Durban - Though it features on Congolese banknotes and has its own World Heritage Site, the forest-dwelling okapi was recently classified as endangered following a 50 percent drop in population size over the past 30 years.
The okapi, restricted to the war-ravaged rain forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is a distant cousin of the giraffe.
Though it is prized for its meat and skins, its living space is shrinking rapidly because of logging, mining and agriculture.
Two years ago it was classified officially as “endangered” on the Red List of Endangered Species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Because it is a shy and secretive forest species, wildlife researchers say it is not possible to estimate its current population level accurately, but it is thought that numbers have halved in just three decades.
The largest remaining stronghold is the Okapi Wildlife Reserve and World Heritage Site, which was home to about 4 400 okapis in 1995. By 2007, this had dropped to around 2 500.
In Virunga National Park there were less than 100 okapis left in 2008, while the population in Maiko National Park has also dropped significantly.
Writing in the latest special issue of the Africa Journal of Ecology, okapi expert Dr Noëlle Kümpel calls for urgent action to prevent their extinction.
He said continued deforestation and expansion of the mining industry was likely to slash remaining okapi habitat by almost one third.
Since 1980, the expansion of human settlements, deforestation and forest degradation have eliminated important sections of the okapi range, especially the Ituri Forest.
The IUCN says the biggest current threat to okapi is the presence of illegal armed groups in and around key protected areas.
These were preventing effective conservation and were involved in poaching and illegal logging.
In a notorious incident in June 2012, armed rebels attacked the headquarters of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, killing seven people and all 14 captive okapi.
The Mercury