Canoes are vital for transportation on the rain forest rivers of the Republic of the Congo. The Congo Basin’s 500 million acres of tropical forest, second-largest in the world after the Amazon, are known for an incredible array of wildlife including great apes, forest elephants, and some 700 species of river fish. But people have also lived here for over 50,000 years. The Congo Basin currently provides water and food to about 75 million Africans.
