Kahuzi-Biega National Park.

Kahuzi-Biega was established in 1970 by Adrien Deschryver, a Belgian conservationist who ranks alongside Dian Fossey as one of the great protectors of the world's endangered gorilla population. Like Fossey, Deschryver understood that the only way to save these animals was to know them, to habituate them, study them, and build a relationship between humans and gorillas that made the gorillas worth more alive than dead to every person living near this forest. That work continues today, carried by rangers and researchers in a park that faces real and ongoing conservation pressures, and that needs the presence of ethical, committed visitors to help fund its survival.

The park straddles two dramatically different worlds. The higher altitude sector, named for its two dormant volcanoes, Mount Kahuzi at 3,308 meters and Mount Biega at 2,790 meters, holds montane rainforest, bamboo, and sub-alpine heathland draped in mist and silence. The lowland sector descends into dense equatorial rainforest, swamp forest, and riverside habitat alive with primates and birds, and the quiet, persistent energy of a forest ecosystem operating at full, unhurried capacity. To move between the two zones is to feel the park's extraordinary ecological range: two landscapes, two sets of wildlife, one boundary.

Kahuzi-Biega is one of the remarkable parks in the DRC where silverback gorillas and golden monkeys coexist with the silver and the gold of the forest, sharing the same mountain slopes in one of nature's more poetic arrangements. Chimpanzees move through the canopy. Forest elephants push silently through the undergrowth. Leopards and golden cats hunt in the darkness. Over 342 bird species fill the trees, including the Congo peafowl and the African green broadbill, a rare species that makes serious birders travel extraordinary distances for a single sighting.

With over 136 mammal species, 342 bird species, 69 reptiles, and 44 amphibians, Kahuzi-Biega is a biodiversity hotspot of global significance, a UNESCO World Heritage Site protecting wildlife found nowhere else on earth, in a forest that deserves far more of the world's attention than it currently receives.

Come for the eastern lowland gorilla. Leave understanding why this forest, and everything in it, must be protected at all costs.