location: Republic of Congo

location: Republic of Congo

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African Parks vows to investigate allegations of abuse at Congolese park
- In late January, the Daily Mail published allegations that rangers working with African Parks at Odzala-Kokoua park in the Republic of Congo had beaten and raped Baka community members.
- In a statement, African Parks said it had hired the U.K.-based law firm Omnia Strategy to investigate the allegations, which were raised in a letter sent to a board member by the advocacy group Survival International last year.
- African Parks said it became aware of the allegations through that letter, but in 2022, a local civil society group in the Republic of Congo released a statement accusing rangers of committing “acts of torture.”

Mongabay’s top 10 podcast episodes of 2023
- It was a packed year on Mongabay’s podcast calendar, with a new season of “Mongabay Explores” taking a deep dive into the Congo Basin.
- At the same time, the Mongabay Newscast continued publishing conversations with leading researchers, authors and activists, and it introduced a new co-host, Rachel Donald.
- Our top 10 list includes examinations of the Congo Basin’s cobalt mining industry, a conversation with a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a botanist discussing the worrying decline of botany education, and a National Geographic photographer’s project highlighting the key role of traditional ecological knowledge for Indigenous communities and conservation.

COP28 cements goal to halt forest loss in 7 years, but where’s the money?
- While COP28 in Dubai included a goal to halt and reverse forest loss by the end of the decade, tropical forest nations say they are still not seeing the funding required to keep forests standing.
- The Democratic Republic of the Congo says it has not seen any of the $500 million pledged to it two years ago to protect the Congo Basin rainforest, the second-largest in the world.
- As forest nations wait for funding, some are controversially turning to untapped fossil fuel reservoirs underneath the forests.
- While carbon credits have come under fire this year, many at COP28 still say they see carbon credits as one way to bring in much needed funding to keep carbon and wildlife-rich forests standing.

Congo’s waters are hotspot for endangered sharks & rays, reveals data from artisanal fishers
- A new shark census off the coast of the Republic of the Congo relied on hard-earned trust between researchers and artisanal fishermen.
- The team found endangered sharks and rays on potential nursery grounds, including juveniles and two species thought to be gone from the region.
- The authors recommend conservation strategies to protect endangered species without harming the livelihoods of Congolese fishermen.

Forest elephants are the ‘glue’ holding Congo rainforests together
- African forest elephants play a vital role in shaping the environment and composition of the Congo Basin rainforest, including the giant carbon-sequestering trees it is noted for.
- Without them, the Congo rainforest would lose carbon stocks and biodiversity, and the composition of the forest itself would change.
- Yet the full ecological value of this charismatic species — and the ecosystem impacts if it is lost — are not fully understood, so increased funding for study and conservation is needed, experts say.
- On this final episode of the Mongabay Explores the Congo Basin podcast season, Andrew Davies, assistant professor of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, and Fiona “Boo” Maisels, a conservation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, detail the unique value of forest elephants, what still remains unknown, and why urgent protection is needed.

Do virus-detecting ants hold the key to preventing zoonotic diseases?
- Researchers are using army ants in Congo Basin rainforests to better understand the presence and emergence of zoonoses, diseases transmitted from animals to humans.
- According to the World Health Organization, the number of zoonotic epidemics recorded in Africa between 2012 and 2022 rose by 63% compared to the previous decade.
- Researchers collected 200 army ants from 29 colonies in Gabon’s rainforest for analysis. They found nearly 50,000 different viral sequences, half of them belonging to viruses currently unknown to science.
- They hope that by regularly collecting ants for analysis from selected sites, they will be able to identify potentially-dangerous viruses as well as which animal species harbour them, and use this information to guide public health strategy to control zoonotic diseases.

Congo Basin’s elephants boost carbon capture, but need salt-licks to survive
- Forest elephants’ browsing habits play a vital role in shaping their habitat, allowing large, carbon-dense tree species to thrive.
- The elephants frequent muddy, mineral-rich clearings called baïs which are a unique feature of the Congo Basin rainforest.
- Researchers are studying elephants and baïs in neighboring Republic of Congo and Central African Republic to better understand the relationship between forests, clearings, and the pachyderms that knit them together.

