A tally of natural resources, by contrast, will vary depending on when and by whom the inventory is taken. In the 19th century, ivory and slaves were the important export resources from the central African interior that is now the DRC. In the early 20th century, wild rubber was the critical resource. In the mid-20th century, when the territory became independent of colonial rule, copper was king. In the latter quarter of the 20th century, the country's failing economy was buoyed by coffee in the agricultural sector and copper, cobalt, diamonds, and crude oil in the mining sector (Sayer et al. 1992), with the "informal" market accounting for a larger and larger percentage of total exports. Now during the post-Mobutu era of anarchy, natural resources remain the only significant export, and these are being taken in large quantity from areas including the national parks and reserves, whose weak to nonexistent protection is becoming increasingly obvious.
The big exports include ivory from the areas within and around four national parks: Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Salonga National Park, Virunga National Park, Maiko National Park, and Garamba National Park, as well as the Okapi Faunal Reserve. Logging is an escalating problem that is ravaging forests from both the east and west, particularly from the Province Orientale, Nord Kivu, and Equateur and Columbo/Tantalite, commonly known as "coltan", (ore containing the elements niobium and tantalum) is mined in KBNP, OFR, and MNP. Diamonds come from MNP and gold from OFR, MNP, VNP, GNP, and KBNP (d'Huart and Hart 2000). There are no reliable statistics on the quantity of these resources that are being extracted. With more than 50 percent of Africa's forests, Zaïre produced only 3.4 percent of Africa's entire timber exports in 1985 (Sayer et al. 1992). Has this proportion increased? By how much? The areas of resource exploitation and the direction of its export have certainly changed, with a far greater percentage being traded through the informal market.
Export routes have shifted significantly with the latest war. Historically, as now, large political changes have been accompanied by major directional changes in the export of natural resources. Before the DRC was colonized by Belgium's King Leopold in the 19th century, export was controlled by Arab merchants who sent their caravans eastward to Zanzibar. After the Belgo–Arab war at the end of the 19th century, the direction of trade, now controlled by Belgium, was routed westward down the Congo River to the Atlantic (Pakenham 1991). This continued during Mobutu's era with the country's economy still funneled through the western capital of Kinshasa. But over the last decade of Mobutu's "reign", a peripheral and clandestine leakage of natural resources slipped over other country borders. This increased during the internal trauma of the rebellion that overthrew Mobutu and during the incomplete authority of Laurent Kabila's subsequent republic. The authority of his son Joseph Kabila, who replaced him as head of state, is still incomplete, and the country's resources continue to leave across all borders into all neighboring countries.
Internally, there is an unchecked flow of natural resources that never reaches the borders. Bushmeat is carried to city markets from more remote forests. This has long been the case, but the war has increased reliance on resource extraction with the destruction of traditional livelihoods and alternate sources of protein as when communities are forced to flee from their gardens. This has led to serious local depletion of game meat (Tshikaya and Mapilanga 1999). Even prior to the war (1994) collection of fuelwood and charcoal was at a rate of 42.6 million cubic meters annually (Wolfire et al. 1998). Along with ever-expanding clear-cutting for agriculture this is pushing back tree coverage around most of the forest's borders in the east. Although there has been no war-time ground-survey of expanding agriculture, local reports (R. Ducarme, ENRA Beni) suggest that land pressure has been escalating during the war-time anarchy.