Substitute mothers spend time with baby bonobos at a sanctuary in the Congo, where a reserve is being established for their protection.

Construction
Green Valley Heating & Cooling
HVAC Service Tech Driver/Transportation
DRIVERS Engineering
SEARLES VALLEY MINERALS
PROCESS ENGINEER Health Care
ADMINISTRATOR Trades/Construction
Osmose Utilites
Foremen Administrative & Professional
ADMIN ASST
JEWISH FEDERATION OF SO AZ Trades/Construction
CIMETTA ENGINEERING
WELDERS

KINSHASA, Congo — Congo is setting aside more than 11,000 square miles of rain forest to help protect the endangered bonobo, a great ape that is the most closely related to humans and is found only in this Central African country.

U.S. agencies, conservation groups and the Congolese government have come together to set aside 11,803 square miles of tropical rain forest, the U.S.-based Bonobo Conservation Initiative said in a statement issued this week.

The area amounts to just over 1 percent of vast Congo — but that means a park larger than the state of Massachusetts.

Environment Minister Didace Pembe said the area was denoted as a protected reserve last week as part of the administration's goal of setting aside 15 percent of its forest as protected area. The Sankuru announcement increased the amount of protected land in Congo to 10 percent from 8 percent, he said.

The Sankuru Nature Reserve aims to protect a section of Africa's largest rain forest from the commercial bushmeat trade and from deforestation by industrial logging operations in the central part of the country known as the Congo Basin.

Sally Jewell Coxe, president of the Washington-based Bonobo Conservation Initiative, said the group has been working to establish the reserve since 2005, when it started meeting with leaders in villages that ring the area to persuade them to stop hunting the ape.

Bonobos — often lauded as the "peaceful ape" — are known for their matriarchal society, and their sex-loving lifestyle.

The bonobo population is believed to have declined sharply in the last 30 years, though surveys are hard to carry out in war-ravaged central Congo. Estimates range from 60,000 to fewer than 5,000 living, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

The Sankuru reserve also contains okapi, closely related to the giraffe, that is also native to Congo, elephants and at least 10 other primate species.

Startup funding has been provided through a grant of $50,000 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and about $100,000 from private donors, Coxe said.