Safari Notes

At nights, most of Africa is dark, but wherever you are, if you use artificially generated light - join and turn off your lights for Earth Hour . Starting in New Zealand's remote Chatham Islands, thousands of cities, towns, and landmarks around the world will start to go dark for Earth Hour on Saturday evening. Up to a billion people worldwide are expected to participate in this global voluntary blackout by switching off their lights from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. local time. The movement, sponsored by the conservation nonprofit WWF, is designed as a symbolic gesture in support of action against global warming . Read more from the National Geographic .

Lack of electricity ! That's what one of Uganda's ministers says: A leading Ugandan economist — who is also a government minister — discovered why the country had one of the highest birth rates in the world. The minister of State for Planning, Prof Ephraim Kamuntu, told a planning workshop a few days ago, that Uganda’s high population growth rate was the result of electricity shortage and outages, which compelled couples to go to bed early. The good professor buttressed his argument, adding that a related reason for the high population was that in Uganda, like most of Africa, one could argue, people don’t work in shifts. “While the rest of the world is working in shifts, we in Uganda are going to bed early. Then we complain that the population is growing; why not?” he said. >>>>> more from Daily Nation Uganda has the world's youngest population and is one of the fastest growing. In 199o, the country's population was estimated at 17 million people; and now

Lake Victoria - the second largest fresh water lake in the world - is said to have experienced the greatest mass extinction of vertebrates in modern times. Thirty years ago the Lake boasted over 400 fish species. More than half are now extinct. The Nile Perch, most probably introduced in to the Lake deliberately in the 1950s - has been as disruptive to Lake Victoria's ecosystem as Man has been. The legendary river, the Nile, that flows from the Great Lake - is no better off: it's listed as one of the top ten World's rivers that are fast dying as a result of climate change, pollution and dams.' Human activity has already excessively polluted the Lake but now Lake Victoria faces another great danger : water hyacinth has re-invaded the Lake choking thousands of hectares of the lake's surface - especially in Kenya. The species, which is originally from South America but today is a costly invasive species worldwide, first established itself in Lake Victoria, Africa

A recently discovered "psychedelic" fish (shown in a January 2008 picture) is bouncing into the books as a new species, a new study says ........ Read more from the National Geographic . Read more here ; or read more and see more pictures of the fish from Discovery and Nature blogs. Watch videos of the fish on Quick Time here . More videos here , here and here .