77 Conservation to further the collaboration and advance conservation. Baka guides learned about mapping tools and conservation practices, and now these “professors of the forest” work alongside Smith and his team, recording their knowledge using GIS technology. The field notes from Baka guides share locations of plants and wildlife as well as seasonal cycles and interactions. This Indigenous knowledge comes together on GIS maps along with data from government ministries, university researchers, conservation organizations, and other local experts. For Baka guides, maps help them inform future generations about the interconnectedness of the forest. For scientists, the Indigenous knowledge fills important gaps and advances the need for protections. As weather patterns become more intense and species move, the data-driven maps will help efforts to preserve the forest, especially in places where species will relocate to adapt to new climates. “The forest faces fundamental challenges,” Smith said. “The Baka people are our interpretive guides to understand what direction to go.” Preserving Places for Future Evolution Smith is an evolutionary biologist. His early work in the late 1980s with the estrildid finch revealed how bill size in this species was not distributed or determined by sex, age, body size, or geographic origin. In contrast to Charles Darwin’s famous finches, these birds differed in ways that seemed to favor ongoing evolution. Over Smith’s 40-plus years in Africa, he has continued to study how rain forest species evolve. In research from 2022, the CBI team discovered that transition zones between rain forest and savanna are critical because these contact zones are where evolution happens. These places not only preserve species but generate them. Unfortunately, these places are also where humans want to settle, on the edge of the forest, not within it. By losing crucial pieces of land where ecosystems mix—called ecotones—plant and animal species lose areas that support adaptation. I realized that we’re doing conservation wrong in Africa. We’re preserving the pattern of biodiversity—species hot spots—but we’re not preserving the processes that produce and maintain biodiversity. — Thomas Smith, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UCLA The work of CBI team members focuses on the conservation of process, not just pattern. That means their science centers on the biotic processes that underlie and maintain the biodiversity of the forest. Finding the Way The Congo Basin comprises more than 10,000 species of tropical plants, with 30 percent unique to this iconic forest. The area is home to endangered wildlife, including forest elephants, chimpanzees, bonobos, and lowland and mountain gorillas. Often called “the lungs of Africa,“ the Congo Basin This photo of an early expedition crew in Cameroon in 1993 shows Thomas Smith (top center) alongside two graduate students and six professors of the forest. Image courtesy of Thomas Smith.
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