and arbon was going the way of ivory coast. its forests left. 80% of its parks have been deforested. when we showed omar bongo beautiful national geographic photographs of the national treasures of gabon, something clicked. a spark, a catalyst went off. within a couple of months we had created 13 national parks. preserving some of the most beautiful and the richest parts of gabon. the president of france at the time came and tried to convince omar bongo that it was a bad decision. the french had big logging interests in gabon. and the biggest critics of the park were the fo reste rs. critics of the park were the foresters. —— parks. the first thing he did was ban the export of raw, unprocessed timber and within two months president sarkozy was in gabon trying to convince him he had made the wrong decision and it was a mistake. what omar bongo did was try to shift it in africa. britain, china, the us, have all been developed on cheap, raw materials from africa. and if going to develop african countries, if we are going to find t