Congolian rainforests

The Congolian rainforests (French: Forêts tropicales congolaises) are a wide area of lush, green forests that stretch across the land where the Congo River and its smaller rivers flow in Central Africa. These forests are part of a special kind of ecosystem called tropical moist broadleaf forests, which are known for their thick trees and rich plant life.

These rainforests are very important because they are home to many different animals and plants, some of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. They also help keep our planet healthy by taking in carbon from the air and giving us clean oxygen to breathe.

The Congolian rainforests cover a huge area, forming a deep green belt that looks like a giant blanket over the basin of the Congo River region. This makes them one of the largest tropical rainforests in the world, second only to the Amazon. They play a big role in supporting life not just for wildlife, but for people living nearby as well.

Description

The Congolian rainforest is the world's second-largest tropical forest, after the Amazon rainforest. It covers over 500,000,000 acres (2,000,000 km²) across six countries and contains a quarter of the world's remaining tropical forest. The Congolian forests cover southeastern Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, the northern and central Democratic Republic of the Congo, and portions of southern and central Africa. The Congolian rainforest is home to a large number of plants and animals, including more than 10,000 species of plants and over 10,000 species of animals. It is estimated that the region contains more than a quarter of the world's plant species and is home to one of the world's most threatened primate species, the western lowland gorilla. There are also a number of other species of primates, including the chimpanzee, black colobus monkey, red colobus monkey, and olive baboon.

The central Congo Basin is home to one of the world's largest tropical peatlands, extending along both sides of the Congo River and its tributaries. The peat swamp forests in the Congo Basin store approximately 29 billion tons of carbon - equivalent to about three years worth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

To the north, south, and southwest, the forests transition to drier forest-savanna mosaic, a mix of drier forests, savannas, and grasslands. To the west, the Congolian forests transition to the coastal Lower Guinean forests, which extend from southwestern Cameroon into southern Nigeria and Benin; these forest zones share many similarities and are sometimes known as the Lower Guinean-Congolian forests. To the east, the lowland Congolian forests transition to the highland Albertine Rift montane forests, which cover the mountains lining the Albertine Rift, a branch of the East African Rift system.

Ecoregions

The World Wide Fund for Nature divides the Congolian forests into six distinct ecoregions:

• Atlantic Equatorial coastal forests (Angola, Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon)
• Central Congolian lowland forests (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• Eastern Congolian swamp forests (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• Northeastern Congolian lowland forests (Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of the Congo)
• Northwestern Congolian lowland forests (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Gabon, and Republic of the Congo)
• Western Congolian swamp forests (Republic of the Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo)

Flora and fauna

See also: Category:Flora of West-Central Tropical Africa

The Congolian rainforests are home to over 10,000 types of plants, with 30% found only there. Though it has fewer plants than the Amazon and Southeast Asian rainforests, it still has more plants and animals than most other places on Earth. The Congolian Forests are one of the world's important natural areas.

There are over 400 types of mammals in the rainforest, including African forest elephants, African bush elephants, leopards, bongos, red river hogs, chimpanzees, bonobos, mountain gorillas, and lowland gorillas. The okapi lives only in the northeastern part of the Congolian rainforests.

The rainforests have 1,000 types of birds such as the grey parrot, brown nightjar, and the bat hawk, along with 700 types of fish like the Nile tilapia, Nile perch, and the giraffe catfish.

Conservation

The Congolian rainforests face threats from logging, oil palm farms, and mining. These activities break up and destroy parts of the forests. Hunting animals for food and illegal hunting also harm the wildlife.

From the 2000s to 2019, the loss of forest in this area grew, and in 2021, it increased by 5%. Over the past 20 years, a large area of forest—17.1 million hectares—has been cut down.