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234 Neither Albert Lokasola John Oates, in Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest , contests the notion
that “rural people will tend to be more protective of wildlife if they are given greater control over
it.” He describes the presumption of such people living harmoniously on ancestral land as “an al-
ternative romantic myth that has become even more pervasive than the myth of Africa as a primev-
al wilderness.” Oates, Myth and Reality in the Rain Forest , xii.
Others have pointed out that conservation theory can be wed with traditional practices for sus-
tainability. In Eating Apes , Dale Peterson writes:
Marcellin Agnagna, who grew up in a village called Kouyougandza in northern Congo,
informs me that thirty years ago, before European “development” arrived, village hunting
worked the old way. “Each village used to have a delimited area for survival activities pur-
poses: a piece of forest. No activity was allowed in the village forest without previous authoriz-
ation of the clan leader or the chief. Each village had a limited number of hunters and they used
to hunt for the entire community, not for themselves. When a hunter killed a big prey (buffalo,
sitatunga, or bushpig), he was supposed to give a leg or the head and neck to the village or clan
leader, a piece for each family, and the rest was for himself. He was allowed to sell part of his
extra meat, but he was more likely to exchange it for something he could not afford (such as
cassava, salt, soap, et cetera). There was no bushmeat trade. And as everyone was attached to
the tradition, the rules were respected—so the concept of 'sustainable use' is not new for the
forest people.” (64-65)
235 Later I read one Ian Redmond, “Where Are the Great Apes and Whose Job Is It to Save Them?”
in Caldecott and Miles, World Atlas of Great Apes and Their Conservation , 290.
The River
241 Over the years, I'd read note 1: In Au Soudan: Excursion dans l'Ouest Africain , Camille Habert
wrote, “Il n'y a pas de crépuscule dans les pays tropicaux, et que la nuit succède au jour presque
sans transition.” Habert, Au Soudan (Paris: Delagrave, 1898), 100, http://archive.org/stream/aus-
oudanexcursio00habe#page/n5/mode/2up .
note 2: Beryl Markham, West with the Night (New York: North Point Press, 1982), 45-46. The
topic was first published in 1942.
note 3: Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was first published in
1798.
243 The next day, as Sally The workshop with the DRC's government and Conservation Interna-
tional was part of a project that BCI initiated ten years ago and invested heavily in to start the first
conservation concessions in all of Central Africa. BCI attracted the attention of the World Bank
after having proposed conservation concessions in the DRC logging review, in which many log-
ging concessions were nullified for not qualifying. Before then, a significant portion (24-55 per-
cent) of the bonobo habitat was carved up into logging concessions. The World Bank contacted
BCI because they saw that BCI had put in a dossier. BCI contacted CI, which had invented and
first implemented (in Guyana) the conservation concession model. Sally presented the concept as
applied to the bonobo habitat at a meeting in Belgium about the DRC's forests (CONFOR DRC),
hosted by the King of Belgium. This led to BCI and CI deciding that CI would take the lead on the
conservation concessions, applying for the grant from the Congo Basin Forest Fund, newly created
by the UK and Norway, with the agreement that BCI would be the implementing partner. (Mehl-
man, P., Rice, D., Niesten, E., Coxe, S., Hurley, M., Scherlis, J. and F. Hawkins. 2008. A Pilot
Conservation Agreement: The Bonobo Conservation Concession Project Équateur, Democratic
Republic of Congo . Concept piece submitted by Conservation International to the Chatham House
Roundtable Review of Innovative Management and Financing Mechanisms for the Forests of the
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