|
|
Visit this ecoregion and you'll quickly discover why it's called a "forest-savanna mosaic." There's not just one type of habitat common in the region; instead, you'll find moist forest giving way to great stretches of savanna and grassland. This habitat variability is a result of the region's large climatic fluctuations over the last 10 million years and of human activities--especially cultivation and burning. You'll find a number of animals inhabiting this forest-savanna mosaic, including bongos, bushbucks, and buffalos.
This ecoregion includes the southern central portion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the northwestern corner of Angola. It's part of the tropical savanna climate zone covering the southeastern part of the Congo Basin and gradually rising onto the Central African Plateau. Deep river valleys cut through the plateau. Small, lush forests called gallery forests grow along the waterways, while elsewhere the vegetation consists of a mix of lowland rain forest, dry forest, and secondary grassland. Among the many trees that grow in the region are false chewsticks, Senegal date palms, East African mahoganies, and African breadfruits. The fleshy fruit of African breadfruit trees is often fed to domestic livestock, and the nuts are roasted for human consumption. Other trees and shrubs in the region include acacias, wild custard apple trees, heart trees, and the pink jacaranda--a small tree with a rounded umbrella-like crown and pink blossoms. Elephants spend their days eating leaves from small trees, leaving denuded and toppled trees in their wake. This activity helps create grasslands in the region because large concentrations of toppled trees keep saplings from growing, and they fuel fires that burn back any trees that manage to sprout. Small populations of the critically endangered western black rhinoceros roam through parts of Cameroon and Chad. Bongos, defassa waterbucks, and roan antelopes are all present in small numbers after years of heavy hunting. The bushbuck’s secretive habits and preference for thick cover has enabled it to withstand the hunting onslaught better than most antelopes. Other large mammals in the region include southern reedbucks, oribi antelopes, buffalos, hippopotamuses, and blue, yellow-backed, and gray duikers. Brown and green Meyer’s parrots live in these savanna woodlands, and red-headed lovebirds can be found in pairs or in larger groups. Great blue turacos and small groups of the plucky Ross’ turaco may be found in the narrow strips of gallery forest that thread their way through the wooded grasslands, while the African emerald cuckoo inhabits savannas because of their thick vegetation. The brown Kasai reed frog and the spotted Tshimbulu reed frog are also found in this ecoregion.
People have modified the vegetation here since pre-agricultural times, setting fires to help catch prey. When agriculture first started, people shifted their crops from site to site, giving vegetation a chance to recover. Today, large-scale clearings for agriculture, urban development, logging, and mining create conditions in which many trees can no longer regenerate. Antelope populations have been severely affected by hunting for "bushmeat." Poaching, soil erosion and water pollution are also threats, while conflicts between elephants and subsistence farmers threaten elephant populations. For more information on this ecoregion, go to the World Wildlife Fund Scientific Report. All text by World Wildlife Fund © 2001
|
More Photos
