Insects? Nature? It’s all about plants!
With arbour week coming up, this is the perfect time to share the fourth and final instalment on the temporary…
WICD – climate change chronicles (Part 2)
We recently completed another round of workshops with Grade 10 learners, in partnership with Umkhumbane Schools Project in Cato Manor,…
Insects: the silent extinction
The focus of this edition of Leopard’s Echo is ‘endangered species’. This is a good opportunity to share the third…
WICD – climate change chronicles (Part 1)
With this blog I’m happy to share the experience from the first three sessions in a series of climate change…
Teaching with ulterior motives
Last week I presented to around 70 pre-service and 3rd year student teachers at Edgewood Campus (UKZN School of Education).…
Progress with partners
Let me report back briefly on three recent events with Kloof High School, which have been extremely rewarding and motivating.…
Solar savings
It’s been two years since we installed solar power. How has it worked for us? The details may be complicated,…
Climate change in Africa
This is just a quick post to publish various links to useful resources on climate change in Africa, to make…
Join us for a climate change edu-action workshop
This workshop offers training and resources on climate change, to empower educators to engage learners (and their families), to build…
I spy with my insect eye
Many organisms manage fine, or better, without eyesight, but nevertheless eyes are extremely useful. Eyes have evolved on at least 40…
Biodiversity Day 2024
Today (22 May) is International Day for Biological Diversity. This year’s theme invites us to “Be part of the Plan”.…
Flood warnings
Disasters strike at random, and catch people off-guard. People also panic when they don’t know for sure what to expect.…
Celebrating with WESSA Eco-Schools
On 16 March, the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA) Eco-Schools celebrated the transformative impact of the Eco-Schools…
Drowning in plastic
Today is Global Recycling Day. So does recycling actually work? Recycling is THE single best known ‘green’ concept, I reckon.…
On the eve of EVs
Today, on World Consumer Rights Day, I make a wish to be able to afford an electric car. I would…
WICD Pilot
Nearly a year ago, the opening session of the What I Can Do (WICD) About Climate Change Action Programme got…
Brown gold
Today, on World Soil Day, we celebrate the fact that healthy, living soil in nature is full of dead things,…
Insect roles in nature (2)
In the last article I started presenting the contents of a temporary exhibition that sadly fell victim to the pandemic. We covered…
Hot box cooking
Cooking in a hot box / hot bag saves electricity while reducing our carbon footprint. Food takes only slightly longer…
Insect roles in nature (1)
Back in 2018 and 2019 Andrew Carter of the Durban Natural Science Museum and I put together a temporary exhibition on the…
Walk the talk
On 19 May I presented at a Climate Change Seminar, under the slogan ‘Walk the talk’. It was part of…
Edu-ca/ac-tion Indaba
Ten days ago, supported by EThekwini Municipality and Green Corridors, around 100 environmental education / public awareness practitioners met for…
Rag rugs
The Internet is full of fantastic ideas for upcycling generally (turning waste into something useful), and rag-rugs specifically. Old T-shirts…
Insects get around
Having just returned from an international trip, exhausted from sitting around on aeroplanes and airports for many hours, I couldn’t…
Bottle garden
In a city, one doesn’t always have access to a vegetable patch. But vertical gardens are a great way to…
Solar home
As I write, our neighbourhood is wrapped in darkness. At Stage 6 national load shedding, electricity cuts out several times…
Climate Action Programme
On Youth Day (24 June 2022) the South African Youth Climate Change Coalition (SAYCCC) ran a workshop in Durban to…
Insect lore and legend
For me personally, the diversity of insects is a wonderful expression of the creativity of the Creator: the vast and…
World Environment Day 2022
The theme of this year’s World Environment Day is “Only One Earth”. Over the past year the Intergovernmental Panel on…
Insect migrations
Smaller, vaster, better, faster Insects migrate. In a GRAND way. Forget the migration of the wildebeest across the Serengeti. The…
Exhibition at Durban Natural Science Museum
It was a bitter-sweet experience, seeing (yesterday, for the first time!) the temporary insect exhibition at the Durban Natural Science…
Insects: masters of multiplication
Insects are good at multiplication. They dominate life on earth – in diversity, numbers and volume. It may be hard…
In defence of the roach
The word ‘cockroach’ evokes in most people a response of revulsion. Like the word ‘rat’. We may associate cockroaches with…
Born into a pandemic
EASTER Action was registered on 21 November 2019, almost exactly – as it turns out – when the first case…
World Environment Day 2020
The theme for this year’s World Environment Day is: It is the Time for Nature. This coronavirus pandemic is in…
Spring has sprung
The rains have finally come in Durban, good and proper. Just what nature has been waiting for. So much is…
Insect photography 3 – Macro experiments
Or ‘The poor woman’s guide to higher magnification’ One day I saw this crab spider on a flower. Then I…
Children and Youth Festival
The UKZN School of Education “recently hosted its inaugural two-day Children and Youth Festival on the Edgewood campus where participants were able to…
Five senses and then some!
