ITURI FOREST PEOPLES FUND

Plants and Animals of the Ituri Forest

Tropical rain forests of Africa, like their counterparts throughout the globe, are most often seen from the rivers and roads that cross them. Those roadside or riverbank strips of forest form impenetrable thorn vine tangles of vegetation, which give the traveler the impression that all rain forest is like this. on the contrary, the Ituri forest, the home of Pygmies, is an open, easily traversed landscape. Unlike roadsides or riverbanks, which receive constant and intense levels of sunlight, much of the rain forest is kept in relative shade by the leaves of mature forest trees, which capture most of the light. Below this canopy very few plants are able to secure enough light with which to grow, and those that do grow extremely slowly. The rain forest is in reality a layered environment. Tall, l00 to 300-year-old hardwood trees such as the African ironwood (Cynometra alexandri) and mahoganies (Entandrophragma species) form a varied and nearly continuous leafy canopy that shades the forest floor, which is sparsely covered with stunted saplings, shade tolerant shrubs, and broad- leaved herbs. The forest only resembles the vine-entangled jungles of Tarzan films on riverbanks, roadsides, and where a giant forest tree has died, fallen down, and opened up a large gap where the sun once more beats steadily to the ground prompting the frantic growth of vegetation in competition for light.

Because most of the sun in tropical rain forests is captured by the trees that dominate the high canopy, most of the edible leaves, flowers, and fruits available to animals and humans is also at the tops of the trees. Not surprisingly, rain forests have large numbers of birds, bats, and arboreal mammals (the most conspicuous being monkeys) that exploit these abundant, treetop resources. African rain forests, unlike the forests of South America and Southeast Asia, also have a wide variety of ground-dwelling animals. These animals range over the forest floor in search of fruits and seeds that, once ripe, have either fallen from the canopy or have been dislodged or discarded by feeding bats and monkeys. Other than rodents, the most abundant of the forest floor fauna arc the forest antelopes called duikers, an Afrikaans word stemming from their habit of ducking into the nearest brush pile when startled. Duikers probably moved into the forest, as did elephant, buffalo, and the forest giraffe (okapi), from the enormous neighboring savannas. These vast grasslands are generally not found surrounding the world's other rain forests.