CAPS, new gas megaproject, aims to power Central Africa, but at what cost, critics ask
- The Central Africa Business Energy Forum proposes to build 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) of pipelines linking oil and gas resources across 11 countries in Central Africa.
- The forum says gas in particular should play a key role in developing the region’s economy.
- Seven countries have so far signed a memorandum of understanding, and a feasibility study for a first phase is expected by the end of 2023
- Environmentalists say the project is a mistake that will exacerbate the climate crisis and fail to benefit local populations.

Deforestation threatens local populations in Republic of Congo’s Sangha
- Between May 2021 and November 2022, more than 200,000 deforestation alerts were recorded around Ouesso, in the northwestern Republic of the Congo.
- Logging has drastically impacted the country’s forest cover.
- In 2016, the Congolese authorities awarded 2 million hectares (4.9 million acres) of logging concessions to businesses, the majority of which had broken environmental and social standards.
- More recently, mining by Chinese companies (the land in north-west Congo is rich in iron and gold) has accelerated the destruction of ecosystems.

Study highlights ‘friends with benefits’ relation between gorillas and chimps
- A new long-term study points to lasting social relationships between chimpanzees and gorillas in the wild.
- The study showed that individuals from both species actively seek out each other in a variety of contexts.
- The benefits of these interactions go beyond protection from predators, and include learning social skills and finding fruiting trees.
- But these social interactions also provide the potential for transmission of deadly diseases like Ebola, which pose as big a threat to the long-term survival of gorillas and chimps as hunting and habitat destruction.

In Congo, a carbon sink like no other risks being carved up for oil
- New research has revealed that the peatlands of the Congo Basin are 15% larger than originally thought.
- This area of swampy forest holds an estimated 29 billion metric tons of carbon, which is the amount emitted globally through the burning of fossil fuels in three years.
- Beginning July 28, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where two-thirds of these peatlands lie, will auction off the rights to explore for oil in 27 blocks across the country.
- Scientists and conservationists have criticized the move, which the government says is necessary to fund its operations. Opponents say the blocks overlap with parts of the peatlands, mature rainforest, protected areas, and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

2021 tropical forest loss figures put zero-deforestation goal by 2030 out of reach
- The world lost a Cuba-sized area of tropical forest in 2021, putting it far off track from meeting the no-deforestation goal by 2030 that governments and companies committed to at last year’s COP26 climate summit.
- Deforestation rates remained persistently high in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to the world’s two biggest expanses of tropical forest, negating the decline in deforestation seen in places like Indonesia and Gabon.
- The diverging trends in the different countries show that “it’s the domestic politics of forests that often really make a key difference,” says leading forest governance expert Frances Seymour.
- The boreal forests of Eurasia and North America also experienced a spike in deforestation last year, driven mainly by massive fires in Russia, which could set off a feedback loop of more heating and more burning.

At a plantation in Central Africa, Big Oil tries to go net-zero
- In March 2021, French oil giant TotalEnergies announced that it would be developing a 40,000-hectare (99.000-acre) forest in the Republic of Congo that will sequester 500,000 tons of carbon per year.
- The project is part of a renewed global push for governments and corporations to hit their emissions targets partially by the use of carbon credits, also known as offsets.
- But advocates say what TotalEnergies describes as a “forest” is a commercial acacia plantation that will produce timber for sale, with little detail on who stands to profit or lose access to land.

The year in rainforests 2021
- 2021 was a year where tropical forests featured more prominently in global headlines than normal thanks to rising recognition of the role they play in addressing climate change and biodiversity loss.
- Despite speculation in the early months of the pandemic that slowing economic activity might diminish forest clearing, loss of both primary forests and tree cover in the tropics accelerated between 2019 and 2020. We don’t yet know how much forest was cut down in 2021, but early indications like rising deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon suggest that forest loss will be on the high end of the range from the past decade.
- The following is a look at some of the major tropical rainforest storylines from 2021. It is not an exhaustive review.

