Charity Report: TL2 – Bonobo in Congo

Second-quarter beneficiary TL2 – Bonobo in Congo gave us this report on how the funds they received from Foundation Beyond Belief will help them with their ongoing work. Foundation members donated $2,105 to TL2 last quarter.

Friends from the Foundation beyond Belief,

We have been working in the center of Congo in an area we call Tshuapa-Lomami-Lualaba (TL2) for the last three and a half years.  Our goal is to create a national park, but in a country like Congo, a law creating a park is not enough. If the people most closely connected to the land are not willing to work to make the park a reality, it will never be more than a paper park.

The TL2 area is too important for that. In the first years of exploration and inventory, we discovered a previously unknown species of monkey and a new important population of the great ape, the bonobo. 

What makes the conservation work urgent is the commercial meat trade that has emptied much of the forest of Congo. The bonobo is not spared and is sold in the markets with other totally protected species. Over the last year, we convinced the governor of the southern province of the TL2 area to declare a no hunting season. We monitored its effectiveness and held numerous workshops in villages as well as towns. Currently there is a lot of support in this province. A series of traditional ceremonies were even held in which all the concerned village chiefs expressed their support for delimitation of a park.

The northern part of the TL2 area has had much less attention. There are not only bonobo and the new species of monkey in the north, but also the only remaining elephant population of the central forests.  This area is also being hunted for market bushmeat. We plan to use the funds from Foundation Beyond Belief to help us hold our first popular meetings in the north of TL2.