In Salonga National Park (the one nationwide park in bonobo habitat), there is no local involvement, and surveys undertaken since 2000 point out the bonobo, the African forest elephant, the okapi, and other rare species have been devastated by poachers and the thriving bushmeat commerce. The ZSM's preliminary purpose was to survey Salonga National Park to determine the conservation standing of the bonobo within the park and to provide financial and technical help to strengthen park protection. There is strong local, and broad-based Congolese, resistance to establishing nationwide parks, as indigenous communities have beforehand been driven from their forest properties by the forming of parks. In 2002, the Bonobo Conservation Initiative initiated the Bonobo Peace Forest Project (supported by the global Conservation Fund of Conservation International), in cooperation with national institutions, local NGOs, and local communities; the Peace Forest Project works with native communities to ascertain a linked constellation of neighborhood-based reserves managed by native and indigenous people. Estimates range from 60,000 to fewer than 50,000 living, in response to the World Wildlife Fund. Organizations such because the World Wide Fund for Nature, the African Wildlife Foundation, and others, are trying to focus consideration on the extreme danger to the species.