The Congo Basin’s 10 most consequential stories from 2021

For the Congo Basin, 2021 proved to be an up-and-down year. Funding commitments totaling in the billions of dollars were announced that would help forested countries preserve some of the highest-quality tropical rainforest left on the planet. And research into the world’s largest tropical peatland, which is found in the Congo Basin, continues to expand […]
The past, present and future of the Congo peatlands: 10 takeaways from our series

This is the wrap-up article for our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four. In the first half of December, Mongabay published a four-part series on the peatlands of the Congo Basin. Only in 2017 did a team of Congolese and British scientists discover that a […]
Carbon and communities: The future of the Congo Basin peatlands
- Scientific mapping in 2017 revealed that the peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale in the Congo Basin are the largest and most intact in the world’s tropics.
- That initial work, first published in the journal Nature, was just the first step, scientists say, as work continues to understand how the peatlands formed, what threats they face from the climate and industrial uses like agriculture and logging, and how the communities of the region appear to be coexisting sustainably.
- Researchers say investing in studying and protecting the peatlands will benefit the global community as well as people living in the region because the Cuvette Centrale holds a vast repository of carbon.
- Congolese researchers and leaders say they are eager to safeguard the peatlands for the benefit of everyone, but they also say they need support from abroad to do so.

Holding agriculture and logging at bay in the Congo peatlands
- The peatlands of the Congo Basin are perhaps the most intact in the tropics, but threats from logging, agriculture and extractive industries could cause their rapid degradation, scientists say.
- In 2021, the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced that it was planning to end a moratorium on the issuance of logging concessions that had been in place for nearly two decades.
- The move raised concerns among conservation groups, who say the moratorium should remain in place to protect the DRC’s portion of the world’s second-largest rainforest.
- Today, timber concession boundaries overlap with the peatlands, and though some companies say they won’t cut trees growing on peat, environmental advocates say that any further issuance of logging concessions in the DRC would be irresponsible.

Layers of carbon: The Congo Basin peatlands and oil
- The peatlands of the Congo Basin may be sitting on top of a pool of oil, though exploration has yet to confirm just how big it may be.
- Conservationists and scientists argue that the carbon contained in this England-size area of peat, the largest in the tropics, makes keeping them intact more valuable, not to mention the habitat and resources they provide for the region’s wildlife and people.
- Researchers calculate that the peatlands contain 30 billion metric tons of carbon, or about the amount humans produce in three years.
- As the governments of the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo work to develop their economies, they, along with many policymakers worldwide, argue that the global community has a responsibility to help fund the protection of the peatlands to keep that climate-warming carbon locked away.

The ‘idea’: Uncovering the peatlands of the Congo Basin
- In 2017, a team of scientists from the U.K. and the Republic of Congo announced the discovery of a massive peatland the size of England in the Congo Basin.
- Sometimes called the Cuvette Centrale, this peatland covers 145,529 square kilometers (56,189 square miles) in the northern Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and holds about 20 times as much carbon as the U.S. releases from burning fossil fuels in a year.
- Today, the Congo Basin peatlands are relatively intact while supporting nearby human communities and a variety of wildlife species, but threats in the form of agriculture, oil and gas exploration and logging loom on the horizon.
- That has led scientists, conservationists and governments to look for ways to protect and better understand the peatlands for the benefit of the people and animals they support and the future of the global climate.

Congo’s bongos are in danger, and curbs on trophy hunting could save them
- Unsustainable hunting quotas could drive a rare African antelope to extinction in one corner of the Republic of Congo, a study by the NGO Wildlife Conservation Society has found.
- There are fewer than 30,000 bongos left today, inhabiting wooded expanses south of the Sahara in Africa, including in the Republic of Congo, which allows commercial hunting of these prized ungulates.
- The country’s hunting allotment of 15 adult males a year, at the time of the study, could lead to their disappearance within 25 years from the Bonio hunting concession, researchers say.
- Apart from trophy hunting, disease outbreaks, habitat loss and unregulated hunting also menace the eastern bongos of Congo.

Female putty-nosed monkeys get their males to run defense against predators
- A new study found that female putty-nosed monkeys use alarm calls to recruit males to be their “hired guns” when a predator is detected, only stopping their vocalizations once males have been enlisted to ward off the threat.
- Recruited males will vocalize their participation with a “pyow” call, which may aid their reproductive chances in the future, according to the study.
- The researchers also observed that male putty-nosed monkeys emitted a newly described “kek” call when responding to a simulation of a leopard moving along the forest floor.
- The researchers say that this study, as well as related studies, can aid conservation efforts for the putty-nosed monkey, a near-threatened species, and broaden our understanding of communicative and cognitive capacities of non-human primate species.

