Bila-Isia Inogwabini

• PhD
• Researcher (External Resources) at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Conservation measures require accurate estimates of density and abundance and population trend assessments. The bonobo (Panpaniscus) is considered Endangered in the IUCN Red List. This classification assumes that available population data are representative. However, with only 30% of the bonobo’s historic geographical range surveyed, reliable infor...

This book examines interactions between human communities and the global biodiversity that is sheltered by the Salonga National Park. While not being a review of research that has been on-going in the Salonga National Park over several years now, the book takes a bird-eye perspective to look at how the forests, waters and species that occur in the...

This book considers the global question of climate change from local perspectives in the context of Central Africa. Bila-Isia Inogwabini examines attempts made by the international community to respond to the global challenges posed by climate change in the Congo Basin and highlights that these attempts have so far produced limited results. Abject...

Cet essai discute de la question des finalités qui sous-tendent les discours et l’appel à l’action pour conservation de la biodiversité, principalement en ces temps de crise écologique et climatique. En passant en revue les textes fondamentaux de Pape François et de Michael E. SOULÉ, l’article argumente qu’il y a deux types de finalités parallèles,...

The fish biodiversity in the Congo River and its tributaries is extremely rich but the information on fish communities in the headwaters in terms of catch and biomass estimates is rare. Fishes in the running and stagnant waters in this region are of vital importance as a food resource for local residents. This study aimed to describe the fish commu...

The sixth benchmark for the Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) was that by 2020 the world should be able to protect and restore all sorts of water-related ecosystems. This article looks at what it would have taken for the world to achieve that target at the end of 2020. After sketchily reviewing the current status of water across globe, the art...

Cet article se veut un élargissement de la discussion sur la question agricole en Afrique. Il passe en revue les conditions écologiques et celles de l'histoire naturelle du continent ayant conduit a la diversification des terres africaines telle qu'elle est connue a ce jour. Au regard de la maigreur de la production agricole traditionnelle africain...

Since 1996, repetitive wars have been on-going in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and huge amounts of resources have been invested in trying to solve the conflagration that engulfs the entire African Great Lakes Region. Political and social analysts studying the causes and solutions to these wars, focused on political leadership, viability...

L’article discute des possibilités réelles pour que la République Démocratique du Congo puisse commencer à penser à son développement durable. Il analyse les programmes jadis promus par les politiques et constate, malheureusement, que tous ont eu des résultats plutôt timorés. L’article argumente que ces échecs du passé récent sont intimement liés a...

The chapter describes a survey of large mammals in the Lake Tumba landscape that focused on forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis). The survey used both line transect sampling and forest reconnaissance to collect data on elephant dung piles in three major forest blocks of the Lake Tumba Landscape (Malebo region, Ngiri Triangle and Bolombo—Losombo). T...

Data were collected using both line transect and presence–absence methods were compared with a control known density to assess the accuracy of bonobo densities each of them produces. The line transect method provided a varied density estimate of the range = 0.24–3.4 individuals km⁻² whereas the density estimated by presence–absence data was 1.26 in...

The most important issue identified by communities was that of land ownership. The chapter discusses the understanding by communities of land, land ownership, and land rights. Using a participative land need assessment, the study identified agroforestry lands, hunting lands, fishing basins, utilitarian conservation areas, and culturally access-proh...

The chapter builds a case for the novelty and the appropriateness of biodiversity conservation landscape in Central Africa. It departs from the foundational definition of conservation in Central Africa that has been, for years, essentially concentrated on protected areas, which were legally spatial entities locked away from human activities and del...

The chapter is about the conflict between preserving biodiversity and fulfilling the basic human needs of local communities residing within and near protected areas. The chapter argues that local human communities should be allowed to exploit resources within and near protected areas even if that exploitation by human local communities is harmful t...

Lions (Panthera leo) have disappeared in large portions of their African range, which historically covered most of the countries. Yet, the species population has never been comprehensibly assessed in Central African though distribution maps indicate lions occur therein fragmentally. The lions of the Bateké Plateaus were absent from scientific recor...

Biodiversity conservation landscape emerged in a legal vacuum because it embraced countries with different juridical history and traditions. Formerly French colonized countries (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo Brazzaville, and Gabon) inherited the same juridical history and practices from France but they evolved in different paths on biod...

Reported effects of Ebola on western lowland gorillas in the last years of the Twentieth Century brought the underestimated threat that infectious diseases pose to wildlife to the forefront of the international conservation community. Human-borne parasites have since been acknowledged to threaten different species of wildlife and particularly Afric...

