Congo to protect great ape {bonobo} with rain forest reserve (AP/CNN)

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- Congo is setting aside more than 11,000 square miles of rain forest to help protect the endangered bonobo, a great ape that is the most closely related to humans and is found only in this Central African country.

U.S. agencies, conservation groups and the Congolese government have come together to set aside 11,803 square miles of tropical rain forest, the U.S.-based Bonobo Conservation Initiative said in a statement issued this week.

The area amounts to just over 1 percent of vast Congo -- but that means a park larger than the state of Massachusetts.

Environment Minister Didace Pembe said the area was denoted as a protected reserve last week as part of the administration's goal of setting aside 15 percent of its forest as protected area. The announcement increased the amount of protected land in Congo to 10 percent from 8 percent, he said.

The Sankuru Nature Reserve aims to protect a section of Africa's largest rain forest from the commercial bushmeat trade and from deforestation by industrial logging operations in the central part of the country known as the Congo Basin.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/11/20/congo.bonobosreserve.ap/index.html