Unrelated adoptions by bonobos may point to altruistic traits, study says
- Two wild bonobos in the Luo Scientific Reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were observed to adopt infants from different social groups, according to a new study.
- These are said to be the first recorded cases of great apes adopting unrelated individuals.
- While the researchers do not know why these bonobos chose to adopt unrelated infants, they speculate that it could be to strengthen current and future alliances within their own groups as well as with other social groups.

Podcast: What are the tropical forest storylines to watch in 2021?
- Happy new year to all of our faithful Mongabay Newscast listeners! For our first episode of the year, we take stock of how the world’s rainforests fared in 2020 and look ahead to the major stories to watch in 2021.
- We’re joined by Mongabay founder and CEO Rhett Butler, who discusses the impacts of the Covid pandemic on tropical forest conservation efforts, the most important issues likely to impact rainforests in 2021, and why he remains hopeful despite setbacks in recent years.
- We also speak with Joe Eisen, executive director of Rainforest Foundation UK, who helps us dig deeper into the major issues and events that will affect Africa’s rainforests in the coming year.

Norway bumps rate to protect rainforests amid anticipated U.S. climate return
- Through partnerships with different forest-rich countries, Norway has doubled the price it pays for cuts in carbon dioxide emissions through avoided deforestation.
- Recent successes have come from Gabon and Indonesia, but more action is necessary as a 2020 report suggests rainforests are losing their ability to naturally absorb carbon dioxide emissions.
- Other countries are following Norway’s example: through the Central African Forest Initiative, President Emmanuel Macron of France and President Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of Congo signed a letter of intent for $65 million to protect Congo’s forests.
- In the U.S., president-elect Joe Biden has named former secretary of state John Kerry as his climate czar, in a sign of the incoming administration’s recommitment to and seriousness about climate action, following a four-year leadership vacuum under Donald Trump.

Landed by the thousands: Overfished Congo waters put endangered sharks at risk
- More than 100 commercial trawlers and about 700 smaller boats of the Republic of Congo’s artisanal fleet are putting intense pressure on 42 shark and ray species, according to a new survey by TRAFFIC, an NGO that tracks the global wildlife trade. All are on the IUCN red list.
- The 150-mile Congo coast makes up a tiny part of Africa’s shoreline, but overfishing is taking a heavy toll. One example: Ten thousand metric tons of hammerheads were reported caught in Congo from 2007 through 2017 — the equivalent weight of 10,000 small cars.
- Republic of Congo is a signatory of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), but not one CITES-listed shark species is on the country’s endangered species list. A new law aimed at meeting international commitments has been in the works since 2018, but has not been ratified by the Parliament.
- A new international market incentivized shark fishing around 2000, with the arrival of Chinese companies in Congo. The fins are exported illegally to Asia for shark fin soup, but authorities say they have no idea how the shark fins are being smuggled out of the country. Without knowledge of export routes, little can be done to prevent the illegal trade.

Sounding the alarm about illegal logging? There’s an app for that
- Illegal timber accounts for 15% to 30% of the timber trade globally and is worth more than $100 billion. A significant share of this illegally harvested timber is sold in European markets.
- In the vast territories of both the Amazon and the Congo, the largest tropical rainforests in the world, authorities largely lack the capacity to monitor for illegal mining and logging activities.
- Using the customizable app ForestLink, people living within and around the forests can send alerts about illegal logging and mining activities to authorities and other stakeholders from remote areas without mobile connectivity or internet service.
- Community alerts have triggered more than 30 verification and enforcement missions by civil society organizations and local authorities in Cameroon, the DRC and Ghana in 2019 alone.

Loss, resilience and community amid an outbreak: Q&A with gorilla researcher Magdalena Bermejo
- Magdalena Bermejo, a prominent expert on western lowland gorillas, experienced the loss of thousands of the great apes to Ebola, including two groups she and her team were studying and had worked to habituate.
- Having remained in the Republic of Congo, Bermejo is now facing the arrival of a new epidemic that could potentially spread between humans and gorillas.
- In this interview, Bermejo discusses her ongoing work in the Congo, the importance of working with communities, parallels between Ebola and COVID-19, and how researchers can find the strength to persevere and rebuild in the aftermath of catastrophe.

