African Forest of the Great Apes in Crisis

The African Forest of the Great Apes, a spectacular lowland rainforest of Central Africa, stretches across regions of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo Brazzaville, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.

It is second in size only to the Amazon rainforest and is the most species rich place in Africa.

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 are all dependent on this ancient African forest.

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.

Moreover, around 12 million forest-dwelling people, including the semi-nomadic Baka pygmies, depend directly on the forest for shelter, medicine, food and for their cultural and spiritual survival.

The crisis

When a company states that it is only using mahogany from Africa, they are virtually admitting that they use wood from illegal sources. Greenpeace, government entities and other organizations have evidence that points to massive illegal logging in the tropical forests of Africa. Depending on the country, 35 - 90% of timber exported from Africa is from illegal sources. Greenpeace is currently working on a report about illegal logging in Africa.

In 1990, UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that only around 12% of West African rainforests remained. In 1997, this figure had fallen to ten percent. Between 1990 - 1995 this region depleted 2.5 million hectares of forest.

Additionally, loggers open up remote areas of the rainforests to the hunting of endangered species such as chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, duikers and pangolins.

Logging in rainforests and the consequent activities that follow it, whether done legally or not, leads to high grading, road building, peripheral forest damage, species extinction and consequent deforestation. Despite stringent measures that the government has adopted to fight illegal logging and poaching, the practice has been going on unabated.

Alarming Facts About Logging in Africa

According to a study by the International Institute for Environment and Development, the Ivory Coast timber exploitation "has been a matter of sheer anarchy." Three decades of intensive logging have devastated the Ivory Coast's ancient rainforests. The country has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. Illegal logging and poaching are threats to the parks, forests and wild animals.

Ghana's Forestry Department estimated in 1994 that about 34% of logs harvested from its forests were illegal. A report by Friends of the Earth found that timber companies in Ghana had illegally defrauded the Ghanian government of over $18 million in taxes during the 1980s. In less than 50 years, Ghana's primary rainforest has been reduced by 90% and less than 1% of the remaining forests are protected in reserves.

The European Commission's Joint Research Center (EC JRC) has recently reported high levels of deforestation in Liberia's remaining lowland rainforests, citing intensive logging as the primary cause of forest loss.

The Liberian Minister of Agriculture, Roland Massaquoi, criticizing the way in which logging companies were operating, stated in April, 2000 that "it is evident that most of the country's natural rainforests have been depleted without reforestation."

Cameroon rainforest. About 76% of Gabon's forests have either been logged or allocated as logging concessions. Logging has rapidly expanded in area and volume and laws are being poorly applied. Cameroon's forests shrunk by two million hectares between 1980 and 1995. Illegal logging and poaching, the Forestry Minister [Sylveste Na'ah Ondoa] said, "endangers forest under exploitation and threatens the equilibrium of our forest ecosystem." Find out more about numerous logging abuses in Africa from The Time's April 17, 2002 article, Rainforests are falling to greed and corruption. Visit our publications section for in-depth reports on Africa's forests.