location: Congo

location: Congo

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Armed conflict, not Batwa people, at heart of Grauer’s gorillas’ past decline in DRC park
- The decline in critically endangered Grauer’s gorillas between 1994 and 2003 in the highland sector of Kahuzi-Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo was due to the impacts of armed conflict, rather than the presence or absence of Indigenous communities, according to a new study.
- The finding, including recent analysis of forest loss in parts of the park where Indigenous Batwa people returned, challenges simple but competing narratives that the region’s Batwa people are either forest destroyers or forest guardians, say various primatologists.
- After the onset of the Rwandan genocide and Congo Wars, which drove an influx of refugees, poaching, hunting and mining in the region, estimates of Grauer’s gorillas dropped from about 258 to 130 individuals, only to rise again once the Second Congo War ended.
- Researchers and conservation authorities say conservation in Kahuzi-Biega National Park remains challenging, but that Indigenous people should be included in environmental stewardship.

‘Dream birds’ in the mist: First photo of ‘lost’ bird in DRC mountains
- The mountainous forests of the eastern DRC are home to a strikingly beautiful bird: the yellow-crested helmetshrike.
- The species was considered lost to science until late last year, when an expedition of U.S. and DRC scientists spotted flocks of the birds gliding through the forests of the Itombwe mountains and snapped the first photo.
- Their observations will help to fill in some key knowledge gaps on this little-known species, which faces threats from habitat destruction and climate change.

We know how many okapi live in zoos. In the wild? It’s complicated
- The okapi, an endangered species that looks like a cross between a large antelope and a zebra, but is most closely related to the giraffe, is found only in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo and is considered an important cultural icon.
- The elusive ungulate faces more threats today than a decade ago, which was the last time a conservation assessment for the population was carried out.
- Armed militia groups, illegal mining, and a new trade in okapi oil for medicinal use have kept the species under threat and prevented scientists from being able to properly assess its population status.
- With scientists lacking reliable population estimates, a specialist group is now working to produce an updated conservation assessment within the next year.

The Itombwe owl: Two birds and an identity crisis
- The last sighting by scientists of the Itombwe owl, a species endemic to the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, was in 1996.
- This was in Itombwe Nature Reserve, a protected area described by its director as “forgotten by a majority of organizations and people who support the conservation of biodiversity.”
- Being overlooked may have helped keep the reserve protected, with the forest remaining intact and satellite imagery showing no roads being carved inside it.
- Experts agree on the need for further expeditions to study the Itombwe owl, including settling the long-running debate over which genus of barn owl, Tyto or Phodilus, it belongs to.

Mysterious African manatees inspire a growing chorus of champions
- Cameroonian conservationist Aristide Kamla recently won the prestigious Whitely Award for his ongoing work to understand and conserve the African manatee, the least-known and understood of the world’s three manatee species.
- African manatees occur in rivers, mangroves, lagoons and coastal waters along the west coast of Africa. Difficult to see in the murky water, they’re challenging to study and conserve, and much of what we assume about them is based on knowledge of the better-known Florida manatee.
- The African manatee faces numerous threats: poaching, drowning as bycatch in fishing nets, landscape degradation, and dam construction all contribute to what’s believed to be its declining population.
- A slowly growing number of species experts are working hard to shine a light on the plight of the African manatee, in the hope that a more unified effort can change the trajectory of the African manatee’s plight in future.

Meet the little-known African tortoise with a hatchback for a shell
- The forest hinge-back tortoise is an unusual animal whose shell can swing down 90 degrees in the rear to protect itself from predators.
- However, despite having a large range across sub-Saharan Africa, the species is currently listed as data deficient on the IUCN Red List; experts say it’s tentatively considered endangered.
- The turtle is threatened by deforestation and hunting for food, traditional medicine and fetishes.
- Researchers say to better protect the species would require more investment, but acknowledge that less “charismatic” species like tortoises rarely get the protection or attention they require.

Study highlights environmental and economic benefits of agroforestry for DRC coffee crops
- Growing coffee in agroforestry systems in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) supports 19 times higher biodiversity and stores twice as much carbon compared with monoculture systems, while maintaining comparable yields.
- But sustainable coffee production in the DRC requires small-holder farmers’ buy-in, considering their immediate economic needs and the local context of extreme poverty.
- Sustainable agroforestry systems are profitable in the long term but face challenges in attracting investment. Experts say responsibility for sustainability should extend to consumers and coffee companies.
- Successful implementation of agroforestry depends on making it beneficial for local farmers, providing additional revenue streams and respecting local ownership and knowledge of the rainforest.

