Africa

Gorilla in an enclosure at Mefou National Park. The park is run by Cameroon Wildlife Aid Fund to conserve and protect primates that are under threat from poaching and deforestation.

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Three of our closest relatives, the gorilla, chimpanzee and bonobo all depend on the Congo rainforest for their survival. Of exceptional ecological importance, the forest is home to 270 species of mammals, of which 39 are unique to the region.

The Congo rainforest is home to animals like the okapi, Congo peacock, forest buffalo, the rare bongo antelope and forest elephant. The Congo rainforest is also home to around 10,000 species of plants, of which 3,300 are unique to the region.

The second largest rainforest on earth after the Amazon, the Congo rainforest stretches across the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon: an enormous area three times the size of France (about 1,700,000 km²). About half of this rainforest lies within the DRC.

Tens of millions of people depend on the rainforest for their survival. In DRC alone 40 million people - Bantu farmers, the Twa people and fishing communities depend on the forest for their livelihood. In this part of the world, entire cultures depend on the forest.

The Congo rainforest also plays a vital role in regulating the global climate. DRC alone accounts for over 8 percent of the world's carbon stocks in forest biomass and 75 percent of those left in tropical rainforests in Central and West Africa making the DRC the fourth largest forest carbon reservoir of any country in the world.

The rainforest in Africa once formed an unbroken blanket of green extending from Senegal to Uganda. Today, the blanket has been torn into pieces with industrial logging one of the biggest threats to the remaining intact forest and the people and animals that live there. It's not too late to save the forests of the Congo, but the clock is ticking!