Caught on digicam.
This lone elephant turned into filmed by a digicam entice in Niokolo-Koba Nationwide Park last year.
Senegal’s elephant inhabitants has been decreased to honest a handful due to a long time of poaching, deforestation, and habitat encroachment.
So this rare sighting in a a long way off residence has introduced hope to conservationists.
Senegal has one in every of the most threatened elephant populations in Africa, with the inhabitants in the Niokolo-Koba park diminishing from 450 in the late Seventies to between 5 and 10 currently, according to the Elephant Disaster Fund.
“We have conducted extensive surveys in the park since 2021 now, covering the entire park with camera traps. And so far we only have evidence of one single elephant,” says Philipp Henschel, a plants and fauna conservationist and Regional Director, West and Central Africa, with Panthera.
“But there have been rumours, most recently from a truck driver crossing the park, there’s a national highway bisecting it, and this truck driver said he saw three elephants and he’s sure that that was elephants and so there is a little hope that we have a tiny group of elephants left in the park.”
Conservation groups sigh the sighting reinforces the want to enhance anti-poaching patrols, restore habitats, and work closely with within sight communities to lower human-elephant struggle.
The park is acknowledged for its extraordinary biodiversity and ecosystems, which led to its inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage Articulate checklist.
But plants and fauna depletion, poaching and mining meant it turned into attach on UNESCO’s pains checklist from 2007 to 2024.
Steps to kind out the issues, including monitoring plants and fauna, combating poaching and illegal gold panning, and a mine pollution administration system indicate the park is no longer considered as to be in pains.
And elephants agree with a role to play in keeping the habitat healthy.
“It’s important for the park, also for the park ecology because they’re such an important species to have. They push down trees, that can bring in growth of grasses, the grasses are important for herbivores grazers like the buffalo and other antelope, those in turn are important for the lions that we’re trying to protect,” says Henschel.
“So, the elephant is what we call the keystone species. So, for the park it would be an advantage to bring them back, but it also needs to be acceptable for the local population living around the park and so this is, I think, the big question that we need to answer.”
The African savanna elephant is currently listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List, with populations all the intention in which by intention of West Africa facing steep declines due to illegal hunting and shrinking pure habitats.
