Gorillas, forest elephants lure SFM investment in Gabon’s forest
INTERNATIONAL – Gorillas and sugar could be key to tapping the natural resources of Gabon, the world’s second-most forested nation after Suriname.
SFM Africa, a Johannesburg-based company that focuses on sustainable forest projects, plans to open a luxury safari lodge in Gabon next year and spend about $190 million on a sugar project in the central African country, said Alan Bernstein, SFM’s chairman and chief executive officer. The company has an 892,000 hectare (1.97-million acre) land and marine concession in southern Gabon known as Grande Mayumba.
Larger than the U.K., Gabon is mostly covered by tropical rain forest, has no highways and only two million people. It has avoided the degradation that’s afflicted most countries spanning the Congo Basin, the world’s second-biggest rain forest after the Amazon. While it hosts large populations of forest elephants, lowland gorillas and chimpanzees, its tourism industry is almost non-existent.
Source: iol.co.za
