Woods Hole Research Center

Okapi Wildlife Reserve

Ituri Forest, DRC

The Okapi Wildlife Reserve (13,150 km2 ) established in 1992, is located in the Ituri tropical rain forest of the northeastern Congo Basin. The reserve is one of five World Heritage Sites in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and is named for its high concentration of okapi (Okapia johnstoni), the only living relative of the giraffe. This region is home to the hunter-gatherers of the Mbuti and Efe forest people (collectively known as pygmies) and the farmers of various Bantu and Nilotic ethnic groups, who have inhabited the forest for hundreds of years. Traditional land use in the Ituri Forest includes hunting-gathering and shifting cultivation. Conservation management plans have called for the zoning of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve into areas of no use, areas permitting traditional hunting-gathering, and areas allowing agricultural cultivation and settlements.

The Ituri forest contains about 500 species of plants, dominated by mixed-species terra firma forest at very high density. The “mbau” or “limbali” forest, composed of mono-specific evergreen forests of Gilbertiodendron dewevrei are widespread here and across the Congo Basin. Also, swamp forests line many streams and rivers of the reserve.

The Ituri Forest ecosystem also contains high animal diversity. The species richness of duikers and primates in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve is among the highest in Africa. The reserve also contains 300 species of birds, and over 50 species of mammals; including a large population of rare forest elephants.

Scientific research and conservation, which began in 1952, is now widespread in this region. Research organizations like the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) focusing on biodiversity, cultural anthropology, and wildlife ecology, are helping to create and maintain places like the Centre de Formation et de Recherché en Conservation Forestière (CEFRECOF), located in Epulu, to train Congolese ecologists and conservation managers.

Threats to Conservation

Despite considerable progress, the Ituri region is the one of the most politically unstable areas in the DRC. Social, economic, and political turmoil threaten conservation in protected areas of eastern DRC, where illegal activities flourish in the absence of governance. Mining of gold, coltan and diamonds; poaching of elephants for ivory; illegal logging; and commercial hunting of bush meat have degraded the regions forest. Without the government’s support in local infrastructure, law enforcement, and funding, research and conservation activities have become limited for only a few international conservation NGOs. Where projects are established, the continuity of these efforts remains highly variable. Consequently, forest monitoring via remote sensing is particularly useful in this region.

Project Objectives

• Support conservation management and ecological research by providing remote sensing data on forest types and land-use/landcover

Project Activities

In collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), WHRC scientists have

• Provided a satellite base map of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve
• Mapped land-cover types using Landsat imagery
• Collected field data on floristic associations to improve vegetation mapping. Several transects of data were collected by a team led by the Congolese botanist Innocent Liengola; however, data collection was interrupted due to the deterioration of security situation in the Reserve

Products & Applications

These map products have been used for land-use zoning, vegetation inventories, and wildlife surveys (including MIKE, Monitoring of the Illegal Killing of Elephants) in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve. WCS and ICCN have been working with local communities to establish a zoning system in the region. To obtain the full-resolution products, please contact Nadine Laporte.

 

 

Future Outlook

• Integrate field data on floristic associations with remote sensing analysis to improve vegetation mapping
• Validate existing land-cover maps
• Evaluate the utility of IKONOS imagery in mapping biophysical variables collected by the Center for Tropical Forest Science (CTFS) Long-term Forest Dynamic Plots