Managing for timber and biodiversity in the Congo Basin

Multiple-use forest management is considered by many as a preferable alternative to single-use, generally timber-dominant, management models. In the Congo Basin rainforests, integration of timber and non-timber forest resources plays a key role in the subsistence and market economies of rural communities. This is however mainly occurring in “ordinary” forest lands and not in formally gazetted forest lands. In this paper we briefly explore the major land-uses in the Congo Basin and their actual or potential for multiple-use. We then focus on the most extant production system (industrial logging concessions) and analyze the existing issues and options for managing actively both timber and biodiversity with a special emphasis on wildlife and the role of certification. A few promising but yet ‘unfinished’ examples do exist in the region and we review these cases to draw lessons and recommendations. We contend however that true multiple-use could only be realized by expanding beyond boundaries of formal management units through new innovative land-use units, allowing a spatial cohabitation of the interests of local people, of conservation proponents and of extractive industries in the same management unit

Obtaining and Characterization of W-Cu Composite Powder Produced by Mixing and Sintering of Ammonium Paratungstate (Apt) and Copper Nitrate

<div><p>The objective of this work is obtaining W-30 wt% Cu composite powder from ammonium paratungstate hydrated (APT) and hydrated copper nitrate and investigating the influence of some production process parameters of W- 30 wt% Cu in particles form which results in high sinterability and densification of W-30 wt% Cu composite. To achieve this objective, the powder was obtained by manually mixing the APT and copper nitrate and reducing under a hydrogen atmosphere at 800 °C and then compacting at 500 MPa and sintering in a tubular furnace at 1200 °C for 60 minutes. The obtained materials were characterized by XRD, SEM, EDS, particle size analysis, density and microhardness measurements. The composite powder showed a good homogenization of Cu in W with very fine and agglomerated particles and a mean crystallite size of 25.64 nm. SEM coupled with EDS with mapping analysis revealed a homogeneous distribution of Cu and W in the sintered sample. The composite had a relative density of 96.77% and a microhardness of 523.66 HV. Therefore the method of obtaining the composite powder is feasible to sinter W-30 wt% Cu powder due to a greater dispersion and homogenization of phases and the average particle size.</p></div