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logging.” However, just afterward, she posts a copy of the reserve legal documents, which, as they
are in French, most readers of her English-language blog will not understand. The proclamation
in fact states that in the reserve's zones that are dedicated to conservation, firearms, traps, hunt-
ing equipment, the exploitation of valuable materials and hunting are banned. The formulation is
standard for community-based reserves, allowing people areas for farming and hunting animals
that are not endangered or legally protected, and others strictly for conservation.
The full text of the proclamation can be seen at “second page of Sankuru Reserve statute,”
Flickr, July 29, 2008,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/teresehart/2715289566/
. It forbids the follow-
ing:
1. to introduce any kind of animal or plant, firearms, traps or all hunting equipment, to cap-
ture or transport living or dead wild animals, skins or trophies, their meat or all other
byproducts of the fauna;
2. to chase, to hunt, to capture, to destroy, to frighten or to trouble in any way all types of
wild animals, even those thought to be harmful, except in the case of legitimate defense;
3. to exploit valuable material or to carry out all activities likely to alter the animals' habitats
or the natural character of the reserve.
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While community reserves allow
I contacted Pierre Kakule, director of the Tayna Gorilla
Reserve and the Tayna Centre for Conservation Biology, who defended André's character and
work. I also met with Lambert Mende, who represented the Sankuru region and was the DRC's
presidential spokesman.
“André,” Mende told me, “is the only person who brought us a real project. He's the only one
who follows that project daily. He's in the villages. He explains. He speaks to the people. And I
support him entirely. So who in the forest doesn't support him? Who is it? . . . There is serious
environmental deterioration. We saw how the nature was being destroyed by the local populations,
and André is the first person who brought us a clear project, who told us how we can stop this de-
terioration. Here's how we can lead people to have a different view of nature, to tell them that the
forests aren't inexhaustible. We have to turn toward other sources. . . . We need to use the people
to protect their own environment and give them reasons and explain what they can do so that they
won't die of hunger while protecting their environment. These notions, we didn't have them. He
was the first person who talked to us about them.”
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Hart presents one other
Hart references Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem,
Histoire Générale du
Congo: De l'Héritage Ancien à la République Démocratique
(Paris and Brussels: De Boeck and
Larcier s.a., 1998), 955.
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“
I remember when André
. . .”
Everyone I interviewed insisted the Harts would have known
that BCI and ACOPRIK had already been working in that region, and had nonetheless started their
project without mentioning it to them or offering to collaborate. Furthermore, a 2007 grant pro-
posal by the Harts emphasizes the uncertainty regarding which parts of that area might comprise
bonobo habitat. BCI advisor John Scherlis told me, “ACOPRIK and BCI were involved in this
before TL2 (the Hart's future park, named for the area's rivers). They were actually unaware of
Terese and John's program in the TL2 area, whereas I believe that John and Terese would have
been very aware of what was going on at Sankuru.”
Grant application to U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Great Ape Conservation Fund for project
entitled “A New Conservation Landscape for Bonobo: Discovery and Conservation of the
Tshuapa-Lomami-Lualaba Landscape, Democratic Republic of Congo,” submitted by Terese Hart
(project manager) and Jo Thompson (grant administrator), dated July 20, 2007, signed by Jo
Thompson, Executive Director, Lukuru Wildlife Research Foundation.
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And yet the idea that
For instance, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), in one of its re-
ports, writes the following:
