The climate is warm and humid, as exemplified by the nearby city of Bunia, which however is at a slightly higher elevation.

About one-fifth of the rainforest is made up of the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, a World Heritage Site.

It is also the home of the Mbuti pygmies, one of the hunter-gatherer peoples living in equatorial rainforests characterised by their short height (below one and a half metres or 59 inches, on average).

They have been the subject of research by a variety of outsiders, including Patrick and Anne Eisner Putnam, who lived on the banks of the Epulu River [fr] at the edge of the Ituri.

The Ituri rainforest was first traversed by Europeans in 1887 by Henry Morton Stanley on his Emin Pasha Relief Expedition.