Classroom lesson · Dzanga-Sangha Rainforest · 🇨🇫 Central African Republic

Dzanga-Sangha Rainforest

A UNESCO rainforest where forest elephants gather at magical clay-licks

Photo · Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

Dzanga-Sangha is a vast tropical rainforest in the southwest of the Central African Republic. It is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which means the whole world agrees it is a very special place worth looking after. The forest is home to forest elephants, western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, and the BaAka people who have lived here for thousands of years.

Tell me more

The rainforest is so thick and tall that it feels like being inside a giant green cathedral. Enormous trees stretch 40 to 50 metres into the sky, and their leafy tops - called the canopy - form a roof that shades the forest floor below. Rain drips through layer after layer of leaves before it ever reaches the ground.

Inside Dzanga-Sangha there is a very famous clearing in the forest called Dzanga Bai. Scientists and forest rangers call it the 'village of elephants' because dozens of forest elephants come here every day to drink the mineral-rich water and eat the salty clay. It is one of the best places on Earth to watch wild elephants - and they are there almost every single day.

The BaAka people have lived in this rainforest for a very long time. They know the names of hundreds of plants and animals, and they sing beautiful songs called polyphonic music - where different voices weave together like threads in a cloth. UNESCO has listed their singing as an important part of the world's cultural heritage. The BaAka also know how to move quietly through the forest and read signs in leaves and tracks that most visitors would never notice.

Dzanga-Sangha is part of a larger region called the Sangha Tri-National Park, shared with Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo next door. Three countries working together to protect one huge forest means that animals like elephants and gorillas have an enormous safe home to roam across.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Why do you think elephants travel to the same clearing every day to eat salty clay? What does that tell us about what animals need?
  2. 02The BaAka have lived in this rainforest for thousands of years and know it better than almost anyone. Why is that kind of knowledge important to keep?
  3. 03Three countries look after this forest together. Why might sharing be better than each country trying to protect only its own piece?
  4. 04If you could spend one day in the rainforest, what would you most want to see or hear?
Try this

Classroom activity

Draw a 'layers of the rainforest' diagram from the ground to the very top. Label the forest floor, understorey, canopy and emergent layer. Now add one animal or plant you learned about to each layer, and draw one arrow showing where rainwater travels on its journey downward.

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