Kokolopori is a community of 35 villages in Djolu territory of

Tshuapa Tshuapa is one of the 21 new provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo created in the 2015 repartitioning. Tshuapa, Équateur, Mongala, Nord-Ubangi, and Sud-Ubangi provinces are the result of the dismemberment of the former Équateur ...

province,

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 ...

. Kokolopori is an ethnically Mongandu Congolese community of about 24,000 people. It is located within the

Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve The Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve is a nature reserve in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The reserve is a protected area for endangered bonobos and uses a community-based model of natural resource management undertaken by residents of the vi ...

, a community-based reserve using the

Man and the Biosphere Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) is an intergovernmental scientific program, launched in 1971 by UNESCO, that aims to establish a scientific basis for the improvement of relationships between people and their environments. MAB's work engag ...

conservation model. The Reserve was established by a local nongovernmental organization, Vie Sauvage, together with an American partner organization, the

Bonobo Conservation Initiative The Bonobo Conservation Initiative is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. and the Democratic Republic of the Congo that promotes conservation of the bonobo and its habitat in the tropical forests of the Congo Basin. Under the Bonob ...

, and was formally recognized by the DRC government in 2009.

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 (''Pan paniscus'') are one of the four species of great ape which live in the Democratic Republic of Congo - the others being human,

chimpanzee The chimpanzee (''Pan troglodytes''), also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. When its close relative th ...

(''Pan troglodytes'') and

gorilla Gorillas are herbivorous, predominantly ground-dwelling great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or fi ...

(''Gorilla gorilla''). The Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve is the site of a long-term bonobo research project led by scientists from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

and the

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (german: Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie, shortened to MPI EVA) is a research institute based in Leipzig, Germany, that was founded in 1997. It is part of the Max Plan ...

. Vie Sauvage, the managing organization of the Kokolopori Bonobo Reserve, also manages Djolu Technical College (Institut Supérieur de Développement Rural de Djolu). The College is the only accredited rural development college in Tshuapa Province, and the only accredited higher education institution in Djolu Territory. It offers three majors: Environment and Sustainable Development, Water and Forests, and Nursing and Public Health. For the 2022 academic year, Djolu Technical College has also opened an extension in Kokolopori that will offer the Water and Forests major.

References

Populated places in Tshuapa {{Tshuapa-geo-stub