Ituri Forest: The Congo Basin's Most Biodiverse Rainforest
The Ituri Forest east of Kisangani is one of the world's most biodiverse ecosystems — home to okapi, forest elephants, chimpanzees, and the Mbuti Pygmy people who have inhabited it for millennia
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Mbuti Pygmy Forest Culture
The Mbuti people of Ituri are the original inhabitants of the forest - their hunter-gatherer culture, polyphonic music (recorded by Colin Turnbull) and ecological knowledge are among humanity's oldest living traditions
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Okapi Reserve and Wildlife
The Okapi Wildlife Reserve protects the secretive okapi – the forest giraffe found only in the DRC's rainforest – alongside chimpanzees, forest elephants and extraordinary bird life
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Colin Turnbull's Ituri Research
Anthropologist Colin Turnbull lived with the Mbuti in the 1950s and wrote "The Forest People" — his account of the Mbuti culture and their relationship to the forest remains a landmark of humanistic anthropology
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Tracking forest elephants
Forest elephants in Ituri are smaller and more secretive than savannah elephants — tracking them through the dense understory with Mbuti guides is an experience of the forest's depths
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Ituri River System
The Ituri River, which flows into the Congo through dense forest, carries water from some of the least visited landscapes on earth – its fish fauna is among the least studied in Africa
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Night in Ituri
Sleeping in the Ituri forest - the sounds of the forest at night, the calls of tree hyrax and barn owls and the darkness under a closed canopy - is a profound encounter with equatorial wilderness