In 2002, Omar Bongo, the president of Gabon, set up a network of national parks to protect the country’s rainforest from logging and help save its population of forest elephants.
He was responding to pressure from campaigners worried by a surge in logging over the previous decade. Among them was a British biologist called Lee White, who went on to become Gabon’s Minister of Forests and the Environment.
Witness History: The stories of our times told by the people who were there.