Podcast: Listening to elephants to protect Central Africa’s tropical forests
- On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast we take a look at a project that aims to preserve the rainforests of the Congo Basin in Central Africa and the biodiversity found in those forests by focusing on elephants and their calls.
- As a research analyst with the Elephant Listening Project, Ana Verahrami has completed two field seasons in the Central African Republic, where she helped collect the behavioral and acoustic data vital to the project. She joins the Mongabay Newscast to explain why forest elephants’ role as keystone species makes their survival crucial to the wellbeing of tropical forests and their other inhabitants, and to play some of the recordings informing the project’s work.
- One of the two existing African elephant species, forest elephants are native to the humid forests of West Africa and the Congo Basin. The forest habitat they rely on has also suffered steep declines in recent years, with one 2018 study concluding that at current rates of deforestation, all of the primary forest in the Congo Basin could be cleared by the end of the century. As Mongabay’s contributing editor for Africa, Terna Gyuse, tells us, the chief threats to the Congo Basin’s rainforests are human activities.

Oil exploration at odds with peatland protection in the Congo Basin
- A new report details an investigation led by the investigative NGO Global Witness into the exploration for oil in the world’s largest peatlands, found in Central Africa’s Congo Basin.
- The Republic of Congo and the company licensed to search for oil in a block containing more than 6,000 square kilometers (2,300 square miles) of peatlands argue for the right to extract the oil for the benefit of the country, and they say they are following strict environmental guidelines.
- But Global Witness found that the environmental impact assessment for the block is dated July 2013, nearly a year before scientists discovered the existence of the peatlands.
- The authors also point out that an agreement worth $65 million to protect the peatlands and the Republic of Congo’s other tropical forests doesn’t require that the carbon-rich peatlands be legally protected until 2025.

Western lowland gorillas may be territorial, a new study finds
- A new study presents evidence of territoriality among western lowland gorilla groups in the Republic of Congo.
- Camera trap images revealed that groups avoided one another and also stayed away from the central area of each other’s home ranges — evidence that the species may be more territorial than previously thought.
- An estimated 80% of western lowland gorillas live outside of protected areas, where shrinking territory due to forest loss and habitat fragmentation is a big problem.
- This new information on their territoriality, combined with their shrinking habitat, means gorillas may experience increased competition for food as well as for the limited space.

2019: The year rainforests burned
- 2019 closed out a “lost decade” for the world’s tropical forests, with surging deforestation from Brazil to the Congo Basin, environmental policy roll-backs, assaults on environmental defenders, abandoned conservation commitments, and fires burning through rainforests on four continents.
- The following review covers some of the biggest rainforest storylines for the year.

Female gorillas recognize and respond to contagious disease
- An infectious skin disease causing bright red facial lesions affects how female gorillas decide to change social groups, researchers have shown.
- Decade-long observations of nearly 600 gorillas in the Republic of the Congo revealed females are more likely to leave groups with severely diseased females or an infected silverback male.
- By reducing contact with sick individuals, females can decrease the risk of being contaminated and prevent further spread of the infection in the population.

$65 million deal to protect Congo’s forests raises concerns
- The Central African Forest Initiative negotiated a deal with the Republic of Congo for $65 million in funding.
- The aim of the initiative is to protect forest while encouraging economic development.
- But environmental organizations criticized the timing and the wording of the agreement, which they argue still allows for oil drilling and exploration that could harm peatlands and forest.
- Two companies in the Republic of Congo recently found oil beneath the peatlands that could nearly triple the Central African country’s daily production.

Study tracks first incursion of poachers into ‘pristine’ African forest
- Researchers logged the first evidence of elephant poaching in a remote, pristine section of Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the northern Republic of Congo.
- The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, also revealed unique behavior changes between gorillas and chimpanzees as a result of selective logging.
- The research highlights the need to incorporate the results of biodiversity surveys into plotting out the locations of areas set aside for conservation.

