Qualla: Okapi Wildlife Reserve https://qualla.com/okapi-wildlife-reserve en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 23 Jul 2026 20:34:05 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/8/k/7/okapi-wildlife-reserve-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Okapi Wildlife Reserve https://qualla.com/okapi-wildlife-reserve Okapi Wildlife Reserve: Introduction https://qualla.com/okapi-wildlife-reserve/ Photo credit J. Doremus, Public domain. For most of history, the okapi was a rumor. European explorers heard the forest people of the Ituri speak of a striped, horse-sized creature deep in the trees, and dismissed it as a tale - until 1901, when a skin and skull finally reached London and the world learned that the forest had been telling the truth all along. The okapi turned out to be the only living relative of the giraffe, a velvety brown animal with zebra-striped legs and a tongue long enough to wash its own eyes. It exists almost nowhere else on Earth. And the single greatest stronghold for it is here, in a vast reserve carved from the Ituri Forest in the far northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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Image: J. Doremus | Public domain

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/8/k/7/okapi-wildlife-reserve-wp/s8k7-okapi-wildlife-reserve-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Okapi Wildlife Reserve: The Forest That Survived the Ice https://qualla.com/okapi-wildlife-reserve/ Photo credit MONUSCO Photos, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Okapi Wildlife Reserve sprawls across roughly 14,000 square kilometers, about a fifth of the entire Ituri Forest. This is one of the oldest forests on the planet - a Pleistocene refuge, a pocket of green that endured when ice ages dried and shrank the rainforests around it, p...

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Image: MONUSCO Photos | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/8/k/7/okapi-wildlife-reserve-wp/s8k7-okapi-wildlife-reserve-the-forest-that-survived-the-ice.mp3 0:06 2 full Okapi Wildlife Reserve: The People of the Ituri https://qualla.com/okapi-wildlife-reserve/ Photo credit MONUSCO Photos, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Ituri has never been empty. For countless generations the Mbuti and Efe peoples have lived in and from this forest, moving through it as hunters and gatherers who know its plants, animals, and seasons with a depth that no outside survey has ever matched. They are not visitors...

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Image: MONUSCO Photos | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/8/k/7/okapi-wildlife-reserve-wp/s8k7-okapi-wildlife-reserve-the-people-of-the-ituri.mp3 0:06 3 full Okapi Wildlife Reserve: Epulu https://qualla.com/okapi-wildlife-reserve/ Photo credit Radio Okapi, CC BY 2.0. On the banks of the Epulu River stands the reserve's beating heart: the Epulu Conservation and Research Center. It traces back to 1928, when the American anthropologist Patrick Putnam set up a station here to capture wild okapi for zoos in America and Europe - a trade that contin...

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Image: Radio Okapi | CC BY 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/8/k/7/okapi-wildlife-reserve-wp/s8k7-okapi-wildlife-reserve-epulu.mp3 0:06 4 full Okapi Wildlife Reserve: The Attack at Epulu https://qualla.com/okapi-wildlife-reserve/ Photo credit Radio Okapi, CC BY 2.0. On 24 June 2012, a band of Mai-Mai fighters led by a warlord called Paul Sadala - known as Morgan - stormed Epulu. They were elephant poachers and illegal miners, and they came to punish a conservation effort that stood in their way. They looted and burned the center. They killed...

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Image: Radio Okapi | CC BY 2.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/8/k/7/okapi-wildlife-reserve-wp/s8k7-okapi-wildlife-reserve-the-attack-at-epulu.mp3 0:06 5 full