FAUNA and FLORA IN ITURI FOREST
Most of the vegetation still consists of enormous trees which have been growing for hundreds of years in the Ituri Forest. The hardwood legume is the most dominant species still to be found in the forest and reaches at least 150 feet above the forest floor. There are three sub-species classified under the hardwired legume.
The Ituri forests are exceptionally rich in mammals and a total of 90 species have been found in the central sector. These forests are home to thirteen species of diurnal primates the highest number for an African forest and six species of duiker. The Landscape contains populations of world importance for several species with a limited distribution, endemic or almost endemic to the DRC: the okapi Okapia johnstoni , the aquatic genet Osbornictis piscivora
The giant genet Genetta victoriae and Hamlyn’s monkey Cercopithecus hamlyni it also has large populations of globally threatened species, such as the forest elephant Loxodonta africana cyclotis and the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes. Other important species are L’Hoest’s monkey, the leopard Panthera pardus, the Cape buffalo Syncerus caffer nanus, the bongo, the sitatunga , the African golden cat Felis aurata, the giant forest hog , the red river hog , the water chevrotain and the forest aardvark.
The forest-savannah ecotone has not yet been systematically inventoried, but reports by missionaries before the recent civil war mention the lion Panthera leo, the spotted hyena, the hippopotamus, the East African Defassa waterbuck Kobus ellip-siprymmus defassa, the bongo Tragelaphus, the bushbuck, the bohor reedbuck and the vervet monkey. The skin of a little known meerkat, Dyboswki’s meerkat , a species which lives at the edge of forests, was collected. This suggests that the forest-savannah mosaic could contain specialized fauna that is rare or absent in other parts of the Congo Basin and absent from the more arid regions to the east and the north.