Natural Reserves in the Belgian Congo

Abstract

IT is well known that the King of the Belgians has played an active part in the development of scientific institutions in his country, and that he is a keen supporter of research. Among his other interests is the question of the protection of the flora and fauna,particularly of the tropical colonies of Belgium. So long ago as 1909, after travelling in South Africa and the Congo, he emphasised the necessity of taking measures without delay for saving a part of the fauna and flora, which intense and often unregulated economic development threatens to destroy. In the Congo in particular, this destruction was going on with great rapidity, often without apparent cause. We owe to the intervention of the King of the Belgians the creation, in 1929, of the Pare National Albert, comprising about 357,000 hectares (nearly 1400 square miles). The administration of this reserve is in the hands of a commission of which the King's son, Prince Leopold, is president, and Prof. V. Van Straelen, director of the Boyal Museum of Natural History, Brussels, is vice-president. During last April, King Albert, accompanied by Prof. Van Straelen, visited the Kivu Park in the Belgian Congo, having made the journey specially to see for himself the effectiveness of the measures of protection in force. His gesture for the cause of the protection of the fauna and flora is of high importance and should result in intensification of the efforts being made in this direction, not in the Belgian Congo alone but also hi other countries.