Disputed Manono lithium mining project in DRC sparks concern
- A lithium mining project in the DRC that was expected to begin in 2023 is still pending.
- The Congolese government and mineral exploration company AVZ Minerals are fighting over the rights to an ore concession awarded to the Chinese company Zijin Mining.
- Delays are lengthening for residents waiting for jobs, and the local population has not yet been informed of how lithium mining will impact their environment.

DRC conflict hinders search for Itombwe nightjar, but ‘lost’ bird may yet be found
- The Itombwe nightjar is a bird described from a single specimen in the Congo Basin nearly 70 years ago and not seen by science for at least the past decade.
- It’s in the top 10 of the global Search for Lost Birds, an initiative by a group of international conservation NGOs.
- Complicating its search is the fact that the region where the type specimen was collected is currently a conflict zone in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
- But there’s hope for the species: it may be far more widely distributed, with live sightings and recordings of its song made at the other end of the Congo Basin, in Cameroon and the Republic of Congo.

Camera-trap study brings the lesula, Congo’s cryptic monkey, into focus
- Only found in the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the lesula monkey (Cercopithecus lomamiensis) was first described by scientists in 2012.
- A 2023 Animals study finds that the lesula is mostly terrestrial, unlike the other species of guenon monkeys in the region.
- The study also finds that the lesula is active during the day, has a seasonal reproductive cycle, and lives in family groups of up to 32 individuals, with males dispersing out to form bachelor groups.
- Researchers say the Tshuapa, Lomami and Lualaba Rivers Landscape, where the study was conducted, holds incredible primate diversity.

UNESCO accused of supporting human rights abuses in African parks
- For years, human rights organizations have accused UNESCO of being either inattentive or complicit in the illegal evictions of communities and allegations of torture, rape and murder in several World Heritage Sites.
- These sites include biodiversity hotspots in Africa, including the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania and the Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the Republic of Congo.
- Although UNESCO is not participating in these human rights abuses itself, organizations say, a few aspects of the agency’s policies and structure allow abuses to happen: lack of solid mechanisms to enforce human rights obligations, its requests for countries to control population growth in heritage sites and the agency’s internal politics.
- UNESCO strongly contests the statements made against the World Heritage Convention and Committee, which has made stronger human rights commitments, and says such multilateral institutions are in fact the best allies to defend human rights.

Impunity and pollution abound in DRC mining along the road to the energy transition
- In the DRC’s copper belt, pollution from the mining of cobalt and copper, critical minerals for the energy transition, is on the rise and polluters are ignoring their legal obligations to clean it up.
- Cases of pollution have caused deaths, health problems in babies, the destruction of crops, contaminated water and the relocation of homes or an entire village, residents and community organizations say.
- Mining is the economic lifeblood of the region and the state-owned mining company, Gécamines, is a shareholder in several other companies — some accused of these same rights abuses.
- Mongabay visited several villages in Lualaba province affected by pollution and human rights violations to assess the state of the unresolved damage — and whether companies are meeting their legal obligations.

Global cobalt rush drives toxic toll near DRC mines
- A new report highlights the social and environmental harms from cobalt mining in the DRC, driven by surging global demand for clean energy minerals.
- Researchers investigated five mines supplying major electric vehicle manufacturers and linked them to water contamination, health impacts and human rights abuses.
- Despite efforts to mitigate pollution, ongoing incidents and failure to meet clean water provision standards demand urgent action from companies and regulators, co-authors RAID and AFREWATCH say.

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.”

Togo monkey seizure turns spotlight on illicit wildlife trafficking from DR Congo
- In December, Togo seized 38 monkeys in transit to Thailand.
- Nearly 30 of the animals in the shipment had not been declared in the official documentation.
- The monkeys, many of which were in poor health, were repatriated to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Only 24 monkeys from the group survived, and these have been taken in by a Lubumbashi animal refuge.

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.

Oil firm Perenco eyes new blocks in DRC amid criticism of its track record
- Oil multinational Perenco has bid on two new oil blocks being auctioned off by the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Perenco operates the country’s only oil production facilities, at Muanda, near the mouth of the Congo River.
- Local and international critics accuse the oil company of polluting the environment, affecting fishing and farming, as well as residents’ health; the company denies this.

