Slowing of deforestation rate in Africa's rainforests reported

Deforestation in Africa's Congo Basin rainforest has slowed as countries there focus on mining and oil rather than agriculture, a study suggests. Satellite images of the region show deforestation has fallen by about a third since 2000, scientists said. The Congo Basin rainforest, stretching 2 million square miles across central Africa, is second only to the Amazon rainforest in size. "Most of the focus has been on the Amazon and on South East Asian tropical rainforests, and a big bit of the missing picture is what is going on the Congo Basin in Central Africa," Simon Lewis from the University of Leeds and University College London told BBC News. Tracking how the dense foliage was changing over time in satellite images, researchers found the Congo Basin forest is in better health than they had expected. "The results were surprising," Lewis said. "This is partly because there is a network of protected areas. But it is also because of a lack of expansion from agriculture, and the way these [central African] countries have organized their economies. "They are very dependent on oil sales and also minerals from mining, and they are investing in that and not investing so much in agricultural expansion." Africa's rainforest is pivotal in its possible impacts on climate change, biodiversity and communities that depend on them, Lewis said.