The Neuron Expedition heads for Congo for the last time. But the work is not over

Tomáš Jůnek is on site, but in Congo the news of the occupation of Ukraine reached him, and he considers that more important than talking about his luggage not arriving…

After returning to civilisation he sent another message: in the rainforest everything hurts and moving around in it is not comfortable, but if you accept its rules it rewards you. That is why, Tomáš Jůnek says, leave the rainforest be.

This is what African salt licks look like — refuges for endangered animals in the rainforest, which Tomáš Jůnek's team set out to map with the Neuron Expedition. Camera traps installed, they report at the end of the expedition.

To map and protect the biocorridors between national parks, to discover unknown habitats of rainforest animals and to support anti-poaching activities. The aim of the Neuron Expedition Dzamba Ya Lobi remains the same as on the two previous trips, but this time the group led by Tomáš Jůnek returns to familiar places in Congo resolved to push their rainforest discoveries still further.

"We will return to the salt licks we were the first in the world to observe in such detail, we will place camera traps along the biocorridor, and we have preparations for further work with the World Wide Fund for Nature ahead of us," is how Tomáš Jůnek of the Faculty of Environmental Sciences of the Czech University of Life Sciences describes the plans for the turn of February and March. His team will spend another month in Congo, for the third time under the Neuron Expedition banner.

The first trip took place in 2019, when the Neuron Foundation supported the efforts of Czech scientists to map territory in the middle of Africa and begin cooperation with conservation organisations with CZK 1,000,000. The second trip, to which Neuron gave a further CZK 500,000, returned from the Republic of the Congo in September 2021 with an unexpected discovery. In remote rainforests on the border with Cameroon it managed to discover a hitherto unknown salt lick, an important habitat for endangered animals, to break up two poaching groups and to record the presence of the rare black colobus.

Salt licks are open clearings in the jungle where elephants and other animal species top up their minerals and which they also use for social interaction. "I identified the new salt lick last year thanks to satellite map data, which are not routinely used in Congo. Salt licks are usually located near rivers, where people move about more often, so they are known to locals and conservationists alike," Tomáš Jůnek recalls of the successful trip.

The newly discovered salt lick is one of the few lying in the middle of the rainforest and is an important meeting place for elephants. "The last signs of human presence are a day and a half away from it, the nearest village a good three days' walk through difficult terrain. It probably came about through the death of trees in a muddy valley. My Congolese colleague and I were almost certainly the first people to see it with our own eyes," Jůnek adds. Now comes the moment to map selected salt licks thoroughly and to install dozens of camera traps and acoustic recorders to capture elephant calls and any gunfire.

The February trip to Congo is the culmination so far of the cooperation between Tomáš Jůnek's team and the Neuron Foundation. But work on the project is not over; on the contrary, international cooperation with conservation and research organisations is deepening, and in August the Czechs will travel to Congo again to retrieve the images and recordings from the recorders now installed. They will then present the results to local authorities and businesspeople with a clear message: in a developing Congo, endangered animals need not only as undisturbed a natural environment as possible, but active protection too.

For up-to-date information on the third trip of the Neuron Expedition Dzamba Ya Lobi, follow our website or social media.