New data show 10% increase in primary tropical forest loss in 2022
- Globally, the tropics lost 4.1 million hectares (10.1 million acres) of primary forest in 2022, 10% more than in 2021.
- These losses occurred despite the pledges of 145 countries at COP26 in 2021 to increase efforts to reduce deforestation and halt it by 2030; the new data, from the University of Maryland, puts the world far off track for meeting the goal of zero deforestation.
- According to Frances Seymour of World Resources Institute, there is an urgent need to increase financing for protecting and restoring forests.

Tap African knowledge and culture for Congo Basin forest conservation (commentary)
- The Congo Basin is home to the world’s second largest rainforest, but it is under increasing strain from development, logging, mining, and other pressures.
- One of the key ways to slow the loss of forest is to engage local communities which live in the area, whose cultures are deeply rooted in stewardship the land, and have a strong connection to the forest.
- “By tapping into African culture and engaging local communities, the conservation of the Congo Basin forest can be achieved in a sustainable and effective manner,” a new op-ed argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Survival and economics complicate the DRC’s bushmeat and wild animal trade
- Hunting for bushmeat can impact the populations of rare and threatened wildlife in forests around the world.
- In the Democratic Republic of Congo, subsistence hunting is often intertwined with the trade of bushmeat and in some cases live animals to sate the demand from larger markets, which can increase the pressure on wildlife populations.
- The trade of bushmeat provides one of the few sources of income for hunters, porters and traders, as well as a source of protein for families, in the town of Lodja, which sits close to forests that are home to unique species.
- Activists in Lodja and the DRC are working to save live animals from entering the illicit trade of endangered species and encourage alternative sources of income to the commercial trade of wild meat and animals.

Inaugural Indigenous women’s forum spotlights Congo Basin conservation
- This week, leaders from Indigenous women’s organizations, environment and land management groups and philanthropists are meeting in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, for a forum aimed at strengthening the role of Indigenous women in Congo Basin land management and conservation.
- Organizers hope the forum will result in a fund for Central African Indigenous women supporting biodiversity and climate resilience.
- Research shows that 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is found in territory managed by Indigenous peoples, yet Congo Basin countries receive scarce funding for conservation.

DRC’s endangered bonobos face another threat to their survival: malaria
- Along with humans, great apes like gorillas and chimpanzees are known to get infected with malaria, but evidence about the parasite’s effects on bonobos has been scant.
- A recent study that analyzed the feces of bonobo across the species’ range found that one bonobo population showed evidence of both malaria infection and a genetic variation that would likely protect them against severe disease.
- This genetic variation was less common in other populations, suggesting that other bonobo groups could be in trouble if climate change brings malaria-carrying mosquitoes into their habitats.

Element Africa: Deadly violence and massive graft at Tanzania and DRC mines
- Environmental concerns are mounting as the Nigerian National Petroleum Company begins drilling for oil in a new field in the north of the country.
- Video testimony has emerged about alleged police killings of five villagers near Canadian miner Barrick Gold’s mine in Tanzania.
- A local official has absconded with $14.5 million in mining royalties intended to fund community development in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Lualaba province.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

What happened in the world’s rainforests in 2022?
- There were some hopeful developments for tropical rainforest conservation in 2022.
- But the outlook for tropical forests nonetheless remains tenuous.
- The following is a look at some of the major tropical rainforest storylines and developments in 2022.

Environmental peacebuilding must pay more attention to armed groups (commentary)
- State and non-state armed groups often play crucial roles in conflict and cooperation over natural resources.
- Environmental peacebuilding examines how addressing resource conflict and improving governance can serve as a stepping stone for broader efforts at peace.
- Though much research and programming of this sort speaks of governments and communities as the main conflict parties, armed parties should also be considered conflict actors in their own right.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

COP27 long on pledges, short on funds for forests — Congo Basin at risk
- The world’s wealthiest nations have made grand statements and offered big monetary pledges to save the world’s tropical rainforests so they can continue sequestering huge amounts of carbon.
- But as COP27 draws to a close, policy experts and activists agree that funding so far is far too little, and too slow coming, with many pledges still unfulfilled. Without major investments that are dozens, or even hundreds, of times bigger, tropical forests will keep disappearing at an alarming rate.
- The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) offers a case study of just how dire the situation is becoming. While some international forest preservation money is promised and available, it is insufficient to stop companies from leasing forestlands to cut timber and to convert to plantations and mines.
- Some experts say that what is urgently needed is the rapid upscaling of carbon markets that offer heftier carbon credits for keeping primary forests growing. Others point to wealthy nations, who while still cutting their own primary forests, encourage poorer tropical nations to conserve theirs without paying enough for protection.

