Do you know, the Congo Basin loses some 3.7 million acres a year to agriculture, logging, road development, oil exploitation and mining? Yes, this is what the WWF’s Central African regional office (CARPO) said in a recent report.
And, if logging and mineral exploitation continues at the current rates in the world’s second largest tropical forest — after the Amazon forests — two-thirds of it could disappear within just 50 years! – the environmental group WWF fears.
With the forests’ disappearance, about 400 mammal species are under threat as their habitat is getting destroyed too! The animals include the world’s largest populations of lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and forest elephants.
CARPO director Laurent Some said in the report,
Tropical forest is vanishing at a rate of 5 percent a decade, wrecking habitats and releasing 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, which is a fifth of global greenhouse emissions.