When Congo Republic's northern pygmies go out into the forest these days, some will be carrying hand-held satellite tracking devices along with their traditional bows and spears.
Using GPS handsets to pinpoint sacred sites and hunting areas, the nomadic forest dwellers are literally putting themselves on the map to protect their livelihoods and habitat against the chainsaws and bulldozers of commercial loggers.
Through the scheme, northern Congo's Mbendjele Yaka people and the central African country's largest logging company are working in an unusual alliance to ensure the forest areas crucial to the pygmies' daily lives are left standing.
"It's essentially a process by which the traditional rights of the pygmies can be respected and protected," Scott Poynton, executive director of the Tropical Forest Trust, which works to promote responsible forest management in the world, told Reuters.
With training and technology provided by the trust, logging company Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB) owned by Denmark's DLH group, and other international partners, the Mbendjeles are using the GPS (Global Positioning System) to mark out forest areas and even specific trees they want preserved. "The sets have icons on them, so they don't have to be able to read and write. They basically go out and say OK, click, here is a sacred site, and a GPS point is taken and links up to the satellite," Poynton said in an telephone interview on Wednesday.
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