Before the Europeans arrived, the people of the Maringa-Lopori basin were yam and cassava farmers who traded with river fishermen and forest hunters. That world collapsed in 1885 when a force of Manyema fighters -- followers of Tippu Tip, the Swahili-Zanzibari slave trader -- arrived at the head of the Lopori River from Stanley Falls. They seized hostages from nearby villages and ransomed them for ivory. Within seven years, they had conscripted local people into their army and controlled the entire eastern half of the basin. The Belgian administrators of the Congo Free State saw a rival, not a moral crisis. In 1889, they enacted the Monopoly Act, claiming all products in the area for themselves, and began driving the slavers out -- not to liberate anyone, but to monopolize the extraction. By 1898, the Free State controlled the entire basin and had begun levying taxes, first in ivory, then in wild rubber.

In 1893, the concession to harvest rubber was granted to the Abir Congo Company, which set up headquarters at Basankusu, at the confluence of the Maringa and Lopori rivers. The location was strategic: from there, Abir could expand along both rivers and their tributaries, establishing posts staffed by agents paid largely on commission. The results were predictable and devastating. Agents used brutal methods to force villagers to meet their rubber quotas. The labor of collection left no time for farming, and malnutrition spread. Smallpox and sleeping sickness followed. To save time, harvesters began cutting down the rubber plants themselves to extract the sap -- destroying the very resource they were being forced to harvest. Reports of the abuses eventually reached Europe, and in 1905 the Free State revoked Abir's concession. By then, the rubber plants were gone. The tax was abolished, but the damage to the land and its people had been done.

The Luo Scientific Reserve, established in 1990 near Wamba, protects part of the landscape that is home to the bonobo, one of humanity's two closest genetic relatives. Japanese researchers documented their social behavior, their matriarchal societies, their use of tools. The reserve and the broader landscape also harbor the Dryas monkey -- one of the rarest primates on Earth, endemic to the Maringa and Lopori basins -- along with Congo peafowl, elephants, bongos, leopards, and the African golden cat. More than 400 bird species have been recorded. The density of Congo peafowl in some areas is likely the highest in the country. But the same remoteness that preserved these species also makes protection difficult. Research was interrupted for more than a decade by the Congo's wars, and poaching pressure grows as the human population rises.

The MLW Landscape occupies one of the least developed corners of the Congo Basin. Most inhabitants practice slash-and-burn agriculture, growing cassava, maize, and peanuts, and depend on bushmeat -- porcupine, sitatunga, forest hog -- for protein. Population density in the protected areas hovers at just two to four people per square kilometer, but in the proposed farming zones it rises to nearly 32, and the pressure on the forest is increasing. The threat of renewed logging looms over a landscape that has barely recovered from its colonial scars. The African Wildlife Foundation leads an effort to develop a sustainable land-use plan, combining conservation science with surveys, satellite imagery, and interviews with local communities. The goal is to meet the economic and cultural needs of the people who live here without destroying what remains of the forest. It is an immense challenge in a place where the nearest city is a weeks-long journey away and where, for more than a century, every outside interest -- slavers, rubber companies, rebel armies -- has taken more than it left behind.