The high points and low points of the project are google-mapped. Nick January took the coordinates and pasted the posts into place, linked back to each event. We slipped the map into its own tab.
Take a look and let us know what is missing.
Pygmies do not now live independently in the Ituri Forest, but did they sometime in the past? For the last few centuries they have lived in a complex reciprocity with agriculturalists. The Mbuti pygmies provide meat, various forest products and other services in exchange for manioc flour, bananas, tubers and rice. No forests in Congo have Pygmies living as hunter-gatherers without a regular source of outside agricultural food. But maybe once they did?
In the 1970s John lived in the southern Ituri forest and discovered just how important farm food was in the diet of the Mbuti. Eight years later we returned to the central Ituri Forest, as a family, to do the research for our PhDs. Over those 2 ½ years we examined the forest’s own ability to provide the calories needed to maintain a group of hunter gathers. Could the forest do it? Or was agriculture a pre-requisite for forest people?
John weighing a baby duiker in 1981 “assisted” by our eldest daughter, Sarah, then three years old.
Here are some of the wild survival options we looked at:
BUSHMEAT:
Meat is currently the Mbuti’s most regularly acquired forest food. This bushmeat is mainly traded for agricultural starch. Could the meat, in and of itself, be the main caloric as well as the main protein component of Mbuti diet?
Mbuti pygmies on a net hunt in the central Ituri Forest carrying their nets between casts.
Cultures that rely on animals for calories hunt animals with fat-rich bodies. In the 1920s a study found that 75% of Inuit energy intake was from fat (walrus, polar bear, whale…). If only meat low in fats is available, protein must be metabolized for energy. This is inefficient and puts a physiological strain on the body.
In the early 1980s we followed net-hunters in the central Ituri Forest. We stayed 5-10 days each at 8 different camps located 6-30 miles from the village of Epulu. We followed all hunts and recorded all animals caught.
One of the measurements we took was an index of antelope body fat as % of kidney covered with fat. If a carcass had more than 20g of mesentery fat, the hunter would strip it and roast it over a fire. That was rare. It occurred only during the years of high seed fall when the forest floor is briefly covered with seeds shed by the forest’s dominant trees. Results: Only one dry season did kidney fat ratio average over 40% and then only briefly, by the beginning of the wet season and for the rest of the year the average was under 15%.
Mbuti have a name for protein hunger, ekbelu, separate from calorie hunger, njala. They won’t stay in the forest camps with njala no matter how many animals are being caught on the hunt.
In 1983, Sarah with our second daughter, Rebekah, in a hunting camp north of Epulu.
GATHERED PLANT FOODS:
There are a number of wild food plants with high calorie content that the Mbuti always collect when they find them.
Major “staple” plant foods gathered by the Mbuti in the central Ituri forest.
The wild plant foods above compare very favorably to agricultural foods with respect to energy available as fats or carbohydrates and some are high in protein as well. None of them however are dependable in terms of availability. They are either:
1. rare and/or
2. seasonal.
There are at least five months, even during the years of most abundant fruiting , when there are essentially no seeds available. Some years there is little fruiting at all. Yams are less seasonal but tend to be small in the Ituri and are only clumped in relatively rare environments.
Mbau is the only food tree that is not rare in mature forest. They are the dominant tree in forests that cover sometimes many tens of square kilometers (link). When one flowers they usually all flower, and during the fruiting season the forest floor is littered with the starchy seeds. However the season of plenty does not happen every year and even when it does it only lasts two months, at most three. And, alas that season of plenty coincides with the ripening of other fruits and seeds and is not a bridge over a period of dearth.
Secondary forests, where a garden existed from 10 to 50 years earlier, are the habitats favored by most wild food plants. Without agricultural disturbance, these trees would be much rarer in the interior of the forest being restricted to the deciduous edges of the forests and more open hill forests.
