A NATIONAL Geographic report says that the Congo River basin covering several countries, including the two Congos, Gabon, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic, is under severe threat.
It says the Basin, the world’s second largest contiguous moist tropical forest, is home to some 10-thousand animal species and 600 tree species, many of them unique to the region and many of them critically endangered.
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For example, the forest elephant has seen a 62 percent population decline and a 30 percent habitat loss in recent times, while the population of the Grauer’s gorilla, the world’s biggest primate, has crashed by 77 percent.
The biggest problems are illegal mining for the region’s extraordinary mineral wealth, the many local wars and the growing number of armed groups operating in the region (many of these conflicts related to the mining), illegal logging, wildlife poaching and illegal hunting for bush meat for the burgeoning human population.
People are streaming into the Congo Basin following the illegal operations there and needless to say, this is also leading to more and more conflict situations between people and wildlife.
The report does not suggest any quick fixes for this situation, but does point out that as consumers we are all to some degree responsible because of the growing need for the minerals of the Congo Basin, minerals that have become a more or less essential part of our everyday lives.*
In similar vein, a report released in New Delhi says that on average two Indians a day are killed in human/wildlife contacts.
In the main the animals involved are elephants, tigers, lions (the last, tiny remnant pride of the Asian lion is in the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary in western India), leopards and snakes.
The report, compiled by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, says that the situation is going to get worse as more and more natural wildlife habitat is destroyed by human expansion, mainly through land clearing for farming and new villages and infrastructure.* Sounds very much like the Congo Basin, doesn’t it?
And some medical news – researchers have come up with evidence that suggests that diseases like cancer are nothing like a modern medical phenomenon.
A team led by scientists from the University of the Witwatersrand’s Evolutionary Studies Institute and the South African Centre of Excellence in Paleao-Sciences, has established that a foot bone of a hominin from the Swartkrans site west of Johannesburg dated to about 1.7 million years ago, shows definitive evidence of malignant cancer.
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It has also established that there was a benign neoplasm or tumour in the vertebrae of the Australopithicus sediba child of almost two million years ago, found at the nearby Malapa site.
The scientists say that this new evidence debunks the notion that such diseases as cancer and tumours are a result of modern lifestyles and environments.**
Finally, I wrote about the dune soap berry tree the other day. Well, a reader tells me that the fruit of the tree is delicious and that the local trees should be in fruit right now. Bon appétit!
*Save the Elephants News Service.
**The Digging Stick, magazine of the South African Archaeological Society.
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