Central Africa News

This is the second article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” Read Part One. The announcement came in mid-2019: A pool of oil lay deep beneath a swampy…

This is the first article in our four-part series “The Congo Basin peatlands.” The notion seemed straightforward: A massive swamp in the Congo Basin relatively unknown to most of the…

Greenpeace Africa is spearheading calls to investigate the vice president and environment minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ève Bazaiba, over her alleged involvement in a series of illegal…

How do you develop your economy and provide services in a sustainable manner? That’s a central theme of the U.N. climate summit underway in Glasgow, and in few places is…

MAKOKOU, Gabon — Villagers in northeastern Gabon have embarked on a first-of-its-kind initiative to reclassify part of a logging concession as a protected area and hunting ground, citing its ecological…

On October 6, Cameroon's minister of forestry and wildlife, Jules Doret Ndongo, will appear at a one-day conference focused on protecting the richly biodiverse forests of Central Africa. Yet his…

When a towering African zebrawood tree falls in the forest, it certainly makes a sound. During a survey of the Ebo forest from August 2020 to March 2021, Eric Nana…

In any one month, Adams Cassinga and his team of investigators juggle as many as 20 suspected cases of wildlife crime, only a fraction of which will result in a…

When the first bongo was reported dead by the Sangha River in the Republic of Congo in 1997, it was believed to have drowned. Several more turned up in the following…

I saw my first wild gorillas in Rwanda in 2002 and I was immediately drawn in by their power, their beauty, and the awareness that these amazing creatures were, despite…

Peering back over the last 120,000 years, scientists have uncovered where chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) rode out past periods of global change, providing insights into how they might be affected by…

What happens when an environmental catastrophe takes place in an isolated area at the periphery of the world’s attention? The last six weeks in the Democratic Republic of Congo and…

On Aug. 12, authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasaï province noticed the Kasai River had turned red. Witnesses said the bodies of hippos and dead fish were seen…

Today we’re looking at Indigenous-led projects and the latest research informing conservation of elephants, the largest land animal in existence and one of the world’s most widely recognized and beloved…

There may be far fewer bonobos in the wild than recent surveys have predicted, a new study concludes. Population surveys of bonobos (Pan paniscus) rely not on counting individual apes,…

In 2019, Norway committed to pay $150 million to Gabon to protect its forests under the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI). After independent verification of the country's deforestation rates in…

Gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos face a bleak future thanks to a perfect storm of human-driven factors, a recent study shows. The triple whammy of the climate crisis, growing human population,…

Kahuzi-Biega National Park in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is renowned for its biodiversity, including Grauer's gorilla — an endemic subspecies — and around 350 bird species. The area…

Virunga National Park’s forests are some the most biodiverse in Africa and among the last bastions of mountain gorillas, okapis, Ruwenzori duikers and many other endangered species. Guarded by some…

The world’s 50 largest financial institutions increased their investments in deforestation-linked commodity companies by more than $8 billion since the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, a new report has…

The Government of Gabon has passed landmark measures to manage and protect the country’s sharks and rays: over the past decade, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has worked with the Gabon…

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) contains the bulk of Africa’s humid rainforest. But forests that were once dense, impenetrable and continuous are increasingly fractured by deforestation. New satellite…

Two of the Democratic Republic of Congo's most prolific wildlife traders have been handed jail terms this year, in a rare spell of conservation wins for Congolese law enforcement. Salomon…

A forestry company in Gabon has built new roads to log a forest in the northeastern province of Ogooué-Ivindo. Villagers had applied to the government last August to reclassify this…

Nahoko Tokuyama says she couldn’t believe what she was seeing when she noticed the wild bonobo with an unknown infant on her back in the Luo Scientific Reserve in the…

Well-known investment funds in the U.S., Europe and South Africa are financing a set of oil palm plantations that have been at the center of more than a century of…

For years, Anthony Caere, an anti-poaching pilot at Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), peered through the windows of his helicopter to see a landscape mostly…

Camera traps bring you closer to the secretive natural world and are an important conservation tool to study wildlife. This week we’re meeting our closest living relative: the chimpanzee. Chimps are…

The rainforest of Lopé National Park in central Gabon is one of the last safe havens for the endangered forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis). But in a new study in Science,…

Poaching for tusks, horns or other body parts is a well-recognized threat to Africa's wildlife, but the impact of hunting for bushmeat may pose a greater threat. Conservationists in Southern…