24 Stunning Places That Climate Change Is Destroying For Future Generations

Congo Basin

Image: Shutterstock/Sergey Uryadnikov

The Congo is home to a wide variety of animal species, including the Okapi Wildlife Reserve. Okapi are forest giraffes that were first discovered in 1901. Other animals that call the Congo home are elephants, forest buffalo, chimpanzees, leopards, and more than 300 species of birds. The rainforest within the Congo is the second largest in the world—second to the Amazon—covering six nations and is home to about 10,000 species of plants, 400 different kinds of animals, 150 ethnic groups, and 30 million people.

Due to a large increase in deforestation and burning of the land for crops, the survival of the wildlife and people who live there is being put at risk. Illegal mining and people who kill for bush meat are destroying the land, and its ecosystem along with it. There’s a lack of funding to protect this precious land, leaving the fate of the Congo in question. Each year 10 million acres of the Congo rainforest are lost.

The increase in deforestation and farming is contributing more to the total global greenhouse gas emissions. The animals and people living in the Congo are the first to see the effects of these harmful practices.