Gallery Forest

This photograph was taken in Bandundu, the Democratic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), where the tropical rain forest transitions into grassy savanna. The terrain is a patchwork of forest and grassland. The higher elevations of the hills have savanna that is cut abruptly, as if snipped by scissors, into the forest. All around, the hilltops look like the bare heads of tonsured priests.

The southernmost research study site of bonobos, at Lukuru, has a mosaic of forest and grassland similar to the above. Historically, bonobos may have extended south, even into the country of present day Angola, along forested river corridors, but there is no proof of this today.

Photo by D. Messinger