IN SEPTEMBER 2002, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg, South Africa, the famously diminutive president of Gabon, Omar Bongo, made a startling pledge: His Colorado-size nation, long known for its oil fields, would create a system of 13 national parks that together would constitute more than 10,000 square miles of equatorial rainforest—better than a tenth of the country's total land mass.

Gabon's virgin forests and indigenous wildlife, including the world's largest remaining population of forest elephants and the second-largest of gorillas and chimpanzees, had lately come to the world's attention via the exploits of WCS biologist Mike Fay, who traversed the country on foot as part of his 1,200-mile Megatransect. Unlike most of its neighbors, Gabon seemed to be in a position to afford its parks: With proven oil reserves of 2.5 billion barrels and a population of fewer than 1.5 million, the country enjoys a per capita income of $5,900 a year, approximately four times higher than the average for most sub-Saharan nations. Still, no one had expected Bongo to make such an extravagant gesture. Percentagewise, a WCS press release noted, only Costa Rica has set aside more land for conservation, though its total park acreage is much smaller. WCS committed more than $12 million over three years—about half of it foreign-aid money drawn from the $53 million that the U.S. government gave for the Congo Basin Forest Initiative in 2002—to help Gabon with the project. No logging or mining would be allowed in the parks, and development would be limited to small, eco-friendly tourism ventures and research facilities.

"By creating these national parks, we will develop a viable alternative to simple exploitation of natural resources that will promote the preservation of our environment," Bongo said. "Already there is a broad consensus that Gabon has the potential to become a natural mecca, attracting pilgrims from the four points of the compass in search of the last remaining natural wonders on earth."

Given the press coverage that Bongo's country has received ever since, you might be forgiven for thinking that the floodgates had opened. Gabon's parks have been glowingly written up everywhere from The New York Times to O: The Oprah Magazine, whose editors put it on the list of "Five Places to See in Your Lifetime." In short, it's hot. So hot that, according to White, within ten years the country could conceivably see more than 100,000 visitors annually.

If you do actually get to Gabon, however—and that's not easy, given the distance, exorbitant airfares, and the inconvenient fact that the national carrier, Air Gabon, shut down last March—you'll come away with a slightly different take.

"Right now, there are 1,500 real tourists a year, maybe 2,000," says Patrice Pasquier, a Frenchman who runs Mistral Voyages, one of the country's few full-service travel agencies. "Let's be frank. I don't see 100,000 or even 50,000 in ten years' time. How many rooms [in the parks] would that take? Fifteen hundred? How many are there now? Not even 100. And let's not even talk about the state of our infrastructure."

The problem isn't limited to a lack of planes or rooms or roads. The Gabonese themselves may not be ready for the service business. "We envision a top-of-the-line client, but first we must identify the levels to which people must be trained," says Franck Ndjimbi, marketing chief for the Conseil National des Parcs Nationaux.

"The long-term success of the parks is linked to the success of tourism," says White. "We're going to have to change the mentality, to the point where the Gabonese actually smile at you. That's our job over the next ten years."

It's not just the Gabonese who need convincing. A couple of months before we set off down the Djidji, I went to the Bronx Zoo to listen to White and another major player on the Gabon project, John Gwynne, make a lunchtime presentation to the WCS staff. White, 41, was one of the driving forces behind Bongo's decision to create the park system; his 2001 proposal to protect important Gabonese wilderness areas was adopted by the president virtually in its entirety. Gwynne, 58, is not an Africa specialist at all, nor even a trained scientist, but an artist and landscape architect who runs the zoo's Exhibitions and Graphic Arts Department.

At the time Bongo created the parks, White noted, Gabon's oil production had peaked and the government was beginning to think about the transition to a diversified economy. "Like it or not," he said, "they've decided it is an economic project."

Then it was Gwynne's turn to speak. The first step, he said, was to create a new "global destination": the African Rainforest. "Yes, at first it's a wall of green, and we have to part that—it's critical to see animals," he said. "But we have to look to Costa Rica's success, presenting the overall experience as much as the animals." There was, he added, one more challenge: "This is a place where chimps and gorillas haven't seen people. They're not afraid. How do we bring thousands in without screwing up the Garden of Eden?"

An hour went by, and only a handful of people left. The crowd seemed intrigued but skeptical. It was a big step, a conservation-and-research organization taking on a tourism project, welcoming Mammon to the temple.

"How do you bring in investors and not lose control?" someone asked.

"What are your standards for ecotourism?" another wanted to know. "It's like the word healthy on a cereal box—what does it mean?"

Those were the specific questions. The bigger question, the one that hung in the air as the meeting broke up, was the same one we'd be asking two months later on the banks of the Djidji: Are we getting in over our heads here?