Islands in the Forest: A Photo Exploration of Congo's Bai Ecosystem

Photo GalleryPhoto 1. Bais are prominent clearings with sharp contrasting boundaries with surrounding forests, enabling us to map them with spaceborne remote sensing tools.We found that bais are highly clustered around streams with most of the total bai habitat contained within the largest bais, such as the one pictured here, named Moungali.In combination, this patterning means that plants and animals dependent on the clearings must access these resources in highly concentrated areas of the forested landscape.Moungali is an elephant bai, a bai classification named after its most abundant visitor, which can be seen in the bottom right of the foreground.