Small though they are, insects seem to excel at everything. They have the five senses that we do, and then…
Nature of cities
I recently visited Incheon where I was struck by the Korean government’s efforts to create a very dense and green…
Outlandish appendages
If you are looking for strange forms and shapes, you have come to the right address. Insects are famously eccentric…
Insects at the do-ference
During an educational event at the Environmental Sustainable Action and Community Development Conference/Do-ference in April 2018, I asked a group of grade 11…
The Soggy Existence of the Rain Tree Bug
29 Jan 2018 Have you ever sat under a tree, when the sun was shining, and the sky was blue,…
Insect photography 2 – Shoot ’em Live
When shooting insects in nature, one faces a number of challenges. One challenge is the eternal trade-off between motion, light and…
Biodiversity in the school yard
What a wonderful topic: the endless variety of life forms and living spaces. After a presentation on the subject, the…
Outdoor Classroom Day
How does Outdoor Classroom Day work in densely populated areas of low-cost and informal housing? Just fine, thanks. A wonderful…
First “Half Earth Day”
Today I stand with EO Wilson in heart and spirit, as he and his team celebrate the first ever Half…
50 years after DDT
I recently read this disturbing article: Sorry but I cannot understand how – to quote the article – “regulators around…
Fungi of Ngome
15 October 2017 I had never been terribly interested in fungi, until our recent visit to Ngome forest. One just couldn’t…
2020 Vision
Globally, biodiversity teeters on the brink of the next great extinction since the demise of the dinosaurs, only this time human activity,…
It is called ‘Biophilia’
Yesterday I was thrilled to discover that the condition I have happily suffered from for most of my life has…
Teachers: the door to a nation
Last week I gave a lecture to over 300 1st and 2nd year student teachers at UKZN School of Education,…
Showing and wowing
Last week I teamed up with CASME for two days of educational outreach at the American Corner in Bessie Head…
Local Stalwarts of Conservation
I was recently invited to speak at the Hillcrest Conservancy AGM. It was extremely humbling and heart-warming to meet so many…
Urban forests
The idea of urban forests is very exciting and trendy. Here is an interesting interview with the author on the…
Kids just love nature
Yesterday I ran a small, intimate educational event with members of the environmental club of Danville Park Girls’ High School.…
Insect Photography 1 – Story-telling
After sharing on this topic at Hillcrest Camera Club in June, I thought it might be nice to publish something…
Biodiversity Hotspot #27
This weekend I participated in the Illovo Wagtail Conservation Festival. A local community concerned for their local environment, are trying to…
Wildlife in Dodoma
During a quick trip to Tanzania to visit family, I had some free time one day. So I went for…
Insects and colour
Article in Leopard’s Echo (Kloof Conservancy’s bi-annual magazine). Colour is a big thing in the world of insects. Really big.…
Butterfly Easter
Insect-wise, our amazing Easter-time road trip around the Eastern Cape was dominated by amazing butterfly and moth sightings. Here are…
7.5 Billion
Yesterday, 24 April 18h21 local time, our family watched as the world population clock ticked from 7 499 999 999…
Earth Day? We need Earth Years!
Gave a lecture at Edgewood Campus (UKZN) on 21 April to celebrate Earth Day, which commemorates the birthday of the modern environmental movement…
The great insect hunt
Educational event with around 50 school kids grades R-9 at Paradise Valley, with extended insect hunt along the river. Thanks kids…
Insects in the news
A large longhorn beetle and her big friend study an article by Prof Michael Samways, author of Insect Diversity Conservation on why…
Insects in the food chain
The presentation at the Bird Life Forum meeting (at WESSA, Howick) again started by explaining the role that insects play in…
Insects are everywhere… or are they?
An educational event for Botanical Society, at Durban Botanic Gardens. The first talk, entitled “Insects at work”, showed the important…
Mud dauber
Over two days a mud dauber wasp (Sceliphron spirifex) built and stocked a nest on our dining room wall. What…
Learning nature
A paper published on how Grade 10-12 kids respond to the school life sciences curriculum concluded that more emphasis needs…
Christmas beetles
…I don’t mean cicadas and their screechy Christmas songs… I mean BEETLES! It has been the most wonderful beetle holiday,…
Homeschoolers in Paradise
The first educational event for local home-schoolers, at Paradise Valley Nature Reserve was a great success. The children (and parents!)…
The insect book is done!
After eight years, big dreams, hundreds of photo moments and many drafts, the book is finally finished and published!!! More…
EASTERaction 