Patrick Loko Backnick
The dense forests of the Congo Basin are considered a 'hotspot' of global biodiversity, due to their supposedly 'primary' character. Yet these forests remain among the most poorly understood in the world and, at the same time, among the most threatened. These threats affect not only the forests themselves and the species they contain, but also the indigenous societies (mainly Pygmies) and their traditional knowledge. Against this backdrop, we have set up a research project to gain a better understanding of human-forest relations and their consequences for plant biodiversity, on an ecosystem scale, in an area of dense semi-deciduous forest in the Central African Republic.
