Kamba African Rainforest Experiences

Part of the larger Congo Basin, the 90-year-old Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the central African country of the Republic of the Congo (also known as Congo-Brazzaville) is an incredibly valuable habitat. Considered “the lungs of Africa,” this rainforest is the largest carbon sink in the world, absorbing more carbon than the Amazon. The famously diverse area is home to more than 600 types of trees and 10,000 species of animals, including the endangered western lowland gorilla. 

It’s an area little visited by travelers—it’s estimated that only a few hundred people visit each year. Those numbers are low partially because the Congo is often confused for its conflicted-riddled neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and partially because tourism has largely been limited. However, Kamba, a company that focuses on low-impact ecotourism adventures and is the only private operator in the park, is working to change that, as well as advance our understanding of one of our closest cousins on the evolutionary tree.

Kamba sponsors the work of primatologist Magdalena Bermejo, who came to the Congo roughly 30 years ago and now lives on-site at Ngaga Lodge, one of Kamba’s three safari camps. Here she’s habituated multiple families of the western lowland gorillas and has become the world authority on this type of great ape; what Jane Goodall did for chimps in Tanzania, Bermejo has done for this species of gorilla in the Congo. For about three decades, what she learned about the gorillas came from firsthand observation. It involved hours a day spent in the park, taking tedious notes about the gorilla's personal behaviors and how they interacted in a group setting. Now she’s able to study the primates at a much faster clip, without being in the forest, thanks to video footage and AI.

Within the last two years, Bermejo has installed around 50 cameras throughout the parkland near Kamba, to gather footage of the primates, and has amassed more than 60,000 hours (and counting) of video. Even with a team of more than two dozen scientists from around the world, it’s more material than they could ever hope to get through. Instead, the team has now written code to sort the trove of data. 

Though wildlife cameras are employed all over the world to watch animals, and there have been some instances of conservation groups harnessing AI to identify poachers, Bermejo’s use of AI to study great apes in depth is unique. Beyond just identifying if the movement in the video is of gorillas (as opposed to other forest animals), the AI also groups videos based on which ape is pictured and categorizes its facial expressions. The latter helps provide clues as to what potential stressors or stimuli exist in their environment and affect how they live. From identifying these behaviors, the scientists can use that information to help conserve their species, by making the habitat more favorable to them. In turn, what they learn could apply to the conservation of other animals elsewhere in the world. 

It also leads to a richer gorilla-trekking experience for Kamba’s guests, as guides can better locate, identify, and explain the animals’ behavior. Having a better understanding of how the gorillas will behave can allow guides to position guests in the best possible spot for viewing the animals. But perhaps most important, it keeps the lungs of Africa breathing. The gorillas are vital for spreading seeds through their droppings, and many of the trees here owe their existence to these animals. Without them, this forest, which is critically important to the world as a whole, would struggle.

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