Dominique Bikaba’s family was once displaced from vibrant rainforests in the Congo Basin to make way for a sweeping national park. Today, a conservationist who also champions the protection of endangered gorillas in these forests, Bikaba is embarking on a journey to conserve this ecosystem — in a way he says is more just. His organization has begun securing lands for communities and wildlife to create a 1-million-hectare (2.5-million-acre) corridor that spans the space between Kahuzi-Biega National Park and Itombwe Nature Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite the ongoing conflict between the DRC government and the M23 armed group in the east that has slowed down the project, the corridor is more than halfway toward its goal. “The corridor is about conserving a block of forest between the two protected areas, allowing species to move safely from one place to another,” Bikaba says. “It’s for restoring these landscapes and wildlife in the region, but also to promote the livelihoods of these communities. For that, there’s a process to legally secure these lands by the Congolese government through community forestry concessions.” Two people collecting geographic coordinates for the community forestry land Asu’u in the Basile Chiefdom in March 2020. Image courtesy of Strong Roots. The initiative has been well received by local authorities, who say it could connect the two sites not only geographically, but also in terms of biodiversity. “Species will be able to migrate from one point to another, and this connection will also enable the connection…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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