Congolese park taken off endangered list - UNESCO

Salonga national park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa's biggest protected rainforest, has been removed off Unesco's list of endangered sites, with the UN organization acknowledging the country's preservation efforts.

In a press briefing in Kinshasa, Wilungula, the director of ICCN says "having World Heritage properties today, like Salonga National Park, means providing solutions for climate change, providing solutions to humanity for global warming...But there are also prices to be paid for this and the price to be paid is first of all the cancellation of the entire oil block in the central basin because you cannot want one thing and its opposite at the same time. We want to protect our forests, we want to preserve our forests,"

Salonga is Africa's largest protected rainforest and home to 40% of the Earth's bonobo apes, along with several other endangered species.

It was created in 1970 by then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and had been on the endangered list since 1984.