OTHER WILD FOREST FOODS:
Mbuti rarely move camp to be near wild food plants. There are, however, two wild foods that will cause Mbuti to move from their hunting camps or village camps for periods of days, even weeks at a time. These are honey and termites. Again these are unreliable from year to year. In the Ituri we only ate termites in one out of three years. Although honey is more reliable, years of truly abundant honey are not common.
Mbuti smoking out bees to take honey from a hive relatively near the ground. Usually this process happens high in the canopy.
Seasonality of non-bushmeat forest foods in a year of plenty.
Even in the best years, the Ituri Forest has at least five months of carbohydrate scarcity. Could the Mbuti live permanently within the closed forest before partnering with agriculturalists? Why would they? The easiest scenario to imagine is that the Mbuti lived on the edges of the rainforest, along the savanna margin or in deciduous forest. Many of the food plants are more abundant here and they would have had the option of moving in and out of deeper forest in response to availability of termites, honey or mbau seeds.
In the 21st century the pygmy net-hunt has become a major source of bushmeat leaking out of the Okapi Reserve in Congo’s northeast Ituri Forest. The Mbuti pygmies are ineluctably depleting the Reserve’s animal resources, their only resources, by hunting deeper and deeper into the forest. Outside traders pack their wares deep into forest hunting camps, to come out as quickly as possible with loads of antelope carcasses they will sell at a phenomenal mark-up to the expanding markets both in the village of Epulu and in distant towns.
Is this new? Perhaps new in the Okapi Reserve, but John reported a similar commercialization of the net-hunt between 1973 and 1976 in the southern Ituri Forest. Fresh out of college, John spent two and a half years living with three different bands of Mbuti Pygmies. Later, 1979, he wrote up his observations as a Master’s Thesis.
John’s passport picture, 1970s, from the period he studied Mbuti hunting economy in the southern Ituri Forest.
Why did John do this? :
Like many college undergraduates in the early ‘70s he was charmed by Colin Turnbull’s romantic anthropology “The Forest People” (Simon and Schuster, 1962). The image was appealing: the Mbuti pygmies living in material simplicity whose daily security was guaranteed by intimate familiarity with a generous forest home. What was glaringly absent from Turnbull’s depiction of Mbuti life was any biological or economic analysis.
John was granted a Watson fellowship – 6,000 USD – to learn the economic-ecology of Mbuti culture in the Ituri Forest. He made the grant last two and a half years, covering his food, clothes and all his transportation. His largest purchase was a one-speed bicycle for occasional trips to larger towns. His second largest purchase was a kerosene lantern, so he could write notes late into the tropical darkness.
His methods:
John lived alone in the camps of three different Mbuti bands, each of which hunted different, but contiguous stretches of forest. He maintained continuous residence in the camps for periods of three to five weeks with only brief village breaks in between. His research tools were a tape recorder, a camera and hand-held spring-scales for weighing the fresh catch on net hunts and for weighing any garden food the Mbuti received in trade for bushmeat.
John spoke Kingwana, a version of Swahili used throughout eastern Congo and used by Mbuti as well, although he also learned to understand the more localized languages of Kibira and Kipakombe.
The question John started with:
1. Was it really possible for the forest to support an Mbuti culture living in isolation from agricultural villages ? This was Turnbull’s ideal.
A question John added once in the Ituri :
2. How able was the forest to support the high bushmeat demand coming from towns in the east? Meat-traders were an emerging reality.
At the Kugongea, or the opening fire at the start of the net-hunt where all the men, women and children gather who will take part in the hunt. Photo from John’s 1970s collection.
John found a traditional interdependence between Mbuti and forest bantu.
In the southeastern Ituri forest John found bantu populations for whom the forest is ancestral home. Among these groups, the Bira and Pakombe have been associated with pygmy populations for many generations, for as far back as their oral histories reach.
There are family level relationships between individual Bantu farmers and individual Mbuti hunters. These bantu, known as bakbala (mkbala = singular), provide their Mbuti “partner” with agricultural starches (cassava, plantains, yams) from their gardens. Mbuti provide their bakbala with wild meat from the forest. The bakbala are also the source of tools and clothing for the Mbuti who, for their part, diversify forest products for the bakbala including mushrooms, fish, and honey. They also provide intermittent day labor for the village gardens.
