Okapi Conservation Project

The Okapi Conservation Project (OCP) operates a research and breeding station at Epulu within the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site covering some 14,000 square kilometres of Ituri rainforest. The station maintains a small number of okapi in large forested enclosures where they have been habituated to human presence for research and educational purposes. Seeing an okapi at close range is a privilege genuinely difficult to replicate elsewhere — these animals are so secretive in the wild that even researchers who spend years in the forest rarely see one.

The okapi (Okapia johnstoni) is the only living relative of the giraffe, but superficially resembles a small horse with zebra-striped hindquarters. The stripes help break up the animal's outline in dappled forest light and may also serve as communication signals. The animals are calm and curious in the station enclosures, and visitors can observe them feeding on forest browse at close range.

The station also serves as a base for wildlife monitoring, anti-poaching work, and community engagement with the Mbuti and Efe forest communities of the Ituri. Visiting should be arranged in advance through the OCP — contact via the Zoological Society of Milwaukee, which has long supported the project.

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A story
The okapi was unknown to Western science until 1901, when British explorer P.L. Sclater formally described it based on skins brought to London. For decades before that, the existence of a large forest mammal in the Congo had been reported by indigenous people and European explorers; no one believed them. The discoverer was not a scientist but a colonial administrator named Harry Johnston, who obtained a piece of an okapi's striped hindquarters from pygmy hunters and sent it back to London.

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