War having made vast swaths of the country inaccessible to researchers, it is impossible to know precisely how these creatures have fared. Certain habitats may have been left untouched, but others have been devoured.
In the Virunga Highlands near the border of Uganda and Rwanda, the mountain gorilla population has grown, according to a census by the Wildlife Conservation Society. By contrast, in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, the eastern lowland gorilla's population has fallen by 70 percent to fewer than 5,000, according to Conservation International. The elephants in the same park may well have vanished.
As for the bonobo population, scientists have no reliable numbers but fear the species may be nearing extinction. Late last year, the UN Environment Program reported that the bonobo, along with the gorilla, chimpanzee and orangutan, could disappear in 50 years.
Peace is likely to present a new challenge to forest dwellers: Congo's rain forests have once again opened up to logging companies and today the first batches of timber can be seen floating downriver from Equateur province to the port in Kinshasa. With blessings from the World Bank, 150 million acres of rain forest could be opened up for logging.
As the World Bank sees it, timber concessions could pour hundreds of millions of dollars into government coffers. Environmentalists fear that the logging could also endanger the habitat of the Pygmy people, who have eked out a living in the forest for centuries. The bonobos are sometimes called Pygmy chimpanzees, because Pygmies too are averse to conflict; they too prefer to hunt and forage in the forest rather than fight one another for territory. UN investigators suspect some of them had been eaten during the war too.
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