Questions around the viability of protected areas and conservation landscapes evolve around their financial sustainability. Hence, the chapter addresses this question for the Lake Tumba Landscape via conducting a thorough assessment of its ecotourism potential, which was identified as the most possible and viable independent source of financial rev...

This chapter presents a tool-kit of a planning process for priority conservation areas. While it is heavily based on the context of the Lake Tumba Landscape, it embraces broader and general principles of planning for conservation in multiple-use areas. These principles include conducting a situational appraisal (geography and the biological diversi...

Preserving the World’s biodiversity is part of that ecological disquietedness, and worries to preserve the world’s biodiversity are one the most stringent narratives of the modern global society. However, the general narrative to preserve biodiversity is often hotly debated; it opposes preservationists against conservationists in a publicly obscure...

Creating new protected areas is a contentious issue because the impact of protected areas on humans is thought to be negative. However, with the alarming declines in biodiversity and the diminishing soil fertility, everyone recognizes that protected areas are the backbones of biodiversity conservation and they are the most viable option to preserve...

The chapter’s aim is to identify different strategies that are implemented in Africa and elsewhere to ensure better protection of protected areas newly created within the Lake Tumba Landscape and to find the most realistic approaches to ensure effective law enforcement, taking into account its social, economic, cultural, and historical contexts. Tw...

This chapter deals with the history of the biodiversity conservation landscape in Central Africa. Principally, it covers the background information on both political and biological practicalities of the landscape as a vision, while comparing them with traditional biological methods that defined such concepts as hotspots of biodiversity. Processes-w...

Freshwaters of Democratic Republic of Congo are poorly studied because of different factors, including the geographic spread of the country, lack of expertise, and financial resources to invest in research. As a review of the current conservation status of the freshwaters of the Lake Tumba Landscape, the chapter did not provide details of species,...

Data were collected for a period of 38 weeks (9.5 months) covering both rainy and dry seasons to identify diurnal primate species, document group compositions, and to estimate both encounter rates δ and densities \(\overline{\varpi }\) at Malebo region. Three species were observed in six groups: De Brazza’s monkey, Mona monkey, and red tail monkey...

Direct observations were used and checked with species described in several ornithological field guides, albeit with only one specifically focused on the Democratic Republic of Congo. The field observation documented 97 bird species belonging to 31 families in North Lake Tumba Landscape (Lake Tumba, the Ubangi River and Ngiri River) and 54 species...

The chapter describes an 8-month survey of large mammals in the Lake Tumba landscape with the focus on the Bonobo (Pan paniscus). After an epic walk of about 86 km in straight lines (transects) and 324 km of forest reconnaissance, research teams documented the distribution and estimated the abundance of bonobos. Five separate bonobo groups were loc...

Need in knowledge was and is still immense for the Lake Tumba Landscape. Collecting data to document the biodiversity of and the role of humans in shaping the Lake Tumba Landscape was essential before embarking on any conservation activity. Beyond these primary questions and gross-resolution preliminary studies, however, ecological functions and co...

Bonobos and chimpanzees diverged three million years ago, a period during which the world went through major climatic changes due to glaciations in the south and north hemispheres. This phenomenon resulted in the aridification of the tropics, which shrank the tropical forests in Africa and left only pockets of forest refuges. The scientific consens...

The information on biodiversity and its distribution is of limited importance if levels of threats to which each biota and each species are exposed remained poorly quantified. However, determining the species conservation status remains difficult for conservation practitioners because of high technicalities of how to generate threat indexes for spe...

For landscapes to conserve and take care of needs of local communities, understanding the total local economy of the landscape is imperative. Hence, to know who is where and who has what stake in the landscape is so important. Equally important are the knowledge of types of natural assets present in the landscape and what asset contributes to fulfi...

Qualitative descriptions of different habitat types are an important part of ecological research. Hence, the chapter is a single-objective one and looks at the broad terrestrial habitat types and major water bodies of the Lake Tumba Landscape. As a qualitative examination, it is limited to forests and savannahs that are two major habitat types of t...

Documenting an important population of bonobos west of Lake Maindombe had critical implications for elucidating the biogeographical history of great apes, and for the conservation of bonobos. The chapter assesses the genetic diversity of the isolated western population of bonobos, and identified patterns of gene flow that have occurred between the...

