AllAfrica News: Environment

[Scrolla] Joburg Emergency Services is sending its safety teams into informal settlements this weekend, where a single fire can wipe out dozens of homes in minutes. City Power is cutting power in Soweto, Orange Farm and Sharpeville on Saturday night -- exactly when temperatures hit their lowest point.

[Scrolla] Schools in Nelson Mandela, Sarah Baartman, Buffalo City, Eden and Central Karoo districts are shut on Wednesday and Thursday due to severe weather. Orange Level 8 warnings are in place for the Eastern Cape coast and Garden Route, with flooding, mudslides and road closures expected.

[Daily Maverick] Having narrowly escaped extinction in the 19th century, the black wildebeest now faces a different threat: being genetically absorbed by the far more numerous blue wildebeest. Researchers are using cutting-edge genomic tools to determine whether hybridisation is quietly eroding the genetic identity of one of South Africa's endemic species.

[Daily Maverick] A major survey of Angola's remote Lisima plateau has uncovered species unknown to science, including new dragonflies, grasshoppers, moths and butterflies, confirming the highlands as one of Africa's most exciting biodiversity frontiers.

[Daily Maverick] Three decades after their parents were evacuated to save them from the bullets of poachers, a group of black rhinos has returned home to Zimbabwe's Matusadona National Park.