Congo government opens Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to oil exploration
- In 2018, the government of the Republic of Congo opened up several blocks of land for oil exploration overlapping with important peatlands and a celebrated national park.
- According to a government website, the French oil company Total holds the exploration rights for those blocks.
- Conservationists were alarmed that the government would consider opening up parks and peatlands of international importance for oil exploration, while also trying to garner funds for their protection on the world stage.

U.S. companies implicated in illegal timber trade from West Africa
- Illegally obtained timber from West Africa wound up in sidings and other wood products sold in hardware stores across the U.S., a report alleges.
- Federal officials have launched an investigation into the U.S. importers of the wood, Evergreen Hardwoods and Cornerstone Forest Products.
- The trade focused on timber from the okoumé tree, classified as vulnerable by the IUCN and which only grows in four countries in Africa.

Farming communities abused at troubled DRC mega-farm, campaigners say
- The Bukanga Lonzo agro-industrial park, located nearly 300 kilometers (186 miles) east of Kinshasa, was conceived as a way to boost mechanized food production in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- But now, the park is in shambles, and a new report by the Oakland Institute says that community members were misled and abused during its construction.
- The primary investor in the park, Africom Commodities, is currently seeking nearly $20 million in damages from the Congolese government for non-payment of expenses at the park.

Local communities feared repression from WWF, investigation finds
- An investigation by Buzzfeed News revealed how for years, paramilitary anti-poaching forces funded and trained by WWF have killed and tortured indigenous villagers on the fringes of national parks.
- Even after the conservation nonprofit was made aware of the human rights abuses in 2015, it continued supporting armed eco-guards around the world and pushed for a new national park in the Republic of Congo.
- WWF was aware of concerns of violent repression raised by indigenous Baka communities in the Congo, but did not report this to the EU, one of the main funders of the new park.
- WWF confirmed to Mongabay that the new park would not go ahead if consent couldn’t be obtained from the Baka.

In the Congo Basin, a road cuts through once-untouched ape wilderness
- The TRIDOM landscape, encompassing forests in Cameroon, Gabon and the Republic of Congo, is home to more than 40,000 great apes as well as Central Africa’s largest elephant population.
- TRIDOM is in the path of a planned road link between Cameroon and Congo. Associated projects include a hydropower dam.
- While the project’s environmental impact assessment estimated only 750 hectares (1,850 acres) of woodland would be cleared for the road, on-the-ground observation of work in progress indicates the impact will be much greater.
- In addition to the direct impact of forest clearing, conservationists fear the road will increase habitat fragmentation, facilitate hunting and mining, and encourage human migration into the area — something that is already happening.

The biggest rainforest news stories in 2018
- This is our annual rainforests year in review post.
- Overall, 2018 was not a good year for the planet’s tropical rainforests.
- Rainforest conservation suffered many setbacks, especially in Brazil, the Congo Basin, and Madagascar.
- Colombia was one of the few bright spots for rainforests in 2018.

Republic of Congo names new national park, home to gorillas, elephants
- The new Ogooué-Leketi National Park is the Republic of Congo’s fifth national park.
- It borders Batéké Plateau National Park in neighboring Gabon, and together the two parks form a transboundary protected area covering more than 5,500 square kilometers (2,120 square miles).
- The official designation of Ogooué-Leketi National Park comes after three logging concessions that overlapped with the proposed park area were finally closed down.
- All of the rights-holding communities that live close to the Ogooué-Leketi National Park were involved in the process of creating the protected area, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Congo program.

Congo Basin rainforest may be gone by 2100, study finds
- Satellite data indicate the Congo Basin lost an area of forest larger than Bangladesh between 2000 and 2014.
- Researchers found that small-scale farming was the biggest driver, contributing to around 84 percent of deforestation.
- This kind of farming is primarily done for subsistence by families that have no other livelihood options.
- The study finds that at current trends, all primary rainforest in the Congo Basin could be cleared by the end of the century.

