Congo News

A vast area of peatlands in the swamp forests of the Congo Basin, known as the Cuvette Centrale peatlands, has just been mapped for the first time and shown to…

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The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has received millions of dollars aimed at stopping deforestation and promoting sustainable development from donor countries and organizations despite breaching a…

The Lebialem Highlands, located in Cameroon’s southwest, is a global biodiversity hotspot, a place long protected from development by its ruggedness and small human populations, though that is no longer…

A study published in the journal Science Advances this month found that, between 2000 and 2013, the global area of intact forest landscape declined by 7.2 percent, a reduction of…

The Year of the Monkey has just ended, and won’t come around again for another 12 years. In the meantime, what is happening with our closest living relatives, the nonhuman…

Great apes need intact, safe habitat to thrive. But deforestation and hunting have imperiled that safety, with four out of six species now Critically Endangered, including Eastern and Western gorillas,…

Nests, footprints and dung have been leading primatologists to new gorilla populations in the Congo Basin nation of Cameroon for over a decade. In 2002, researchers discovered nearly 100 Western…

While 2016 lacked the drama of Indonesia's 2015 fire and haze crisis, surging deforestation in Earth's largest rainforest and ongoing destruction of forests for industrial plantations meant that it was…

Massive forest fires in the Congo and Amazon, surging deforestation in Brazil, and tentative steps toward reform in Indonesia and Myanmar: there were no shortage of major happenings in tropical…

KAHUZI-BIEGA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of the Congo - I came out of my room and a park ranger was standing just outside the door with an AK-47 in his hands.…

The boundaries of Odzala-Kokoua National Park contain some of the best-preserved old-growth rainforest in the Republic of Congo. Its terrain varies from hills rising to 350 meters (1,148 feet) to…

In recent years, technological innovations like camera traps and GPS collars have revolutionized wildlife research. However, when it comes to collecting field observations, scientists frequently still use the old-school method…

Cables obtained by the non-profit Oakland Institute through a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that U.S. government officials pushed the Central African nation of Cameroon to approve a deeply…

In an operation led by the Lusaka Agreement Task Force (LATF) between July 28 and August 2, wildlife enforcement teams arrested two businessmen in the Republic of Congo believed to…

Michelin Group, one of the world's three largest tire companies, has just adopted a zero deforestation policy for its rubber sourcing. The move is significant because rubber is a major…

The risk of murder is higher for environmental activists and wildlife officers than for police officers. Protecting the planet is a dangerous job. Schoolyard massacres and suicide bombers make the…

Central African country Gabon has formally adopted a new guidance document produced by local communities and civil society groups that aims to help forest communities receive a share of profits…

Elephant poachers killed three wildlife rangers and wounded two more in a shootout yesterday in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, reports African Parks, a conservation group…

A new report by the Rainforest Foundation UK found that protections for Africa’s tropical forests are failing to actually protect biodiversity and forest communities. In recent years, hundreds of millions…

ameroon’s Korup National Park is home to elephants, chimpanzees, red colobus monkeys, drill, and a myriad of noisy species, whose squawks, squeals and howls fill the forest air. For more…

frica is similar to other developing regions of the world in that agriculture is central to the continent’s economy, composing almost one quarter of its GNP and employing nearly two-thirds…

This is the second in a four-part series on palm oil in Cameroon. Read the first, third, and fourth parts for more discussion on the topic. n Cameroon’s 500,000-hectare (1,931-square mile)…

he countries of Gabon, Liberia, Indonesia and Myanmar may not seem to hold much in common, but each of these countries — two in West Africa and two in East…

he adolescent orangutan was captured in the forests of Sumatra by a soldier at the height of the Aceh province civil war for independence. By February of 2004, this orangutan…

s global markets increasingly clamor for palm oil, used in everything from soap to processed foods, companies are actively scouting out prime places to produce that oil, and governments are…

amily planning can prevent unwanted pregnancies, increase birth spacing, and improve women’s reproductive rights. All of this can reduce human populations, theoretically taking pressure off local environments. In recent years,…

The rare “forest giraffe,” a native of the lowland rainforests in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, faces numerous threats, including habitat loss, armed conflict, poaching, and, increasingly, the mining…

In southeast Cameroon, World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) has helped support a number of conservation initiatives, including the creation of three national parks. But WWF’s presence in Cameroon since…

For scientists, not all species are equal. In tropical Asia and Africa, for example, scientists tend to focus on a handful of large national parks that are home to high-profile species…