WCS 3-Sentence Science

Hope for Congo’s Giant Peatlands

April 8, 2019

Each year, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists publish more than 300 peer-reviewed studies and papers. “WCS 3-Sentence Science” is a regular tip-sheet — in bite sized helpings — of some of this published work.

Here we present T.J. Rayden’s work on peatlands in the Congo Basin:

1. A 55,000-square-mile peatland in the Congo Basin is the world’s largest and contains an estimated 30.5 billion metric tons of carbon.
2. Much of the peatland area is protected on paper by some form of conservation designation, but the potential exists for hydrocarbon exploration, logging, plantations, and other forms of disturbance that would significantly damage the peatland ecosystem.
3. The current low level of human disturbance suggests that the opportunity still exists to protect the peatlands in a largely intact state, possibly drawing on climate change mitigation funding, which can be used not only to protect the peat carbon pool but also to improve the livelihoods of people living in and around these peatlands.

Study and Journal: “Congo Basin peatlands: threats and priorities” from Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
WCS Co-Author(s): T. J. Rayden , WCS Conservation Solutions

For more information, contact: Stephen Sautner, 718–220–3682, ssautner@wcs.org.