The Weekly Anthropocene, February 15 2023
Dispatches Against Despair, from the Wild, Weird World of Humanity and its Biosphere
New Protected Areas
The Republic of Congo1 has expanded its Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to include the Djéké Triangle, a 95 square kilometer patch (that’s larger than Manhattan) of unlogged tropical rainforest. The Djéké Triangle is home to three groups of critically endangered western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) that have been continuously studied since 1995 from Mondika Research Site, and is one of the key sites advancing human knowledge of one of our closest relative species. Notably, this park addition occurred with local communities’ free, prior, and informed consent, with the Wildlife Conservation Society spending two years holding community meetings with local villages to define the parameters of the new protections.
"We are not prohibited from activities such as harvesting leaves, mushroom or honey, or fishing, all of which are allowed in the zoning; what we are prohibited from doing is using firearms, and we agree on this because we k…
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