If you ever have walked round the entirety of Manhattan Island, top to bottom, on a muggy summer's day then chances are your calves - and most of the rest of you - would ache more than a little, your clothes would be drenched with sweat and you'd be ready for a rest. Try doing the equivalent trip in similar temperatures, through thick tropical rainforest, and then do it again and you would get some idea of the area that one company intends to turn into a palm oil plantation in the South West region of Cameroon. Or maybe a simpler way would be to fly over it as Greenpeace has done. It would take you more than an hour. Whatever way you look at it, the area is big. Then again, Africa is a vast continent, with an enormous rain-forested area striding across the Congo basin and beyond. And the challenge to protect those forests is colossal.
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