After 14 years of advocacy, the DRC president finally signs new Indigenous peoples law (commentary)
- On Wednesday, the president of the DRC, Felix Antoine Tshisekedi, signed and promulgated the new law on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Indigenous Pygmy Peoples.
- For the country’s Indigenous pygmy people, this is the first time that they are legally recognized as a distinct people with rights and access to free, prior and informed consent before the government and industries can exploit their land.
- But not everything will change in the blink of an eye and implementation of the law will take time, says Patrick Saidi, one of the Indigenous coordinators that worked to get the protections enshrined into law.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.

Can a luxury chocolate company help a Congolese forest?
- The widespread popularity of chocolate has led to a cocoa boom in the DRC, escalating deforestation in the country’s primary forests by impoverished locals in the war-torn region.
- Luxury food company, Original Beans, seeks to solve deforestation fueled by chocolate farming near Virunga National Park by planting organic cocoa in an agroforestry system that provides a sustainable form of income to local women.
- The company argues that producing luxury chocolate is a solution that generates enough money to bypass mass-production and opaque supply chains, while fairly paying local producers.
- Agroforestry experts say the project relies too heavily on planting invasive tree species and does not follow all sustainability recommendations.

Element Africa: Mines take their toll on nature and communities
- Civil society groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo are demanding the revocation of the license for a Chinese-owned gold miner operating inside a wildlife reserve that’s also home to nomadic Indigenous groups.
- Up to 90% of mines in South Africa aren’t publishing their social commitments to the communities in which they operate, in violation of the law, activists say.
- A major Nigerian conglomerate that was granted a major concession for industrial developments in 2012 has still not compensated displaced residents, it was revealed after the company announced it’s abandoning the project.
- Element Africa is Mongabay’s bi-weekly bulletin rounding up brief stories from the commodities industry in Africa.

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.

Easygoing bonobos accepting of outsiders, study says
- Bonobos are well known for their peaceable relations within family groups, but there’s less scientific consensus about how much tolerance they extend to individuals outside of their core groups.
- A recent study set out to examine this question by observing members of habituated bonobo communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and comparing their behavior to observations of chimpanzee groups in Uganda’s Kibale National Park.
- The researchers found that, compared to chimpanzees, bonobos maintain strong and distinct core groups, but also exhibit frequent and peaceable between-group interactions.
- The findings give conservationists a better understanding of bonobo social behavior, which in turn can inform conservation actions.

Locals in the dark about oil auctions in DRC: report
- Greenpeace Africa and a group of environmental organizations have released a report in one of the first field investigations into local views on a wave of anticipated oil exploration.
- Researchers visited fourteen villages in four of the proposed oil blocks, finding that most residents didn’t know about the government’s plans.
- This week the DRC’s environment minister rejected an appeal by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry to remove some blocks from the auction.

The mine leak was bad. The DRC and Angola’s response are no better, report says
- In July 2021, an Angolan diamond mine leaked large amounts of polluted water into the Kasai River Basin which stretches across Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Twelve people were killed, a further 4,400 fell ill and an estimated 1 million more were affected by the polluted water.
- Fourteen months later, the DRC government has not released full results of tests conducted on the rivers, but a ban on drinking the water from the Kasai and Tshikapa rivers remains in place.
- An independent report published in September 2022 has found that the leak killed off much of the rivers’ aquatic life, with severe and ongoing impacts on river-dependent communities.

Catfished: New species described from DRC after mistaken identity
- Scientists recently identified a new species of air-breathing catfish, Clarias monsembulai, in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Salonga National Park — the first new species of catfish in the Clarias genus to be described in 42 years.
- It was named after Congolese researcher Raoul Monsembula, who collected samples of the species in 2006 and 2010 without realizing at the time that the fish was unknown to science.
- Experts say that species discoveries are very common in Salonga National Park due to the region’s rich biodiversity as well as the limited amount of research being done there.
- However, the area also faces numerous threats, including poaching and the possibility of fossil fuel extraction.

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.

