Africa's gorillas will only survive in wildlife parks and zoos if current forest destruction isn't curbed.
This spectacular lowland rainforest stretches across regions of
Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Congo Brazzaville, the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
The forest in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone is home to
over 1,000 species of birds and more than 400 species of mammals,
many of which are not found anywhere else on Earth. The African
Forest of the Great Apes is critical to the survival of three of
our closest animal relatives; the gorilla, the chimpanzee and the
bonobo. The forest is also home to magnificent forest elephants and
other animals such as the okapi and Congo Peacock which are barely
known to science. They are all dependent on this ancient African
forest.
Also, there are around 12 million forest-dwelling people,
including the semi-nomadic Baka pygmies, who depend directly on the
forest for shelter, medicine, food and for their cultural and
spiritual survival. "If the forest dies, we will die as well
because we are the People of the Forest," Mbuti 'Pygmy', Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
Forest disappearing - and the Great Apes will go with it
The African Forest of the Great Apes once stretched across
Africa from Senegal to Uganda, but no more. Africa has lost 85
percent of its ancient forests since the 1970's, and the future for
the creatures and people that depend on them is uncertain.
By 2015 Africa's apes, the gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos,
will disappear with the last undisturbed forest areas.
Since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, tropical Africa has seen
almost a 25 percent increase in the rate of forest destruction. On
average the region has seen its production of timber increase by
more than half since the mid 90s. Of what remains, 40 percent has
been allocated to commercial logging operations, and illegal
logging is rampant in the region.
"Selective extraction" is what the international timber
corporations call their supposedly protective operations where they
saw down one or two giant trees per hectare. What they forget to
mention is that as much as 70 percent of the remaining forest and
vegetation in the logging area also falls victim to roads, sawing
machines and bulldozers.
There has been no significant increase in the area of ancient
forest designated for conservation during the same period and
already protected areas are mostly ignored. Conservation efforts
are thwarted because of a lack of political will, money and
personnel for enforcement, and because of poverty and
corruption.
While the Government of Cameroon, in 2006, invited an
independent monitoring body to help control the forestry sector,
illegal and destructive logging practices are currently the norm in
the region. And at the same time countries such as France, Italy,
Germany, the UK and Spain continue to import huge amounts of
African timber each year.
copyright 2002 Greenpeace/Global Forest Watch
Potentially intact ancient
forest, >50,000 heactares
Other forests
Sources: Forest cover, TREES (EC Joint Research Scentre)
Logging concessions, Cameroon: CETELCAF, MINEF, Central African
Republic: Project Demenagement Resource Naturelle, Democratic
Republic of Congo: SPIAF< WRI, Equatorial Guinea: GFW and local
partners, Gabon: Ministere des Eaux et Fortes, Jnl. Officiel du
Gabon, WCMC, WWF, Republic of Congo: WRI, WWF