First estimate of Congo Basin’s pygmy population comes with warning about increasing threat of deforestation

As many as 920,000 pygmies live in the forests of the Congo Basin, and deforestation of Central Africa’s rainforests is not only intensifying the threats to their lives but the survival of their very culture, a new study suggests. “Pygmies are of great significance to humanity’s cultural diversity, as they are the largest group of active hunter-gatherers in Africa, and possibly the world,” John E. Fa of Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK, a senior research associate with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and one of the study’s lead authors, said in a statement.