Woods Hole Research Center

Salonga National Park, DRC

The Salonga National Park, established as a World Heritage Site in 1984, encompasses the largest tract of protected tropical rainforest in the world. Its remote location supports a diversity of forest habitats and many endangered animal species. Rivers serve as both means of transportation and communication as traditional infrastructure is lacking to support research, development, or official conservation planning.

Salonga National Park is remote & has high ecological integrity (Regional land-cover map adapted from Laporte et al. 1998)

The majority of forests in Salonga are semi-evergreen (or semi-deciduous), but evergreen and mono-dominant forests of Gilbertiodendron dewevrei “limbali forests” also exist. Grassland exists within isolated patches of the park, but becomes more extensive in the southern portion of the region and outside the park. Salonga is also home to a large number of animal species, perhaps the most important of which is the endemic dwarf chimpanzee (Pan paniscus) or bonobo. For a more comprehensive description of the flora and fauna of Salonga, please visit the fact sheets of the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) and the ICCN.

Its remote location lends itself well to forest conservation. Human settlements have been limited in the region. Activities like fishing, hunting-gathering, and subsistence farming, were discontinued within the park during the mid-1970s. Currently, only a handful of fishing camps and research stations are located within the protected area. A limited amount of cultivation is found between Salonga’s southern and northern sectors.

Threats to Conservation

Poaching, or illegal hunting of protected species, is the most immediate threat to conservation in the Park. The lack of logging concessions and low population density in the park reduces the threat of deforestation and forest degradation. However, political instability could prompt a renewal of large-scale industrial logging that may threaten Salonga without proper forest management and land-use planning.

WHRC is working with various partners to support the conservation of Salonga National Park through mapping. Collaborators include the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN), the University of Kinshasa (ERAIFT), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and the Zoological Society of Milwaukee (ZSM).

Project Objectives

• Support the development of conservation management plans by providing remote sensing and GIS data

Project Activities

• Providing a mosaic of satellite images for the park
• Updating park boundaries in collaboration with University of Kinshasa ERIAFT

Products & Applications

WHRC scientists have produced a simple mosaic of the Salonga National Park and its buffer zones using ortho-rectified images from the Geo-Cover collection. This mosaic is being used as a base map for field survey in the region; it was also used, in conjunction with the legal definition of the park, to re-define the protected area boundaries.

To obtain the full-resolution spatial products and their metadata files, please contact .

Future Outlook

The WHRC encourages interested partners to propose future collaborative efforts.