Simon Pooley’s New Book Revisits Okapi Conservation in the DRC

What changed

Simon Pooley’s new book, Discovering the Okapi, tries to bring the elusive animal back into conservation and public focus. Published by Wits University Press, the more than 300-page study traces the okapi’s history, including the long-standing knowledge of people in the Ituri forest region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Why it matters

The okapi is the sort of animal that sounds invented: a red-brown forest creature with zebra-striped hindquarters, huge ears, a blue-black tongue and the ability to communicate through infrasound. Yet its very strangeness has not protected it from slipping out of public attention.

Pooley began writing the book in 2020, while recovering from dengue fever. He had grown up in KwaZulu-Natal’s Ndumo Game Reserve and was struck by how little historical material about the okapi was available in English. His project is therefore as much about recovering a neglected record as describing an unusual animal.

That record also exposes an old imbalance in the language of discovery. Western scientists recognised the okapi after its 1901 “discovery”, but African communities had known and hunted the animal for thousands of years. Their knowledge is central to the story, even as Pooley wrestles with terminology used to describe forest communities and acknowledges that he has never seen a wild okapi or visited its habitat.

The animal’s disappearance from public view is literal as well as cultural. London’s Natural History Museum has no okapi specimen on public display. Four old mounts sit in an off-site storage facility, deteriorating after once being museum attractions.

That makes the book’s ambition clear: before conservation can command attention, the subject has to be visible again. Whether renewed interest will produce more funding or institutional action remains uncertain. But a fuller history of okapi conservation in the DRC still needs to be written, and Pooley’s book is an attempt to reopen that space.