Gabon’s government reached an agreement last month with the country’s major logging companies and an assortment of environmental groups to permanently protect a 1,900-square-mile tropical rainforest reserve rich with large mammals and other wildlife. The Lope Reserve has also been nominated to become the first national park in the West African nation. The agreement involves a redrawing of the boundaries of the reserve, opening up some previously protected land to logging while putting additional areas off-limits to tree cutting. Some environmental groups object to permitting any logging, but other groups, including the World Wildlife Fund, say the deal is a good one because the land to be logged was farmed less than 200 years ago while the land to be newly protected has been essentially untouched for 10,000 years.
