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.
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Ancient
forests are in crisis
 What is at stake? |
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.
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"If the forest dies, we will die
as well because we are the People of the Forest," Mbuti 'Pygmy',
Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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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. |
© Greenpeace/Plowden
Time to act
The African Forest of the Great Apes once stretched across Africa from Senegal to Uganda. No more.
Most of these stunning forests are now gone and the future for the creatures and people which depend on them is uncertain.
Overall 85 percent this ancient forest has been lost, and industrial logging threatens most of what remains.
Since the Rio Earth Summit, tropical Africa has seen almost a 25 percent increase in the rate of forest destruction. And on average the region has seen its production of timber increase by more than half since the mid 1990s.
At the same time, there has been no significant increase in the area of ancient forest designated for conservation. On the contrary, in the last five years, several million more hectares of this ancient forest have been allocated to industrial logging and may soon be logged out.
While the Cameroonian government has recently invited an independent monitoring body to help control the forestry sector, illegal and destructive logging practices are currently the norm in the region.
Yet countries such as France, Italy, Germany, the UK and Spain continue to import huge amounts of African timber each year.