Bikoro Territory is an administrative area in

Équateur District Équateur District was a former district of the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo and Democratic Republic of the Congo. In 1914 it became part of former Équateur Province. The district went through various changes of extent and name over the year ...

of Équateur province in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...

. The headquarters is the town of

Bikoro Bikoro is a market town in Équateur Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, lying on Lake Tumba, south of Mbandaka. It is the administrative center of Bikoro Territory. In 2012, the estimated population was 7,426. Bikoro was the ...

. The territory lies to the south of the provincial capital of

Mbandaka Mbandaka (, formerly known as Coquilhatville in French, or Coquilhatstad in Dutch) is a city on the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo located near the confluence of the Congo and Ruki rivers. It is the capital of Équateur Provinc ...

. It is bordered on the west by the

Congo River The Congo River ( kg, Nzâdi Kôngo, french: Fleuve Congo, pt, Rio Congo), formerly also known as the Zaire River, is the second longest river in Africa, shorter only than the Nile, as well as the second largest river in the world by discharge ...

, and contains Lake Ntomba. The lake covers about depending on the season, connected via the Irebu channel with the Congo river. Water may flow into or out of the lake through this channel depending on the floods. Lake Tumba has 114 species of fish and supports an important fisheries. The lake lies at the center of the

Tumba-Ngiri-Maindombe Tumba-Ngiri-Maindombe is the largest List of Ramsar wetlands of international importance, Wetland of International Importance in the world as recognized by the Ramsar Convention. The site covers an area of in the region around Lake Tumba in the w ...

landscape, the largest

Ramsar Convention The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of Ramsar sites (wetlands). It is also known as the Convention on Wetlands. It i ...

wetland in the world, a vast area of forest and permanent or seasonal lakes and marshlands that has great environmental and economic value. Bikoro Territory is one of the remaining places where

bonobo The bonobo (; ''Pan paniscus''), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee, is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus '' Pan,'' the other being the comm ...

s still survive, a close relative of humans. It is also home to the endangered

red colobus monkey Red colobuses are Old World monkeys of the genus ''Piliocolobus''. It was formerly considered a subgenus within the genus ''Procolobus'', which is now restricted to the olive colobus. They are closely related to the black-and-white colobus monkey ...

and the

red-tailed monkey The red-tailed monkey (''Cercopithecus ascanius''), also known as the black-cheeked white-nosed monkey, red-tailed guenon, redtail monkey, or Schmidt's guenon, is a species of primate in the family Cercopithecidae. It is found in Angola, Cameroo ...

. Other large animals include the hippopotamus, crocodile and elephant. The marsh forests are suffering from uncontrolled timber extraction and

slash-and-burn Slash-and-burn agriculture is a farming method that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed vegeta ...

agriculture. The main cash crops are coffee, cacao and rubber.

References

{{reflist , refs= {{cite web , url=http://www.forestlandscaperestoration.org/regional-networks/eastcentralafrica/bikoro/ , title=Bikoro , publisher=Global Partnership on Forest and Landscape Restoration , author=Joel Kiyulu , access-date=2012-02-01 {{Dead link, date=June 2019 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes Populated places in the province of Équateur Territories of the Democratic Republic of the Congo