Mbuti woman with mushrooms she has brought to our house (1980s).
John’s description of this pygmy- bakbala traditional relationship:
1/ Reciprocity is not necessarily immediate. John recorded periods where a mkbala provided his Mbuti with starch on many successive days with no meat in return. This was possible as the relationship was long-standing with confidence on both sides that each would support the other. The Mbuti would eventually provide forest products. The relationship was personal, and based not only on the needs of the other but also based on current availability. When there was meat, the mkbala would be recompensed.
2/ Relationship is one on one. A mkbala has a relationship with a particular Mbuti who then shares garden starch acquired with other members of his enlarged family and band. Likewise, a mkbala receives meat from “his” Mbuti which he will, in turn, share with his immediate relatives and neighbors.
John made a couple other noteworthy discoveries about the kbala relationship:
• The net hunt, the spear, and all iron tools had their origin with the Bantu. Before interacting with Bantu, the Mbuti must have hunted with poison tip arrows and smoked animals out of holes. There would not have been the possibility for large meat surpluses. (this was more than five centuries ago)
• Although there are Bantu ethnic groups living in the forest without relationships with Mbuti; there were no Mbuti living as forest hunters without bakbala relationships. The forest does not provide adequate starch. Wild yams and Mbau nuts are the biggest wild sources of starch, but yams are not abundant and have a very limited distribution whereas Mbau nuts are available only briefly with unpredictable seasonality.
• Historically Mbuti have provided other services for bakbala. In the 19th and early 20th century they hunted elephants when the bakbala were being pressured by Arab merchants and later by Belgian colonists for this commodity. Even earlier the Mbuti were the guerilla warriors essential in the wars between different ethnic groups.
John also found a new commercialization of the net-hunt:
From 1973 to 1975 meat traders became an increasingly prominent part of the Mbuti economy in the southeastern Ituri. These traders from distant towns packed full loads of merchandise directly into hunting camps where they replaced them as quickly as possible with full loads of smoked bushmeat they packed back to the markets. The merchandise they brought was most frequently rice or cassava flour, sometimes liquour, sometimes trinkets.
One of the three bands of pygmies traded almost exclusively with meat traders or bachuuzi. They also hunted the most distant forest.
Woman wearing traditional Kange “paint”, flowers and twigs along with a trinket available from bachuuzi.
John’s description of the bachuuzi (trader)-pygmy relationship:
1/ The bachuuzi went to the most distant, animal rich camps. They traded exclusively for immediate return and left with their meat as soon as they ran out of trade items. Smoked meat begins to lose market value after a couple weeks so rapid trade was important.
2/Relationships with traders were ephemeral. There was no reciprocity, no willingness to make a loan. The bachuuzi’s goal was immediate profit and return on loans was far too uncertain to be practical.
John made a couple associated observations about the commercialized net hunt:
• Meat trade is exploitative. The value of the meat relative to the value of the starch decreased according to Bachuuzi trading standards. Several spot checks John made in the big markets around the forest showed that meat was running at five to ten times the amount paid by bachuuzi in the forest.
The “prices” meat traders would pay for bushmeat were far inferior (1/3) to what the bakbala would give for the same amount. The Mbuti “allowed” this exploitation for the convenience of having the agricultural food brought directly to their hunting camp.
• The commercial net hunt is depleting wild game resources. Over the study period there was decreasing hunting success and the Mbuti had to hunt longer hours and extend their hunting area into ever more remote forest, forest that would have previously been a refuge for animals.
For his two original questions , John found the following answers:
1/ The Mbuti do not live independently in the Ituri Forest . Agricultural starch is an important and regular part of their diet. It is indeed unlikely that Mbuti live exclusively as hunter-gatherers anywhere in the Congo as we have since found that the Ituri was among the richer forests.
