The National Sea Rescue Institute has warned beach-goers to be extremely vigilant after they had seen an increase in shark activity along the False Bay coastline.

This past week people at Fish Hoek and Muizenberg beaches have been asked to leave the water at different times following sharks being spotted close inshore.

With the aim of meeting the socio-economic goals in South Africa, Water and Environmental Affairs Deputy Minister Rejoice Mabudafhasi launched the Isipingo Adopt a River Project.

During the Budget Vote Speech in April this year the department announced that one of their key priorities is the protection of the country's water resources.

Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica says her department is concerned about the impact of deteriorating water quality in the country and has called on role players to come up with ways to avert the situation.

Speaking at an AgriSA Water Conference on Wednesday, Sonjica said one of the successful intervention methods government had developed was the so-called Green Drop Certification Programme, an incentive-based regulation approach to address challenges in the municipal wastewater sector.

A hotline has been set up to help stop rhino poaching, environment officials said on Tuesday.

Members of the public could call 082-404-2128 to report poaching or trade in rhino horns, as well as veterinarians, hunters or pilots involved, Endangered Wildlife Trust spokesperson Faan Coetzee said in a statement.

The SPCA will lay criminal charges against a Kempton Park man who breeds rabbits, stomps on their heads to kill them, and sells them to restaurants.

Senior Inspector Kay Prinsloo said: "The property owner admitted to this method of killing yesterday and demonstrated how he did it to senior inspector Denise Stewart of the SPCA in Kempton Park.

Like a devoted mother, Khulani Mangena tries to entice Vuma, an orphaned rhino calf in his care, to drink from a 30-litre bottle of specialised rhino formula milk. But the rhino refuses, eyeing the artificial teat suspiciously.

After all, it looks little like the source of the mother's milk that nine-month-old Vuma thrived on until his mother was slaughtered by poachers at the Krugersdorp Game Reserve last week.

Pretoria - Government has committed itself to the conservation of grasslands biodiversity through the signing of a declaration, says Buyelwa Sonjica, Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs.

The declaration was signed today by the minister and eight MECs responsible for environmental affairs in Gauteng, North West, Eastern Cape, Mpumalanga, Limpopo, Northern Cape, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape.

 William, the lovable rogue or the scourge of Scarborough - depending on your point of view - is dead, courtesy of a new protocol for managing raiding baboons on the Peninsula.

The big male baboon, estimated to have been about 14 years old and known officially as GOB03, was put down by a City of Cape Town vet after being caught in a trap on Friday.

The massacre of South Africa's endangered rhino population continues with the discovery of two more mutilated carcasses in the North West and Limpopo.

This brings the total number of rhinos killed for their horns to 117 according to anti-poaching investigators, though SA National Parks has put the figure at .

A young hippo has been shipped out of a Cape Town sewerage works, where he made his home after fleeing a nature reserve where he had clashed with his father, an official said on Tuesday.

The four-year-old nicknamed "Zorro" fled the Rondevlei Nature Reserve outside Cape Town in February 2009 for the lush grass and abundant water of the sewerage waterworks.

Frigid weather and strong winds have taken their toll on African penguins on islands offshore of Port Elizabeth.

Nearly 500 chicks living on Bird Island died over a 24-hour period early this week, more than half the island's juvenile population.

Good annual rains over the past 15 years in the Kruger National Park have caused game populations to surge, says Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica.

In written reply to a parliamentary question, tabled on Tuesday, she said not a single large mammal species in the park was currently under threat.