UKZN School of Agriculture and Science

11/06/2026

Pietermaritzburg Campus
MSc/PhD opportunity:
Investigating pathogens carried by biting flies using high-throughput genome sequencing

Closing Date: 30 June 2026

To apply, please send: your full CV, academic record, the names and contact details of two referees, and a 1-page motivation letter to Prof. Sandi Willows-Munro at [email protected]

02/06/2026

01/06/2026

27/05/2026

WORLD PARROT DAY 2026

The 31st of May 2026 is . This day was founded in 2004 by the World Parrot Trust to raise awareness of the challenges parrots face in the wild, including habitat loss and the wildlife trade. It is also a global celebration of parrots, recognising their beauty, intelligence, and the vital role they play in ecosystems worldwide.

For this day, we highlight South Africa's only endemic parrot, our jewel of the forest, the Cape Parrot. Earlier this month was the Cape Parrot Big Birding Day (CPBBD), organised by the Cape Parrot Working Group (https://cpwg.ukzn.ac.za/), primarily based at UKZN. This has been a national census event of the Cape Parrot population, ongoing since 1998. It is a citizen science effort in which volunteers from around the country travel to remote forest patches to count Cape Parrots. These counts have led to the species being downgraded in 2025 from "Endangered" to "Vulnerable" on the IUCN Red List.

This highlights the success of the efforts of the Cape Parrot Working Group, and other invested entities like BirdLife South Africa and the Cape Parrot Trust, in implementing interventions to raise awareness, educate, rehabilitate habitat, control illegal and legal trade, and monitor the population. Although the species has been downgraded and there have been small successes, Cape Parrots still desperately need support to survive and thrive. They are considered a flagship species for the dwindling Mistbelt forest habitat that also supports many of South Africa's forest species.

For more info on other ways to be involved on World Parrot Day:
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27/05/2026

The Pietermaritzburg support staff from the School of Agriculture and Science on the Carbis Road Campus held a social event on 26 May 2026. They had tea and, as they did in June 2025, had a paper aeroplane competition. Pictured below is the group with their planes, and the winners of the three categories. Left to right are the dazzling winners: longest flight (a previous model of this design landed on a roof and disappeared into a gutter), best design (called "The Eagle"), and most interesting flight (a plane that drops a payload and/or the pilot ejects).

11/05/2026

One Health Workshop: April bird ringing session along the Umsunduzi river at Darvill

08/05/2026

Cape Parrot Big Birding Day 2026

A group of students and staff volunteers participated in the annual Cape Parrot Big Birding Day on the weekend of 02 and 03 May 2026. The weekend involves afternoon and early-morning counts of the endemic (i.e., found nowhere else in the world) Cape Parrot in the Mistland forests across the country. This group covered the Ingeli and Empasheni forest patches near the Weza settlement in KZN. The annual count is in its 29th year, and the data collected so far has informed the conservation status of the species. These efforts have shown that the Cape Parrot population is stable at about 1800 individuals, and the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) downgraded the species status from 'Endangered' to 'Vulnerable'. Despite this, the species and its habitat still need protection from threats such as poaching, disease, and habitat loss, and this annual census has helped monitor the population thus far. The photos above show the volunteer group outside the John Bews Building on the Carbis Road campus in Pietermaritzburg before they departed, and a photo of the group with volunteers from the local security company, Indwe Security, who kindly assist the groups every year in navigating to the remote forest patches through the plantations. There are many local entities like this that volunteer their time and resources to support the Cape Parrot Big Birding Day each year. Their local knowledge and participation are significantly helpful to our conservation efforts for the species.

28/04/2026

The Pietermaritzburg support staff from the School of Agriculture and Science on the Carbis Road Campus held a social event on 24 April 2026. They had tea and did a stress-relieving colouring activity. Although Easter has passed, April is still the Easter month, so they coloured in pictures relevant to the theme. They had fun colouring and chatting and debating artistic differences and colour choices.

28/04/2026

The UKZN Pietermaritzburg, Discipline of Biological Sciences, along with Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, hosted a three-day One Health workshop focused on the wildlife aspect of the One Health triad, from 16 to 18 April 2026 at the ANEW Hotel Hilton. The workshop featured experts from across the country and included talks on: conservation challenges for different vertebrate taxa, disease, reproduction, hormones, microbiology, pathogen genomics, plastic accumulation, environment, and One Health-focused surveillance systems. There was also a discussion at the end about where to go from this starting point regarding the One Health initiative in South Africa, and the potential challenges. Over 100 people attended, including UKZN postgraduate students, academics, practitioners, and some government veterinary experts. There was a field trip on the third day to the Darvill Umgeni Bird Sanctuary for demonstrations of sampling fish, birds, amphibians, and reptiles. One Health has often been discussed at the policy level, so this was a much-needed engagement to address its implementation in a South African context.