Gabon

Gabon is a West African country with a small population-only one million people in an area as big as the state of Virginia. It was once 85 percent covered with pristine rainforest and had vast numbers of gorillas, chimpanzees and forest elephants.

I have spent many years taking trips, doing actions and gathering contacts to sensitize Gabon's authorities and conservationists about the need to preserve this country's environment. In order to better accomplish this task, I agreed to be an honorary consul. After nearly 20 years of efforts, backed by international conservation associations, not even one national park has been created in Gabon. So in 1992, with some friends, I identified and proposed protection for a very spectacular and pristine site, the Ipassa-Mingouli.

The Ipassa-Mingouli contains a million-year-old primary rainforest and a large uninhabited river, the Ivindo. Three extraordinary and practically unknown waterfalls protect this area from human destruction.

The Ipassa-Mingouli Project aims to enlarge a small UNESCO reserve, called the Ipassa, by including a more extensive and intact forest, called the Mingouli. Ours is both a sustainable development and conservation project. The goals are to protect the forest, to promote the welfare of the nearby population and to develop eco-tourism. We also aim to perform ecological and biomedical research with the aid of local traditional doctors. Iboga, a medicinal plant which only grows in Gabon, could be a primary focus of future research. It is now under study in the US and Europe. This plant may prove useful for treating alcoholism and tobacco and drug addictions.

The Ipassa-Mingouli has no resident population, and so, during our first visit, confident chimpanzees approached and confronted us. They had never seen humans before! The villages of local people are nearly 50-kilometers away from the core area and the Ivindo River. These people practice hunting and gathering in the forest near their villages, so they are not threatening the ecosystem.

Unfortunately some logging permits have already been issued within the area to the Rougier Group, France's biggest logging company. The local population completely backs the Ipassa-Mingouli Project, since they know that logging depletes their forest of animal and plant variety. Furthermore, the logging company offers them very few jobs.

We looked for allies to help protect the Ipassa-Mingouli, and a few years ago we got the World Conservation Union (IUCN) involved. It prepared a proposal and report on the Ipassa-Mingouli Project which interested Gabon's European Union delegation. These two organizations put pressure on Jacques Rougier, owner of the Rougier Group, to practice sustainable use of the area. In 1995, Rougier reluctantly signed a sustainability agreement. Thus our project seemed poised to get underway. Due to some difficulties between Gabon's government and the European Union, however, the initial phase of the project has been delayed.

Meanwhile Rougier, like a thief in the night, without informing either the European Union or the World Conservation Union, has roared ahead with heavy industrial logging. They began cutting right in the core conservation area.

Rougier's people are plundering the forest and massacring the animals. Since the workers are not given a stipend to provide for their food, they are forced to rely on poaching. In addition, many commercial poachers now roam into the core zone of the Mingouli forest, following logging roads opened by Rougier.

Early in 1997, after nearly two years of Rougier's massive tree slaughter, there was a serious outbreak of Ebola hemorragic fever that struck down many people living in the nearby villages. This usually fatal illness has dreadful symptoms well described in the movie and book The Hot Zone. Scientists such as Steven Morse of Rockefeller University believe that a main cause of Ebola epidemics is the disturbance of primary rainforests by logging. Logging roads open the way to poachers who hunt primates and sell their meat, and Ebola is transmitted to humans by contact with the meat or blood of infected primates.

Thus Rougier, in addition to plundering this beautiful pristine forest, also bears responsibility for the tragic deaths of 59 people in late 1996 and early 1997. If Ebola breaks through Gabon's fragile quarantine barriers, a "Jet Ebola Virus" could unleash a world epidemic.

I was informed that last summer three Italian activists performed a direct action against the Rougier Group. Keeping themselves hidden in the Mingouli forest, close to the logging company's bulldozers and chainsaws, they nail-spiked 152 trees that Rougier's officials had selected for logging.

The Ipassa-Mingouli needs more direct actions and it needs international pressure on the Rougier Group, on the Gabonese government and on the French government. Anyone willing to visit the Ipassa-Mingouli will be very welcome and useful. Those willing to write letters of protest will find a model of such a letter on our Web page at http://www.dna.it/ecowarriors Write to the President of Gabon at http://www.presidence-gabon.oleane.com/cgi-bin/mailto?lang=english. You can fax Jacques Rougier of the Rougier Group at (international phone code) 33-1-53772508.