2/ Sustainable net-hunting cannot fulfill the bushmeat demands of surrounding towns. The Mbuti with commercial traders are continuously moving into more remote unhunted forest.
Indeed the pattern in the southeastern forest of thirty-five years ago is very like the situation today in the Okapi Reserve. What would be interesting would be to know what has happened to the descendents of these three bands of Mbuti today. We will try to get this information and post it sometime during the next six months.
The disaster:
On 24 November, 2009, a Kenya-bound truck with two trailers carrying illegal wood from the Ituri Forest broke through the one lane bridge crossing the east branch of the Epulu River, at the Okapi Reserve headquarters. Vehicle traffic was forced to halt. Stalled vehicles and passengers in transit accumulated along the road and camped in the village of Epulu.
In the days that followed, local dugouts were put into service to ferry travelers across the river. A couple weeks later larger rafts started to transport small vehicles. But big trucks with loads of passengers and merchandise adopted a new rhythm that included a long layover at the very center of the Okapi Reserve.
Transporting merchandise, carton by carton, from a truck on the east of the Epulu River to a truck on the west side. Photo by Conrad Aveling.
That problem has been resolved in record time. The governor of Orientale Province and the Roads Department acted with unprecedented speed. Today (20 December 2009) the ribbon was cut on a new bridge. A tremendous crisis was lessened –not resolved – but lessened. The bridge collapse created a disastrous gash in the Reserve’s defenses and a boom in the bushmeat trade. Now with the new bridge in place bushmeat still bleeds from the Reserve as from a wound that refuses to heal.
The new bridge is opened on the 20th of December 2009. Photo from the head warden, C.C. Mapilanga.
Background to the bushmeat boom:
Bushmeat hunting is part of the traditional way of life for Ituri’s mbuti pygmies. The Reserve was created in part to protect this tradition. Nevertheless, there has been a slow commercialization of hunting that was greatly accelerated by the recent war when domestic meat production dried up and conflict sent many refugees up against the forest. In the Ituri bushmeat was traditionally for the mbuti pygmies and local villagers, but it became a commercial trade item for export to surrounding markets. There were no regulations in place that could control this.
Pygmy hunting was self regulated when we (John and Terese Hart) were doing our PhD research in the Ituri in the 1980s. At that time we could not convince mbuti to stay in the distant forest for more than very short periods because of “hunger” despite the fact that animals were more abundant farther from the village. Although mbuti will live in hunting camps for weeks at a time, their diet is always supplemented by rice and manioc from villagers’ gardens. In the 1980s mbuti women carried out bushmeat in the morning and brought back the basic starch staples in the evening. If the camp was too far in the forest, it required a longer walk with a heavy load, an overnight in the village and a long walk back to camp with an even heavier load the next day. This put hunger strains on the camp, and complicated the mbutis’ mutual help systems which work most smoothly when the work load is lighter.
A red duiker being butchered on an mbuti net-hunt in the Ituri Forest, north of Epulu village. Photo by Kim Gjerstad.
This self-regulated system changed with commercialization. Now mbuti hunting camps are farther and farther in the forest. Village meat merchants carry out the staple foods, along with alcohol and small trinkets. They “buy” at minimal cost to sell at maximum profit. The result: mbuti continue to live from day to day although capturing more animals in more remote forest.
The impact of the growing hunting pressure, even before the bridge collapse, was evident in the results of wildlife surveys conducted in 1995 and 2006. Both surveys used identical methods and sampled the same sites. The results show major declines in population indices for all the species of hunted duikers (antelope). Declines ranged from 26 percent for the common blue duiker, the most common and frequently killed species, to 42 percent for the rarer, but highly prized red duikers (4 species) and 59 percent for the even larger yellow-backed duiker. Populations of all species declined overall, but the decline in the most remote uninhabited central reserve is highly disturbing. This can only be attributed to an increase in hunting pressure in these remote areas.