‘That’s a scam’: Indian firm’s REDD+ carbon deal in the DRC raises concern
- Environmental and human rights advocacy organizations say an Indian company has misled communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, convincing them to sign away the rights to sell carbon credits from the restoration, reforestation or avoided deforestation of locally managed forests.
- These forests, managed under a structure known by the French acronym CFCL, provide communities with control over how land is managed while giving them access to the resources the forests provide, proponents of the initiative say.
- But the contracts, the implications of which were not fairly or adequately explained to community members, may restrict their access to the forests for generations to come, the advocacy groups say.
- These organizations and the communities are now calling on the Congolese government to cancel the contracts.

Loggers close in on one of the world’s oldest biosphere reserves
- An EL PAÍS/Planeta Futuro investigation exposes plans to open timber transport roads in a tropical forest connected to the Yangambi Man and Biosphere Reserve. The area, in northeastern DRC, is a wildlife corridor and a haven for chimpanzees, pangolins and Afrormosia, an endangered tree species traded in global markets.
- The timber, including hardwoods regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), is exported to the EU and the US.
- UNESCO is preparing an audit to salvage DRC’s three Man and Biosphere Reserves through better governance arrangements. They will also review the zoning of the Yangambi Biosphere Reserve to preserve high-conservation value areas.
- Mongabay has partnered with EL PAÍS/Planeta Futuro to publish this work in English. This story was produced with the support of the Rainforest Investigations Network (RIN) of the Pulitzer Center.

In the DRC’s forests, a tug-of-war between oil and aid
- At the COP26 climate summit, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President Féelix Tshisekedi of the Democratic Republic of Congo announced a $500 million aid package to protect forests in the Central African country.
- Part of the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, the announcement was one of the top headlines at the summit.
- Now, with the DRC set to auction off oil blocs in carbon-rich peatlands, questions are being raised about whether the package addresses the threat posed by industrial logging and oil drilling.

Suspension of Chinese miner for pollution in DRC points to wider problem
- The Democratic Republic of Congo’s environment minister recently suspended the operations of a Chinese company for polluting a major tributary of the Congo River in Tshopo province.
- Xiang Jiang Mining is accused of polluting the Aruwimi River, mining for gold without first conducting an environmental impact assessment, and failing to secure work permits for its foreign employees.
- In nearby South Kivu province, six other mining companies were suspended for similar offenses last year, pointing to a worrying pattern of companies ignoring mining and environmental regulations.

Ivory from at least 150 poached elephants seized in the DRC raid
- A three-year investigation has led authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo to 2 metric tons of ivory hidden in a stash house in the southern city of Lubumbashi.
- The tusks are valued at $6 million on the international market and estimated to have come from more than 150 elephants.
- The three people arrested in the May 14 raid are allegedly members of a major wildlife trafficking ring in the Southern African region.

Oil exploration in DR Congo peatland risks forests, climate and local communities
- The Democratic Republic of Congo is putting 16 oil exploration blocks up for auction, including nine in the peatlands of the Cuvette Centrale.
- Environmentalists warn that oil exploration and infrastructure for production could release huge amounts of carbon stored in the peatland and threaten the rights of local communities.
- The Congolese government says it needs to exploit its natural resources in order to generate income to develop the country, much as countries in other parts of the world have done before it.

Scheme to stop ‘conflict minerals’ fails to end child labor in DRC, report says
- Much of the world’s supply of coltan, tin and tungsten minerals is extracted using child and forced labor, despite an industry mechanism meant to guarantee responsible supply chains, a new report alleges.
- The investigation by campaign group Global Witness found major failures in the chain of custody for minerals produced in the provinces of North and South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- The findings, which align with previous investigations by Congolese NGOs and the United Nations, point to large amounts of ore from unvalidated mines entering the supply chain, including from areas known to be under control of militias and rogue army units.
- The International Tin Supply Chain Initiative says the report is inaccurate and fails to account for progress made in recent years, but has not yet refuted any of the evidence provided.

DRC logging contracts suspended as audit uncovers serious violations
- The publication of an audit of forestry contracts in the Democratic Republic of Congo has exposed serious management failures.
- The audit cites serial breaches of the country’s forest code and more than a dozen violations of a 2002 moratorium on new concessions.
- The DRC’s environment minister announced the immediate suspension of forestry contracts deemed illegal by the audit, saying that where a special commission confirms the Inspectorate General of Finance’s findings, those contracts will be canceled.
- The audit is the first requirement to access a $500 million fund for protection of the Congo Basin pledged by funders last November, but the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), which is leading the funding process, has not reacted publicly to the negative findings.

