LAC TÉLÉ COMMUNITY RESERVE , Republic of Congo — Standing on a riverbank in Lac Télé Community Reserve in March, naturalist Joseph Oyange watched as fishermen guided their pirogues through the lazy current. Nets fanned out in graceful arcs before sinking into waters alive with tilapia and catfish. Nearby, a kingfisher launched from a low-hanging branch, while farther downstream, a hippo belched. “This,” Oyange said, “is the real Garden of Eden.” Oyange is a Congolese naturalist whose involvement in conservation spans almost 30 years. Much of his work focuses on Lac Télé Community Reserve, in the heart of the world’s largest peatland. He was part of a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) team that surveyed the reserve in 2006 and 2007 and made the stunning discovery that roughly 125,000 western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) inhabit the Likouala region’s swamp forests; remarkable considering that it outnumbered the approximate total population of the subspecies, classified as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List. “We always knew there were gorillas in and around Lac Télé,” Oyange said, “but myself and my colleagues had no idea — not a clue — we had so many.” The reserve, according to the study, has about five gorillas per square kilometer (13 gorillas per square mile) — one of the highest density estimates in the world. “Foreigners are surprised by this, but we aren’t,” said Emmanuel Mambou, a fisherman from Epena, a cluster of roughly two dozen thatched homes on the banks of the Ngiri River, the…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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South Africa Today – Environment
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