Audio: How an African bat might help us prevent future Ebola outbreaks
- On this episode, we look at research into an African bat that might be the key to controlling future Ebola outbreaks.
- Our guest is Sarah Olson, an Associate Director of Wildlife Health for the Wildlife Conservation Society. With Ebola very much in the news lately due to a recent outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Olson is here to tell us how research into hammer-headed fruit bats might help us figure out how Ebola is transmitted from animals to humans — and potentially control or prevent future outbreaks of the viral disease.
- The bats don’t contract the disease, but there is evidence that they carry the virus. Olson is part of a study in the Republic of the Congo that seeks to understand how the Ebola virus is transmitted from carriers like hammer-headed fruit bats to other wildlife and humans.

Video: Rare newborn western lowland gorilla filmed in the wild
- The baby gorilla was born on Feb. 17 in the rainforests of Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, according to WCS.
- The infant is the offspring of a female gorilla named Mekome and a male silverback named Kingo, who has been studied by the WCS Congo researchers of the Mondika Gorilla Project for about two decades.
- Mekome’s newest baby is her fifth offspring, and represents hope for the species, researchers say.

Where does your timber come from? Genetic analysis may soon tell you
- Illegal trade in tropical timber costs countries billions of dollars in revenue each year and threatens regional and national biodiversity.
- Researchers tested the potential of two genetic analysis techniques to pinpoint the geographic origin of timber trees and thus verify claims that trees are harvested in legal quantities from permitted locations.
- They successfully assigned samples of tali, a highly exploited African timber tree, to the forest concession of origin using genetic markers.
- Their findings suggest that genetic analysis can differentiate the geographic origin of tropical timber at the scale of forest concessions and can serve as forensic tools to enforce timber trade legislation.

Five-year sentences for elephant poachers in Republic of Congo
- A court in the Republic of Congo has convicted three men of killing elephants for their tusks. They were handed five-year prison sentences and fined $10,000 each.
- The three men were part of a six-member poaching gang that managed to escape an ambush set up by park authorities, but not before leaving behind some 70 kilograms of ivory as well as an AK-47 rifle, according to the WCS.
- The gang is believed to have links to some of northern Congo’s most notorious elephant poachers and ivory traffickers, including two who were jailed in the last two years.

East Africa’s Albertine Rift needs protection now, scientists say
- The Albertine Rift in East Africa is home to more than 500 species of plants and animals found nowhere else on the planet.
- Created by the stretching apart of tectonic plates, the unique ecosystems of the Albertine Rift are also under threat from encroaching human population and climate change.
- A new report details a plan to protect the landscapes that make up the Rift at a cost of around $21 million per year — a bargain rate, scientists argue, given the number of threatened species that could be saved.

Maps tease apart complex relationship between agriculture and deforestation in DRC
- A team from the University of Maryland’s GLAD laboratory has analyzed satellite images of the Democratic Republic of Congo to identify different elements of the “rural complex” — where many of the DRC’s subsistence farmers live.
- Their new maps and visualizations allow scientists and land-use planners to pinpoint areas where the cycle of shifting cultivation is contained, and where it is causing new deforestation.
- The team and many experts believe that enhanced understanding of the rural complex could help establish baselines that further inform multi-pronged approaches to forest conservation and development, such as REDD+.

New study: Gorillas fare better in logged forests than chimps
- A study in the northern Republic of Congo found that gorillas and chimpanzees both became scarcer at the onset of logging.
- However, gorillas move backed into logged areas more readily, while chimpanzees were more likely to stay away.
- The researchers believe that gorillas are better able to cope with logging because they’re not as territorial as chimps and they seem to be more flexible in their eating habits.

COP23: Leaders vie for protection of ‘incredibly important’ African peatland
- The presence of the world’s biggest tropical peatland was recently confirmed in Central Africa. It is the size of England and straddles the border between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo (ROC).
- However, conservationists and scientists worry it may be at risk from logging and development. They caution its destruction could release “vast amounts” of carbon emissions. Others say the threats are overblown.
- Conservation leaders and representatives gathered this week at COP23 in Bonn, Germany, say protections could exist through REDD+ projects that could give local communities management rights and provide financial incentives for leaving the peat forest intact.

Video: Thousands of illegally caught African gray parrots being rehabilitated
- The Wildlife Conservation Society has released a video showing seized African gray parrots being treated at a rescue facility built specially for the rehabilitation of these birds.
- The birds were collected from the wild in the Republic of the Congo, and were most likely being smuggled to markets in Europe and the Middle East.
- So far, the WCS team has rehabilitated and released almost 900 parrots back into the wild.

