BIG FOREST IN AFRICA

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

About 22 percent of Africa is forest and woodland, and only a small percentage of this acreage is protected. Incredibly important from a human standpoint because of their timber and water resources, these tree-dominated ecological landscapes are also reservoirs of outstanding biological diversity. From the sprawling, steaming rainforests of the Congo Basin to the sizzling, sepia-toned woodlands of the Tanzania-Zimbabwe frontier, these are some of the most game-rich forests in the world.

Congolese Forest

The Congo Basin is Africa’s largest contiguous forest and the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world. Covering about 695,000 square miles, this swamp-struck tropical forest covers portions of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Exceeded in size only by the Amazon, the Congo Basin rainforest supports some 10,000 kinds of plants and a huge variety of animals, including big mammals like African forest elephants, forest buffalo, chimpanzees, bonobos and a number of subspecies of gorilla. It also shelters more than 100 different human cultures. Gravely maligned by wide-scale logging and the bushmeat trade, these great, waterlogged forests remain a bastion for African wilderness. Important reserves include the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas in southwestern Central African Republic and Moukalaba-Doudou National Park in Gabon.

Other Big Forests

The Upper Guinea Forests of southern Guinea, eastern Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and western Toga represent the other major tract of lowland rainforest in Africa. BirdLife International quotes a 1991 report listing their remaining extent at less than 31,000 square miles. Half the ecosystem’s plants and nearly a third of its animals are found nowhere else on the planet. The most extensive protected area in the Upper Guinea Forests is Côte d’Ivoire’s 1,275-square-mile Tai National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From its towering old-growth stands rear massive isolated rock domes called inselbergs. Another major swath of timber in Africa is the Nyungwe Forest of Rwanda, which the Wildlife Conservation Society calls “the largest block of high-altitude montane forest in East and Central Africa.” Sprawling along the divide between the Congo and Nile basins, the 378-square-mile Nyungwe Forest conceals a diverse assemblage of primates and close to 300 species of birds. Nyungwe National Park in Rwanda and Kibira National Park in Burundi form a critical international reserve in this area.

Dry Forests

Collectively, dry forests account for the majority of Africa’s timbered acreage; African dry forests are some of the most extensive in the world. Open woodlands and savannas cover vast swaths of the continent, as sun-filled and sprawling as the tropical rainforests are shadowy and hemmed-in. The miombo woodland, dominated by Brachystegia trees, blankets over a million square miles of the Central and East African plateaus, commencing south of the Congolese forests and the East African acacia savannas. A particularly biologically diverse form of miombo woodland covers much of the 19,300-square-mile Selous Game Reserve in southern Tanzania, one of Africa’s wildernesses and among the world’s biggest wildlife preserves. Visitors here glimpse a fairly intact wild landscape of rugged woods, grasslands and riverine forests, a complex protecting a huge variety of ungulates – including major herds of elephant, buffalo and hippopotamus – as well as an impressive suite of carnivores, such as painted hunting dogs and lions.

Mangrove Forests

It’s easy to overlook the mangrove swamps of tropical Africa’s coastlines when considering the continent’s forests, but these communities – founded by a number of species of mangrove, which are shrub-trees uniquely adapted to brackish estuaries and nearshore margins – are hugely important from an ecological perspective, functioning as nurseries and foraging grounds for numerous marine creatures. The most extensive mangrove forest on the continent is along the Niger Delta. More biologically diverse mangrove swamps lie along the Indian Ocean coast, most significantly in the Rufiji and Zambezi river deltas.