The world's second-largest rainforest, spanning six Central African countries, home to the western lowland gorilla and the forest elephant — and increasingly caught between record deforestation, armed conflict, and the global demand for the minerals in the phone this is probably being read on.
The Congo Basin rainforest spans roughly 2 million km² across six countries — the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, Central African Republic, and Equatorial Guinea — making it the second-largest contiguous rainforest on Earth after the Amazon. The DRC alone holds the majority of this forest and, as of 2024, has the second-largest stock of primary rainforest of any country after Brazil.
Annual primary forest loss in the DRC reached a record 590,000 hectares in 2024, up from 530,000 hectares in 2023 — the highest figure on record for the country. Total tree cover loss for the year reached 1.38 million hectares. Between 1990 and 2020, the wider Congo Basin lost more than 352,000 km² of forest, and the annual deforestation rate has been rising, not falling, since the 1990s.
Source: Global Forest Watch satellite data, 2024–2025 reporting via MongabayUnlike the Amazon, the Congo Basin has historically had one of the lowest deforestation rates of the world's major tropical forests, in part due to lower population density and less-developed road infrastructure across much of its interior. That relative intactness is precisely why the recent acceleration in forest loss is significant to researchers — it suggests pressures that were previously limited by poor access (shifting-cultivation agriculture, mining, logging roads) are now reaching deeper into one of the last large, relatively undisturbed tropical forest blocks on Earth.
The Congo Basin's remaining intact forest is still yielding scientific surprises. In July 2026, researchers formally described a previously unknown species of Colobus monkey — Colobus congoensis, known locally as "Likweli" — from the Lomami National Park region of east-central DRC.
Likweli was documented in 114 field observations between 2018 and 2022 across an estimated 1,700 km² range, restricted to high-canopy forest on deep clay soils. Genetic and morphological analysis confirms it as a distinct species, most closely related to Colobus satanas — a species found more than 1,200 km away. Researchers have proposed a preliminary IUCN Red List classification of Endangered, citing its small range, small population, and exposure to hunting and habitat conversion.
Source: Hart et al., PLOS ONE, 2026A newly described, already-Endangered species is a useful reminder that the Congo Basin's biodiversity is still being documented even as the forest it depends on shrinks — species can be formally recognized and immediately at risk in the same year.
Community-led conservation is a notably larger part of the picture here than in some other Field Notes locations: as of late 2025, Congolese communities have been working to establish a roughly one-million-hectare biodiversity corridor. International initiatives to strengthen protected-area management and address deforestation drivers are also active through bodies like the FAO's Central Africa forest programs, though enforcement capacity in conflict-affected eastern regions remains a documented, significant limitation.
This report carries a lower Evidence Level rating than our Borneo and Amazonas reports, and that's a deliberate, honest signal rather than an oversight. Western lowland gorilla population estimates in particular remain some of the least precise wildlife figures we cite anywhere on the platform, since the species' dense, remote habitat makes direct survey work extremely difficult — published estimates vary considerably depending on methodology and survey coverage. The relationship between specific mineral supply chains and specific patches of forest loss is also harder to document rigorously than, for example, palm oil's relationship to deforestation in Borneo, because artisanal mining is dispersed, often informal, and occurs in areas that are difficult and sometimes dangerous for researchers to access directly.