‘Much deeper than we expected’: Huge peatland offers up more surprises
- Scientists recently discovered the world’s biggest tropical peatland in the Congo Basin rainforest of Central Africa. The peatland straddles the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo.
- Roughly the size of England, the massive peatland is estimated to contain more than 30 billion metric tons of carbon — equivalent to three years of global fossil fuel emissions.
- When the scientists went back to investigate the peatland further, they discovered the peat along its edges is deeper than they thought. This means it may contain more peat — and, thus, more carbon — than they originally thought.
- The scientists are racing to learn more about the peatland as loggers move to fell and drain the forests above it to make way for roads and developments like palm oil plantations. Meanwhile, local communities are hoping for greater protection of the region as government officials try to drum up more support for conservation initiatives at this week’s UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany.

Supporting conservation by playing a game? Seriously? (commentary)
- Can you answer important questions about conservation by playing a game? Yes, and it works.
- In August, ForDev, the research team I lead, was invited by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Congo Basin Office to facilitate a workshop of their Regional Working Group on High Conservation Values. FSC’s goal was to define regional indicators for the management of Intact Forest Landscapes (IFLs) within certified forest concessions.
- We combined the MineSet role-playing game with facilitation techniques to help members of the Working Group understand each other, integrate research outputs in their discussions, and support the decision-making process.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Going viral: How advancements in Ebola disease detection in wild apes can help to prevent dangerous outbreaks
- Research using a non-invasive method of detecting Ebola virus antibodies from wild ape dung has shown that non-human great apes can survive the disease.
- Early detection and disease monitoring in wildlife populations can prevent the transmission of zoonotic diseases such as Ebola from being transmitted to humans.
- A more comprehensive assessment of health threats to wild great apes can help to determine whether the Ebola virus is of primary concern in a given gorilla or chimpanzee population.

Discovering the Congo carbon sink
- Cuvette Centrale, as it is known, stores as much carbon as has been emitted by the U.S. over the last 20 years.
- The peatland ecosystem is home to wetland birds, forest elephants, and western lowland gorillas.
- Threats to the vast carbon sink include climate change and conversion to agriculture.

The Republic of Congo: on the cusp of forest conservation
- The Republic of Congo’s high forest cover and low annual deforestation rates of just over 0.05 percent have led to the country being named as a priority country by the UN’s REDD+ program.
- The country has numerous protected areas and has signed agreements to certify the sustainability and legality of its timber industry.
- Skeptics caution that more needs to be done to address corruption and protect the country’s forests, a third of which are still relatively untouched.

World’s largest tropical peatlands discovered in swamp forests of Congo Basin
- The peatlands, which weren’t even known to exist as recently as five years ago, were revealed to cover 145,500 square kilometres (or more than 17,500 square miles), an area larger than England, and to sequester some 30 billion metric tons of carbon.
- That makes them one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems on Earth, according to the researchers who made the discovery and subsequently mapped the peatlands.
- Professor Simon Lewis and Dr. Greta Dargie, who are both affiliated with the University of Leeds and University College London, first discovered the peatlands’ existence while doing fieldwork in the region in 2012.

Logging in certified concessions drove intact forest landscape loss in Congo Basin
- A study published in the journal Science Advances this month found that, between 2000 and 2013, the global area of intact forest landscape declined by 7.2 percent.
- Certification of logging concessions, which aims to ensure sustainable forest management practices, had a “negligible” impact on slowing the fragmentation of intact forest landscapes (IFLs) in the Congo Basin, according to the study.
- According to Corey Brinkema, president of the Forest Stewardship Council US, the findings of the study may be noteworthy, but they don’t apply to how FSC operates today.

The year in tropical rainforests: 2016
- After 2015’s radical advancements in transparency around tropical forests between improved forest cover monitoring systems and corporate policies on commodity sourcing, progress slowed in 2016 with no major updates on tropical forest cover, resistance from several governments in releasing forest data, and some notable backtracking on zero deforestation commitments.
- But even without the pan-tropical updates, we know that deforestation increased sharply in the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for the world’s largest area of tropical forest.
- Low commodity prices may have bought some relief for forests.

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