The chapter describes a survey of large mammals in the Lake Tumba landscape with the focus on the chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) using straight lines (transects) and forest reconnaissance to document the species distribution and to estimate its abundance. Unfortunately, after the completion of the surveys, samples were insufficient to conduct a dens...

Climate change in Africa is manifesting itself in the distribution and quantities of freshwater which are becoming serious security issues. Central Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with its abundant water, is caught in the middle of strategies to curb future effects of droughts, water scarcity and flooding across Africa....

Protected areas have often been defined as the backbones of biodiversity conservation. However, legitimate demands formulated by countries for their economic development, growing human populations, forest fragmentations, and needs of local communities for sustainable livelihoods are also pressing demands on protected areas, stringently pressuring c...

L’article passe en revue les causes humaines du changement climatique et revoit les solutions qui sont proposées pour s’adapter aux conséquences de ce phénomène tout en essayant de l’arrêter. Ces solutions du cadre global de la réflexion sont revues et contextualisées dans le cas de la RD Congo. Il est proposé aux Congolais de réinventer le sens de...

Background. Lake Tumba with a surface area of 830 km2 is very humic (pH = 3.6–4.6). The fishery is important for the riparian population but there are concerns about overfishing. The objective of this study was to assess changes in the fish species composition by comparing the presently reported survey (2005–2010) with earlier studies carried out i...

The chapter discusses the linkages between biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Based on the three key principles of sustained extraction of natural resources based on scientific management, reduced wastage, and equity in redistribution of the yields, the chapter demonstrates that biodiversity conservation is part of the foundation...

The essay discusses how climate change will impact the possibilities of sustaining development on earth. Firstly, it presents the core ideas of what climate change and, secondly, what these ideas imply for sustainability and sustainable development. The essay conveys a simplified and ready-to-use message most of these hard-core scientific data tell...

Cet article donne une idée de pourquoi il y a tant de discussions autour du changement climatique et discute des raisons, des conséquences et quelques pistes pour aider le congolais à se préparer pour affronter ce défi dont l’ampleur exacte reste encore à cerner pour la République Démocratique du Congo. La modicité des connaissances disponibles à l...

This focus article presents the state of the West African rainforest (WARF), its role in atmospheric moisture transport to the Nile Basin, and the potential impact of its deforestation on the Nile Basin's water regime, as well as options for improving transboundary water governance. The Nile is the longest river in the world, but delivers less wate...

Ce livre est pédagogique dans son ambition ultime et présente la science comme profession et œuvre humaine. L’auteur parle d’une manière simple et claire aux jeunes, particulièrement africains, intéressés à faire de la recherche scientifique leur carrière. En essayant d’insérer la pratique de la recherche dans le cadre plus large du travail humain,...

Rainfall time series data from three sites (Kinshasa, Luki, and Mabali) in the western Democratic Republic of Congo were analyzed using regression analysis; rainfall intensities decreased in all three sites. The Congo Basin waters will follow the equation y = -20894x + 5483.16; R2 = 0.7945. The model suggests 18%-loss of the Congo Basin water volum...

This paper is a re-assessment of anthropological methods and frames broad epistemological questions on knowledge production and distribution. Sampling published materials, it argues that the fundamental question African scholarship faces in the African Studies is the recourse to an outdated epistemology of comparative methods meant to serve the wes...

Rainfall time series data from three sites (Kinshasa, Luki, and Mabali) in the western Democratic Republic of Congo were analyzed using regression analysis; rainfall intensities decreased in all three sites. The Congo Basin waters will follow the equation y = -20894x + 5483.16; R2 = 0.7945. The model suggests 18%-loss of the Congo Basin water volum...

There are currently four known primate T-cell lymphotropic virus groups (PTLV1-4), each of which comprises closely related simian (STLV) and human (HTLV) viruses. For PTLV-1 and PTLV-3, simian and human viruses are interspersed, suggesting multiple cross-species transmission events; however, for PTLV-2 this is not so clear because HTLV-2 and STLV-2...

Many people believe that using the traditional knowledge to help communities adapt to the effects of climate change should be one of the pillars of dealing with climate change particularly in helping them adapt. This note argues that traditional knowledge is no longer relevant for such task given the changes in space occupancy patterns consequent t...

The description and differentiation of habitat types is a major concern in ecology. This study examined relationships between bonobo (Pan paniscus) nesting patterns and forest structure in the Lake Tumba Swampy Forests. Data on presence of fresh bonobo nests, canopy cover, canopy structure, tree densities and tree basal areas were collected systema...

