A case has been brought to the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) over the Kenyan government’s plan to build a 2,000-5,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in Bondo, near the eastern shore of Victoria Lake, Africa’s largest freshwater lake. The project has been the source of numerous protests from residents since it was announced. A Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) report produced in 2023 by Kenya’s nuclear power program noted that nuclear power should be avoided in the Victoria Lake region, citing volcanic hazards that could impair nuclear safety. However, the nuclear plant project is proceeding, despite the SEA finding. “I filed a reference at the East African Court of Justice on two grounds,” Dickens Ochieng, told Mongabay in a phone call. Ochieng is a resident of Siaya County, where the facility is located, and a human rights lawyer with J. Henry and Company Advocates, the law firm that filed the case on Sept. 23. “First, I want the court to determine if we should even have that nuclear power plant in Victoria Lake given the ecological and environmental risk that may be associated with it,” Ochieng said. “Then, I am asking for the project to have a transboundary environmental impact assessment, as Victoria Lake is not only a Kenyan matter.” Victoria Lake is shared by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Roughly 40 million people across the three countries depend on the lake for their livelihoods, food security and drinking water. Millions more depend on the river that drains from Lake Victoria and…This article was originally published on Mongabay

Lulingu, a Grauer’s gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri), was reintroduced to Virunga National Park, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2024. In May 2026, Lulingu gave birth to a new baby, bringing hope for the species and excitement for the conservationists working there. “The baby and the mother are doing perfectly well. It really makes us happy. We are proud of her, it is also a bit of our success. Imagine, we knew her as a baby, we watched her grow, be rehabilitated and now she is a mother,” Jackson Kabuyaya Mbeke, country director of the DRC Gorilla Rehabilitation and Conservation Education Center (GRACE), told Mongabay by phone. Lulingu arrived at GRACE, a 16-hectare (40-acre) wildlife sanctuary, in 2016 when she was 18 months old. She was rescued from an illegal wildlife trafficking network by the Congolese Wildlife Authority (ICCN) and the NGO Gorilla Doctors. The sanctuary gave her space to socialize and play in a setting close to her natural habitat, under the watchful eyes of adoptive gorilla mothers. Lulingu was later reintroduced into the wild near Mount Tshiaberimu, a remote part of Virunga National Park. “The purpose of our sanctuary is to take in rescued gorillas, but also to care for them until they can be released into the wild. The fact that Lulingu has had a baby is a sign that she has adapted well to life in the wild,” Kabuyaya Mbeke explained. “By reintroducing them into the wild, we also hope to repopulate forests that have been…This article was originally published on Mongabay