Much of Gabon’s economic growth has come from the export of natural resources like oil and manganese, but oil revenues are declining.
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Gabon’s inland and coastal forests are so vast, they sequester more carbon dioxide each year than the amount produced by 30 million cars, helping the world stave off climate change through the natural process of photosynthesis. With more than four-fifths of the nation’s population living in urban areas, 88 percent of the country is covered with trees, home to reclusive, critically endangered forest elephants. Over 700 species of birds flutter and trill, while rare slender-snouted and African dwarf crocodiles navigate watery caves and wooded streams bearing nutrients to the sea. Further inland, a significant proportion of the world’s remaining western lowland gorillas roam with chimpanzees, tufty eared red river hogs, African forest buffalo and different types of antelope, like delicately featured duikers and marsh-dwelling sitatunga. Humpback whales migrate through offshore waters, where critically endangered populations of sawfish, rays that have shark-like bodies and saw-shaped snouts, persist. Clusters of juvenile sea fish flit among the protective roots of mangroves, while thousands of leatherback and olive ridley turtles, the largest congregations in the Atlantic, lay their eggs on the sandy beaches.
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Its ocean leaps with life.Īlong the Atlantic Coast, hippos bellow from river shallows and wade into saltwater waves. Gabon is a place of seemingly endless nature.