For good reasons, trade has been promoted as the way to alleviate poverty, the argument being that many decades of aid have not ended poverty in many part of the world. Yet, it is becoming apparent that in order for trade to accomplish what it is expected of it, trade needs aid to bring certain groups of people at the thresholds of viability and su...

The description and differentiation of habitat types is a major concern in ecology. This study examined relationships between Bonobo Pan paniscus nesting patterns and forest structure in the Lake Tumba Swampy Forests. Data on presence of fresh Bonobo nests, canopy cover, canopy structure, tree densities and tree basal areas were collected systemati...

Ce rapport d’activités est un document présentant les résultats préliminaires d’une étude menée dans le cadre l’Organisation des Unies pour l’Education, la Science et la Culture (UNESCO) dans sa branche Man and Biosphere (MAB) qui, venant en appui au Projet de Survie pour les Grands Singes (GRASP) ont déboursé de l’argent pour soutenir les recherch...

Dans le cadre du renforcement des capacités des agents de l′ Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) en Système de Gestion de l’Information des Aires Protégées (SYGIAP), il a été organisé sur financement de l’Union Européenne (UE) une session de formation conduite par la Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) et d’autres partenaire...

An aerial reconnaissance of the southern (rhino) sector of Garamba National Park was undertaken between August 14th and 24th 2005 at the request of the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature. The survey was funded and executed by the European Union with technical input from ICCN, ACF and WWF-CARPO staff. Almost all of the park’s wildl...

This document describes the limits of the Ngiri-Tumba-Maindombe Ramsar Site, which was classified in 2008; it provides reasons why this massive freshwater and swampy area has been selected to become the World's largest Ramsar site.

The history of biodiversity conservation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) runs in parallel with the story of alienation of land and natural resources which began in early colonial times. There is a legacy of undemocratic laws promulgated in the time of Leopold II that still govern land rights and the conservation of biodiversity. Numerous...

Introduction The Lake Tumba-Landscape in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the largest mass of swamp and flooded forest area in Africa. The soils are extremely poor, and rich in humic acids giving the waters an acid and chemically impoverished character. The second largest lake in the area is the blackwater Lake Tumba (765 km 2) situated close to...

Data on crop damage and crop raiding were collected from Malebo Region to document patterns of human– elephant conflict. Using interviews, field visits and market surveys, we found that raided fields had a mean size of 320 m2 (75–600 m2), 16.6% of which were intersected by permanent elephant trails leading to permanent water points. The most damage...

Plasmodium vivax is the leading cause of human malaria in Asia and Latin America but is absent from most of central Africa due to the near fixation of a mutation that inhibits the expression of its receptor, the Duffy antigen, on human erythrocytes. The emergence of this protective allele is not understood because P. vivax is believed to have origi...

Les grands singes d’Afrique sont les réservoirs du VIH et HTLV responsables d’épidémies et de pandémies. Cependant, chez les bonobos, un grand singe endémique de la RDC, peu de données sont disponibles sur les infections rétrovirales. Cette étude vise à caractériser les rétrovirus simiens de bonobos sauvages en RDC, pays où l'épidémie de VIH a comm...

The forest and savannah elephants of Africa are now thought to have diverged about five million years ago, at about the same time as the divergence of Asian elephants and woolly mammoths. Recent research has demonstrated that, in the absence of forest elephants, the African tropical forest ecosystem alters in structure, diversity, and composition....

Plasmodium vivax is the leading cause of human malaria in Asia and Latin America but is absent from most of central Africa due to the near fixation of a mutation that inhibits the expression of its receptor, the Duffy antigen, on human erythrocytes. The emergence of this protective allele is not understood because P. vivax is believed to have origi...

Data on crop damage and crop raiding were collected from Malebo Region to document patterns of human–elephant conflict. Using interviews, field visits and market surveys, we found that raided fields had a mean size of 320 m 2 (75–600 m 2 ), 16.6% of which were intersected by permanent elephant trails leading to permanent water points. The most dama...

ABSTRACT Habitat loss and hunting threaten bonobos (Pan paniscus), Endangered (IUCN) great apes endemic to lowland rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Conservation planning requires a current, data-driven, rangewide map of probable bonobo distribution and an understanding of key attributes of areas used by bonobos. We present a rangewi...

Human induced habitat destruction and modifications cause losses of aquatic and terrestrial biodiversity. The Congo and its islands constitute special ecosystems and have been used by humans for many purposes over centuries. However, little is known about the effects of these human activities on the fish species richness and distribution. This stud...

