Carys' Congolian Rainforest Project

Logging is the main threat to the Congo rainforest. Logging is cutting down trees. Big companies and local people are logging. The reason they are logging is because they are cutting down trees to make objects, cutting down trees to plant other resources such as crops and finally to cut down trees to build houses. Logging is a problem as the trees are the homes of animals and also the traditional people who live in the rainforest lose their homes. Trees provide oxygen and cutting down trees reduces the amount of oxygen which is important to help the World breath. Another risk is global warming. Which means that everything will get drier and the trees will shrivel and lots of animals, birds and the amazing things in the rainforest might not survive in the heat. The Rainforest Trust are a charity that prevent logging in the Congo and to stop poaching and save species. Another charity we found is called Save Congo Rainforest . It is a actually run by young people who really want to stop

I decided to write about the insects of the rainforest because I feel like I might find some really cool ones. I'm hoping to find a type of Mantis.  Insects live in different layers of the rainforest, some in the canopy and some on the forest floor and understory. They are like tribes.  There are over 370,000 types of beetle in the Congo Rainforest alone! Some of the cool insects I have found have great names, including the Banana Spider and the Army Worm. The great thing about Army Worms is that they march together in a big group from crop to crop.  Carpenter ants bury through wood with their teeth. They can lift seven times their weight with their teeth! Ants live together in main communities called colonies.  Carpenter Ant Insects can be very loud, especially at night. They sound like a whole orchestra coming in at different times. It would make me feel quite stuck in sound if I was there. We have asked permission from a sound recorder called George Vlad who has been all around

If you were there for a day you might see some different types of monkeys, or Primates. Some of the species only live in the Congo rainforest! The Western Lowland Gorilla The thing I love most about these Primates is their scientific name which is Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla ! When they are standing on two feet, they are really big, between my height and my mum's height. They are critically endangered and their numbers have got smaller by 60% in the last 20 years which makes me feel sad.  Image credit You can tell a Western Lowland Gorilla because they have red fur on their heads and silvery fur on their backs and legs. They have 32 teeth like adult humans do.  The Bonobo Bonobos are great apes, like humans, and they are only found in the DRC in the Congo rainforest.  They are our closest living relatives!  W e share 98.7% of our DNA with Bonobos!   Bonobos are peaceful and cooperative too newcomers. but they are endangered and could go extinct. There are maybe only 5,000 of them left

In my head, the rainforest is very dense with ginormous, overgrowing, beautiful plants of many different shapes and sizes. The colours would be all different types of green, pinks, oranges and yellows. And all the trees trunks would be a dark gloomy brown.  There's not very much space for the plants to grow, so they all grow on top of each other and around each other. Plants need sunlight, so they all reach upwards and sometimes outwards to get as much sunlight as possible. There are 10,000 plant species in the Congo rainforest and three out of every ten you find are only found there. The rainforest has layers of different vegetation. The first one is the forest floor where you will find the start of tree trunks and the stems of plants. Its also were the main mammals and insects can be found. Next is the understory, where the little trees are, as well as the ends of floor plants. The canopy is were all the light gets blocked by the leaves of taller trees which grow together to make

This post is about some of the forest people of the Congo these are called the Aka the Baka and the Twa. I talked to my grandma and she told me about the music of the Baka tribe she had learnt it at a workshop lead by somebody who had lived with the Baka people the Baka songs are sung by a method called yodelling they are also accompanied by complicated hand clapping rhythms. They have a really cool song called 'The Forest is Ours' which you can listen to here . We listened to a band called Baka Beyond which has musicians from the UK and the rainforest in. They play at festivals in the UK so I might get to see them!  The Baka are "pygmies" with means the adults only grow to about 4 feet/1.2meters. They live as hunter gatherers. Their  problem is that other people are taking their trees which also means that big companies are taking their land, which means it leaves less forest. for the Baka people to use for hunting gathering. A Baka home and some people from the Baka

The Seasons The Congo rainforest has a tropical climate year round with lots of precipitation and heavy humidity and temperatures. There are two seasons in the Congo rainforest. One called the rainy season and one called the dry season. The rainy season is from March to November. And the dry season goes from December to February. My Dad helped me understand using Excel to create charts. I typed in all the data myself. We have made two charts. The first chart measures the average rainfall each month in the Congo Rainforest. As you can see October has the most amount of rain and July has the least.  The chart below shows you the average temperature in the Congo Rainforest. The hottest time is in August. The coldest time is in October. I think that if I were visiting, I would go in May because it's quite rainy and quite sunny.  We collected our data to make these charts from this Data source We learnt from a recent study by NASA that the dry season is getting longer. Research shows t