Protecting elephants in the Congo River Basin

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Protecting elephants in the Congo River Basin’

Marc Filippino
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, July 6th. And this is your FT News Briefing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Ukraine hasn’t received a lot of the heavy weapons allies have promised. Latin American bonds and currencies are having a moment. Plus, we’ll meet some conservationists working to protect elephants from poachers in the Congo. (Elephant trumpets)

I’m Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Western allies are falling behind in delivering the weapons they promised to Ukraine. That’s according to new data from the Kiel Institute, a research group in Germany. Overall, Ukraine has only received half of the heavy weapons its allies said they would deliver. The US has sent just a quarter of the tanks it’s promised and none of the infantry fighting vehicles. And Ukraine could really use some of that extra support since it’s trying to ramp up its counteroffensive.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Big asset managers are flocking to Latin American bonds and currencies. The region’s high interest rates and low inflation are really appealing. Here’s the FT’s bonds and currencies reporter Mary McDougall.

Mary McDougall
I think it’s really a story of central bank discipline. Latin American countries acted much more quickly than the Fed and other central banks by putting interest rates up more quickly when inflation worries started emerging in 2021. And now you’re in the situation where they have high interest rates and they’ve succeeded in bringing inflation down. So the benefit for asset managers here is that they can buy these currencies, they can buy the bonds in these countries and get much higher returns from them because the returns are linked to the interest rates. So Brazil’s interest rate is 13.75 per cent and inflation is down under 4 per cent in Brazil’s case. So for investors, this means you can get a high real return by owning the assets in these regions.

Marc Filippino
But Mary says there are a lot of countries in the region that investors are still avoiding.

Mary McDougall
In broad terms, the region is still seen as a pretty dicey place to invest and is basically pretty under-owned by international investors. Markets have been pretty wary of the political situation in a lot of these countries. You have a lot of quite leftwing governments with big spending plans. You have very volatile currencies. A lot of these countries don’t have particularly stable public finances. So it is not an easy place to invest. And they will stress that you have to be pretty careful.

Marc Filippino
There’s one country in particular that’s really struggling. That’s Argentina.

Mary McDougall
And that’s an obvious one that I think everyone’s avoiding. It’s pretty much lost all access to foreign capital after a number of debt defaults. Inflation’s over 100 per cent. It’s got strict capital controls. It’s pretty hard to get your money out. Yeah, I haven’t met investors piling into Argentina, but if you’re out there listening, please, please get in touch with me.

Marc Filippino
Mary McDougall is the FT’s bonds and currencies reporter.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

We’re going back to the Congo River Basin today with FT Africa editor David Pilling. He visits a clearing in the forest where the world’s biggest concentration of forest elephants lives. It’s called Dzanga Bai. We’ll hear from conservationists working to fend off poachers and the Ba’Aka people who’ve been hunting in this forest for millennia. Here’s David.

David Pilling
I’ve been back on the immense mud ground Sangha River for about five hours now, give or take a few stops for local officials to check out documents. (Sound of wading in water and a person speaking in another language)

We float around a majestic bend in the river and arrive at the Sangha Lodge. It’s a single-storey cabin that looks out over the river and it’s our base as we head out to the Dzanga Bai. Early the next morning we drive until there’s no more road. Then we walk for about an hour, led by Ba’Aka guides who follow elephant tracks deep into the dense forest. (Elephant trumpets)

We reach the Dzanga Bai. In the Ba’Aka language, bai means clearing. Here, these mighty creatures steal out of the secrecy of the forest to feed on nutrients from the ground.

Ivonne Kienast
That’s the most marvellous scene that you can see. And right now we probably are watching between 90 and 100 elephants doing their elephant thing (chuckles), extracting minerals from the ground, digging. Others are just walking. There’s a lot of subtle social interactions going on.

David Pilling
You can hear the wind rumbling behind Ivonne Kienast, who runs the Dzanga Forest Elephant Project. She’s standing on a viewing platform overlooking the spectacle of elephants, which are splattered in different shades of mud. They’re constantly moving in circular motion like some giant timepiece, and they’re not entirely harmonious either. The big ones push the babies out of the way and only allow the little ones to feed on the minerals when they’ve had their fill. Kienast also helps run an innovative project that uses microphones hidden in the forest to create a huge sound map. Using artificial intelligence, researchers can monitor the movements of individuals or groups of elephants.

Ivonne Kienast
You can just put a unit in the forest and have it recording continuously, and then you can extract the data you’re interested in.

David Pilling
The sensors also spot danger.

Ivonne Kienast
Gunshot data are, for us, extremely interesting because we can inform the park management. We can say, “Oh, look, during this time of the year, you have a lot of gunshot activity here, and a lot of elephant activity here,” so that they can then take decisions and . . . 

David Pilling
. . . work to deploy resources.

Ivonne Kienast
Exactly.

David Pilling
Yes.

David Pilling
Our Ba’Aka guides lead us out of the forest. The Ba’Aka have lived there for millennia, eating plants and hunting animals sustainably. They use a method called net hunting. The next day I joined a group of five women and five men to see how they do it.

[SINGING AND CLAPPING]

They sing hunting songs the entire way into the forest. They change to a different song when we get to the spot where they plan to hunt. This song is to bless the nets. (Singing)

The way net hunting works is this: they make a lot of noise to scare off big animals like elephants or gorillas. (Singing) Then quick as a flash, the 10 Ba’Aka each unfurl their nets and join them to create a circular enclosure. The idea is to trap the small animals like forest antelope called duiker. This time the Ba’Aka didn’t catch anything. They didn’t seem that bothered either. We were paying them however the hunt turned out. I was after all a tourist, not just a journalist. I felt enormously privileged to see part of the world that most people will never have access to.

It’s a harsh and beautiful part of the world. And at the end of the day, we all depend on it. It’s the lungs of our planet. This is just a small protected part of the rainforest out there. In countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, population pressure, pressure for charcoal, pressure just to live is pressing in on these forests. I’m left hoping, perhaps against hope, that as we learn more about it, we can also help keep it safe.

[SINGING AND DRUM BEATING]

Marc Filippino
And believe it or not, conservation can be a bit of a contentious topic. Tomorrow in the final part of our series, FT Africa editor David Pilling will discuss the debate around forest and wildlife protection, who benefits, who loses, and how local communities feel about it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Before we go, Japan Airlines is taking packing light to a whole new level. The company is offering people travelling to Japan the option of renting all their clothes once they get there. Japan Airlines started the experiment yesterday. The idea is to cut down on emissions by reducing the weight of the plane. The airline’s going to collect data over the next 13 months. They’ll use it to determine whether renting out clothing actually results in lighter luggage.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

You can read more on all of these stories at FT.com, and for a limited time, all the articles we mentioned in each episode of the briefing are free to everyone, not just subscribers. Just click on the links in the show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

[MUSIC PLAYING]