Bonobos are the most recently discovered species of great ape, and are endemic to an area within a large convex bend of the Congo River, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In this chapter, we highlight issues related to the discovery for science of a significant population of bonobos to the west of their range (Inogwabini et al., 2007a, b),...

Fish stocks are declining at alarming rates in the Central African forests but little is known about patterns of fishing pressure for different areas. To contribute to the understanding of covariates that could explain these trends, this study documented the relative abundances of fish in eleven sites in the western Democratic Republic of Congo in...

Data on the ecology of forest elephant are difficult to find. Therefore studies of forest elephant ecology are needed to support the species management. With that perspective in mind, that data on forest understorey types and key plant species on which elephants feed were collected in Salonga (1996 – 2002) and Malebo (2006 – 2010), Democratic Repub...

The southern Lake Tumba landscape is one of the very few areas in the range of the bonobo distribution where the species occurs within distances easily accessible by human populations. It offers exceptional human-bonobo interactivity on which several ecological hypotheses have been tested. Ecological studies carried out in this area indicated that...

Abstract: During the period 1994 through 2007, three intermittent and discontinuous surveys were conducted which documented the presence or absence of Cercocebus chrysogaster (Golden-bellied Mangabey). The three surveys were performed within the forest block areas of: (1) the region including the southern sector of the Salonga National Park (SNP) t...

African forest elephants- taxonomically and functionally unique-are being poached at accelerating rates, but we lack range-wide information on the repercussions. Analysis of the largest survey dataset ever assembled for forest elephants (80 foot-surveys; covering 13,000 km; 91,600 person-days of fieldwork) revealed that population size declined by...

Analysis results for top-ranking predictive models (excluding hunter sign as an explanatory variable), which included (a) the Human Influence Index (HII), or (b) human population density and proximity to road (SPD). Details of the variables included in each model are given and percent deviance explained and UBRE score value. Estimated average eleph...

Estimates of percentage extremely low density elephant range across the Central African forests and by country (relative to each country’s forested area) for 2002 and 2011 for the top-ranking predictive models, which included the survey year variable. Elephants are assumed to be almost absent when dung density falls below a threshold value of 100 e...

Estimated conditional dependence of elephant dung density for top-ranking multi-variable models without hunter-sign used for prediction across the Central African forests, using the variables available across Central Africa either as GIS layers or in country-specific databases. Plots shown are for models with variables (A) survey year∧, Human Influ...

Estimated conditional dependence of elephant dung density considering survey year by country for a multi-variable models including hunter sign. Survey year by country focusing on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Gabon for the model with variables hunter sign*, survey year by country*, proximity to roads, human population density***, corru...

Estimated conditional dependence of elephant dung density for single variable models. Results are shown for (A) hunter sign***, (B) survey year**, (C) proximity to roads*, (D) human population density***, (E) Human Influence Index***, (F) official protection*** (higher values = less protected), (presence/absence of wildlife guards is a factor covar...

The number of survey sites per country by survey year. Results are shown for the 80 survey sites in Central Africa. (PDF)

Details of the 80 survey sites included in the analysis. (PDF)

Analysis results for top-ranking models which included the hunter sign variable. Hunter sign was not included in the predictive model across the Central African forests, as it was unavailable at that scale. (PDF)

Description of spatial variables, data source, method of calculation, likely influence on elephant density, UBRE score and deviance explained for the single variable models. (PDF)

Estimated forest cover by country as defined by Iremonger et al. (1997) [96]. (PDF)

Rickettsia felis is a common emerging pathogen detected in mosquitoes in sub-Saharan Africa. We hypothesized that, as with malaria, great apes may be exposed to the infectious bite of infected mosquitoes and release R. felis DNA in their feces. We conducted a study of 17 forest sites in Central Africa, testing 1,028 fecal samples from 313 chimpanze...

This study examined how outbreaks and the occurrence of Anthrax, Ebola, Monkeypox and Trypanosomiasis may differentially affect the distribution of bonobos (Pan paniscus). Using a combination of mapping, Jaccard overlapping coefficients and binary regressions, the study determined how each disease correlated with the extent of occurrence of, and th...

Quantitative and qualitative analyses of ecological factors conducted on the distribution of the bonobos of the Lake Tumba Landscape did not fully explain the actual distribution of bonobos in that part of their range. Hence, the aim of this paper was to study the human cultural landscape of the region to shed light on questions raised by different...