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.

In Nigeria, a decade of payoffs boosted global wildlife trafficking hub
- An investigation by Nigeria’s Premium Times and Mongabay has found evidence of systematic failure by Nigerian law enforcement and the judicial system to hold wildlife poachers and traffickers accountable.
- Our analysis of official wildlife crimes data, supported by numerous interviews with prosecutors, environmental campaigners and traders at wildlife markets in Lagos, Cross River, Abuja, Ogun and Bauchi states, found a near-total reliance on minor out-of-court settlements in trafficking cases.
- Despite numerous high-profile, multimillion-dollar trafficking busts at Nigeria’s ports since 2010, no one has faced jail terms as a result.
- The reliance on informal payments to local officials encourages corruption, experts say, while sporadic crackdowns on wildlife markets have not stopped traders operating in the country’s commercial capital.

DRC’s cacao boom leaves a bitter aftertaste for Congo Basin forest
- The DRC’s Tshopo province lost a record-breaking area of intact forests to fires in 2021, a trend researchers say is driven by agricultural expansion, as displaced people from the violence-ravaged eastern DRC move into the province.
- There’s been an increase in clearing of forests to cultivate food crops and cash crops like cacao beans, used to make cocoa for chocolate.
- Around 70% of the world’s supply of cacao beans is produced in West African countries, with Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon the biggest producers, where its cultivation has also accelerated deforestation.
- “You are aware of what has happened in West Africa in countries like Ivory Coast and Ghana,” Germain Batsi, a DRC agroforestry expert, told Mongabay. “I am afraid such scenarios will be reproduced here, something we would regret afterwards.”

A conservation paradigm based on Indigenous values in DR Congo (commentary)
- Colonialism and the gazettement of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern DRC led to the evictions of Batwa Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and a number of human rights abuses that continue today.
- To seek to address historical and contemporary injustices, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is emphasizing Indigenous values and entering a partnership with the Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) to take actions that ensure that the rights of the Batwa peoples are respected and protected.
- This commentary is written by the Executive Director of Rights + Communities at the WCS, and a Congolese Lawyer and former Chairperson of the U.N. Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

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.

DRC environment minister panned for allegedly facilitating illegal concessions
- The Democratic Republic of Congo’s environment minister, Ève Bazaiba, has come under scrutiny over her alleged involvement in a series of illegal forest concessions.
- Bazaiba in September reportedly deployed a team from her ministry to effectively obtain local community consent for a concession that had been illegally granted by her predecessor.
- The country’s president has ordered an audit of the concessions and the suspension of all “questionable contracts,” but observers say the government hasn’t taken any action yet.
- The DRC is mulling a controversial plan to end a 19-year moratorium on industrial logging, which critics say would imperil 70 million hectares (173 million acres) of forest, an area larger than France.

High risk, low pay for DRC rangers entrusted to guard a gorilla sanctuary
- Marie Jeanne Bora Ntianabo was drawn to the extraordinary commitment of park rangers while she was still a child.
- Now 29, she loves her job as a ranger despite danger of being ambushed by poachers or armed groups operating in Kahuzi-Biega National Park.
- The work doesn’t pay well, especially due to reduced numbers of tourists that the park depends on for revenue, but Ntianabo says she isn’t tempted by the profits others seek while harming the park’s ecosystems and wildlife.

Address risky human activities now or face new pandemics, scientists warn
- The new, highly-contagious Delta variant — spread with the ease of chickenpox — is causing COVID-19 cases to skyrocket across the globe as health officials respond with alarm. “The war has changed,” said a recent internal U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) document.
- Globally, numerous infectious diseases are being transmitted between wildlife, livestock and humans at escalating rates, including outbreaks of COVID-19, Ebola, dengue, HIV and others, as the threat of new emergent zoonotic diseases grows ever greater. The cost is huge in lives lost and ruined economies.
- The driver: human activities, particularly intrusion into wild landscapes and eating and trading wild animals. Bringing people, domestic and wild animals into unnatural proximity exposes all to pathogens for which they lack immunity. International travel and a booming global wildlife trade quickly spread viruses.
- Experts say that a “One Health” approach is urgently needed to prevent future pandemics — simultaneously addressing human, animal and ecosystem health, protecting humanity and nature, and incorporating disease risk into decision-making.

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