Congo News

The first bursts of deforestation in tropical areas can push a lot of species – more so than previously though – closer to extinction due to the loss of habitat, as…

Ballooning demand for pangolin scales and meat has driven the hunting of these armored animals up at least 145 percent in Central Africa since before 2000, according to a new…

The chimpanzee nest was a few months old, but there it was, right next to the tracks of the endangered forest elephant. We were in a conservation area that had…

The word came in that a small chimp was for sale up the road near Aketi, a town in remote, northernmost Democratic Republic of the Congo. The seller: a policeman…

Tropical forests are home to more than 50 percent of terrestrial biodiversity, and they also play a globally important role in storing and sequestering carbon. Forest conservation can therefore help…

Researchers have compiled the first-ever carbon map of rainforests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The DRC is home to 60 percent of the Congo rainforest, the second-largest…

GARAMBA NATIONAL PARK, Democratic Republic of Congo – Scientist Mathias D’haen said he couldn’t believe his eyes. We had been walking in the bush for a couple of days in…

The dramatic urban energy of Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital, seems a world away from the green expanse of the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in Les Petites…

Elephant poachers have killed two wildlife rangers in a shootout in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), reports African Parks, a not-for-profit conservation group that manages…

The world's most prestigious award for grassroots environmental activism has announced its winners for 2017. Every year, the Goldman Environmental Prize, dubbed the Green Nobel Prize, honors grassroots environmental heroes…

Ongoing violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has taken a heavy toll on the country’s women, with sexual violence there gaining the DRC a label as the…

YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Two male chimps, Avi and Max, take turns inside an electric-fenced compound where eight Central chimpanzees are housed at the Mefou Primate Sanctuary not far from Cameroon’s…

Great apes should be humanity’s best bet for conservation — charismatic, intelligent, strikingly familiar, with big emoting eyes. It’s hard to think of creatures with whom the public empathizes more…

In a remote mountainous rainforest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), scientists have discovered a new species of wild ginger. The newly described plant -- discovered on the…

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, or DRC, is home to a massive amount of forest – in the range of 112 million and 154 million hectares (between 276 to…

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s extensive forests seem like a bright spot in an otherwise-troubled country. With forests covering an area larger than Colombia, DRC has managed to sidestep the…

Laden with carefully thought-out food supplies, Greta Dargie carried her heavy pack as she waded through the mud. Getting to field sites in the swampy forests of the Cuvette Centrale…

For weeks, the primatologists had followed a group of Grauer’s gorillas over rugged terrain — hacking through dense rainforest; following knife-edged ravines; and crossing a nearly impenetrable mountainous landscape in…

The world’s most peace-loving apes will be getting a little love themselves this Valentine’s Day, as the California Senate recently passed a resolution to create the first World Bonobo Day…

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.…