Critical time for African rainforests

Abstract

KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO (DRC)--From a workshop behind her house, botanist Terese Hart can glimpse log-filled barges churning down the Congo River toward a nearby sawmill. Such traffic had come to a virtual standstill during the nation's civil conflicts, but now, she says, the "lights are blazing at night" as massive logs from the forests of Bandundu and Équateur provinces are fed, around the clock, into the jaws of giant saws.