The Congo rainforest is the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world, spanning the Congo Basin in Central Africa.
The forest extends across several countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. It forms one of Earth’s largest continuous areas of tropical forest after the Amazon rainforest.
The Congo Basin contains enormous biodiversity. Its wildlife includes forest elephants, western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and okapis. The rainforest also supports millions of people, including communities whose livelihoods depend on farming, fishing, gathering, and forest products.
The forest is not one perfectly uniform habitat. It includes dense evergreen rainforest, seasonally flooded forest, swamp forest, and savanna-forest mosaics. The region’s peatlands are especially important carbon stores. “Congo rainforest” refers to the wider forest system of the basin, while the Democratic Republic of the Congo contains the largest national share.