Over ten years antelope densities plummeted in the Okapi Reserve. On the left 1995 results, on the right 2006 results. Black is highest density and light gray is lowest density. The top two figures are small antelope, the middle two are the larger red antelope and the bottom two are the largest yellow-backed antelope. Epulu village is site of bridge collapse. [field work led by John Hart, maps by Rene Beyers]
Why the bridge collapse created a bushmeat boom:
Suddenly a new big market of stranded travelers on Route-Ituri sprang up right at the end of the foot paths out of the forest. Not only did they eat bushmeat but they bought enough to carry on to their destination.
Why the Okapi Reserve is still bleeding:
Now the brief boom market is gone, but commercial bushmeat traders will continue to follow mbuti hunters into the forest, they will continue to carry out loads of bushmeat, and that bushmeat will continue to feed an ever-growing market.
Is there a solution? :
The warden of the reserve calls for more help to return the Reserve to its original intent: an area where traditional hunting is allowed but no commercial hunting is permitted and where there is no hunting at all in a large central part of the reserve (”protection integrale” on the maps above). The warden suggests a provincial decree to establish a no-hunting season in the Reserve. He asks for collaboration of the national security services to enforce the decree.
We ask the governor, whose rapid action to repair the bridge has solved an immediate crisis, to now help solve the chronic underlying lesion. If government authorities put the law and law enforcement facilities in the service of conservation, there would be radical improvement.
The Congo is second home since 1974 when I came as Peace Corps teacher to what was then Zaire. It was here that John and I decided to marry, and it was here that two of our three daughters were born. We finished our educations – John with a doctorate in wildlife ecology and mine in plant ecology – then back to Congo and full-time working with Congolese for conservation of their last wildlife-rich forests.
teresehart AT gmail DOT com
Terese is…
...otherwise known as mamaT and still in Kinshasa preparing the bonobo round table and the Abraham ceremony.
...John is in Kindu and has been there more than four weeks. He has dispersed the team leaders through Maniema. Dino is already in Orientale. John will stay behind in Kindu a few more days helping to set up the teams for participatory delimitation of the provincial protected area. YEAH.
...We now have a tab for maps. Our first map is of posts and places from which we have reported. It's great, thanks, Nick.
Soon afterwards US Fish and Wildlife Service joined Arcus and Abraham to allow us to stay in the field for nearly two years.
Other groups/people brought more capacity and sub-projects: Iowa Great Ape Trust (communication), Canadian Ape Alliance (training), Edith McBean (primate study areas).
We began year three with new and generous support from: the Arcus Foundation, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Wallace Global Fund, Abraham Foundation,
Edith McBean.
Part way into year three we were assured two more years of funding from DFID. This will give our bushmeat monitoring, hunting controls, and village to village campaign a tremendous boost.
A Happy New Year of 2010 as a new foundation, Woodtiger Fund, has pledged two years of support. We are now certain that in 2010 we will be able to move our campaign north into the Balanga chefferie and the Tutu valley.
How can you help? We accept private donations, no matter how small (or big) through a registered charity. Just as important: spread the message, link to us, talk about us, contact us! But donations DO matter, whatever amount they might be, they help and they encourage!
About Our Project
The three river basins of the Tshuapa, Lomami and Lualaba Rivers (TL2), Congo’s forest enigma, ascend through its geographic heart. We have answered our first question "Is Congo's own great ape, the bonobo, found in TL2?" Yes it is? And so is Congo's endemic rainforest giraffe, the okapi and the rare Congo peacock. But, now the challenge is to bring real protection to the forests before the bonobo and all other large animals are hunted out.
We make a great team:
John Hart, my husband, who has led exploration and inventory missions around Congo for the last 25 years, along with
Five expert team leaders, Dino Tshwa, Bernard Ikembelo, Maurice Emetshu, Crispin Kibambe, and Christian Urom.
All of us working closely with some 30-40 other staff, from dugout captain, to community project leader and from cooks to porters, all essential.
We’ve been in the field – Congo’s TL2 – since May 2007.
