Revered by the Indigenous Mbuti and Efe tribes as a spiritual symbol and uplifted by the Democratic Republic of Congo as a national one, the okapi is deserving of a nickname as mystical as “forest unicorn.” The dark-colored ungulates are docile, elusive, and characterized by the zebra-like stripes on their legs and rump, though they’re most closely related to giraffes. Found in the DRC’s Ituri Forest, a part of the Congo Basin rainforest, they’re popular favorites at zoos around the world. But the okapi, for all its charm, is in more trouble today than it was a decade ago. For a peaceful creature, it’s surrounded by human violence that has put both the animal and the people who live near it in a state of ongoing turmoil. Illegal Chinese mines, poaching, deforestation, armed militia groups, and now a new market for so-called okapi oil have further imperiled what was already a threatened species. “We know what they need, and we know what harms them,” John Lukas, who founded the Okapi Wildlife Reserve and Okapi Conservation Project, told Mongabay. But there’s one major blind spot: “Nobody knows how many okapi there are.” Scientists estimate there are anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 okapi in the wild, but those estimates are about a decade old; Lukas says there are an estimated 3,000 in Okapi Wildlife Reserve alone. It’s near-impossible for people to safely survey the Ituri Forest for a more accurate population estimate. Instead, the nonprofit Okapi Wildlife Reserve and its partners are…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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