Forests and Democratic Republic Of Congo News

The discovery of the elusive okapi, once believed to be a mythical unicorn, was one of the most exciting taxonomic findings of the twentieth century. This mysterious mammal lives deep inside…

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…

Muanda, Democratic Republic of Congo – “We used to eat all the turtles,” Matondo Nkenghe José explains about local activity along the Democratic Republic of Congo’s tiny 23-mile coast. “People…

Muanda, Democratic Republic of Congo – Two elephant tusks are wedged behind a photocopier. A stuffed antelope stands by the door and a large framed photograph of President Joseph Kabila…

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…

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…

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…

Hugging the shores of a lake in a far-eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a strip of mountainous rainforest that has never been thoroughly surveyed…

Using remote cameras attached high up in trees and in the understory, researchers have captured the first ever video footage of a new population of the rare Dryas monkeys (Cercopithecus…

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,…

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…

A report released earlier this month presents the most comprehensive scientific analysis of illegal logging ever published. Its findings indicate a third of the tropical timber traded globally comes from…

As always, Mongabay covered a mix of environmental stories this year. While some species went extinct, several new species were discovered. Some forests were wiped out, but others were restored. Below, we take a look…

The governor of a province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo approved the boundaries of a 1,477-square-kilometer (570-square-mile) natural reserve on Wednesday. “This is the first protected area to…

Deforestation rates have been rising in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in recent years, threatening the country's forest-dependent wildlife and releasing millions of tons of CO2 into the…

On October 4, a park ranger was killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kahuzi Biega National Park while trying to protect the park’s rare Grauer’s gorillas. The ranger, Munganga…

The world’s largest ape, the Grauer’s gorilla or the eastern lowland gorilla, is now on the verge of extinction. The gorilla subspecies (Gorilla beringei graueri), found only in eastern Democratic…

For more than two decades, a violent civil war and its aftermath raged in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), leading to the deaths of millions of people. Forests…

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…

Author's note: The data that underpins this post is updated on a regular basis on Mongabay's rainforest site: Amphibians, Birds, Fish, Mammals, Reptiles, Vascular Plants. September 26, 2021 update: this…

International financing for forest conservation in three key African forest countries — the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, and Liberia — has increased steadily since 2009, but each country…

ver the last four decades, industrial agriculture has been a boon to Southeast Asia, but it also helped destroy more than 30 percent of Borneo’s rainforest — one of the…

For two decades, a devastating civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) prevented scientists from monitoring Grauer’s gorillas (Gorilla beringei graueri). But now, data from recent surveys…

ven the most celebrated conservation successes can seemingly be undone overnight. That was the hard lesson Takeshi Furuichi learned when conflict erupted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),…

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has one of the world's biggest remaining tracts of rainforest (second only to the Amazon in size), home to unique and threatened species…