walk from our lodgings, collected our security passes, removed...

It’s nine pm, I’m off to the Rio+20 earth summit in the morning and my wife, who’s a mean writer, is coaching me on blogging so I can get on and pack my bag. Just as I put ‘pen’ to paper, my French-speaking Mum calls to sort our her mystifying tax situation. The evening...