West Africa walkabout: The extra adventures of the elephant brothers

Over a month has passed since a pair of pachyderms packed their trunks and went walkabout in West Africa, and their wanderlust exhibits no signal of being sated any time soon.

After leaving the relative security of their prolonged-term wretchedness in Guinea’s Ziama Massif in August, the two African woodland elephants crossed the border into Liberia sooner than trekking around 200 kilometers across the country, leaving a trail of astonished and enchanted onlookers of their wake.

Not affirm material with a solitary mark of their imaginary passports, the outsized overlanders hold now ventured into Côte d’Ivoire. That you simply have to accept as true with that elephants would give a gigantic berth to any country with the observe ‘ivory’ in its title, however this brace of brothers appeared undeterred.

Given the prodigious distance that the elephants hold already lined, it could perchance per chance well be unwise to predict the put they are heading subsequent, however their overall trajectory means that they will most likely be aiming for Grebo-Krahn Nationwide Park, which could per chance well most likely snatch them encourage into Liberia, or most likely to Taï Nationwide Park, a World Heritage wretchedness and practically in regards to the final remaining expanse of pristine lowland rainforest in Côte d’Ivoire.

Without reference to their last destination, this pilgrimage is a splendid illustration of how West Africa’s remaining woodland elephants are now obliged to pass thru a mosaic of land-utilize forms, together with woodland fragments and agricultural landscapes, in disclose to reach forests extra afield. Above all, it underlines but again the significance of transboundary collaboration in natural world conservation, in particular the put big and extremely cell megafauna is concerned.

Fauna & Vegetation International (FFI) and our local partner in Guinea, Center Forestier de N’Zérékoré (CFZ), had been closely monitoring these two elephants—and the others remaining in Ziama—since 2016, and the experience and records bought at some level of that prolonged interval of observation has proved precious in supporting the efforts of the Liberian and Ivorian authorities to safeguard the unscheduled company.

The collaborative framework established by the slightly just a few Transboundary Panorama Administration agreements for Ziama–Wologizi–Wonegizi between Liberia and Guinea, and Taï–Grebo-Krahn–Sapo between Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire, has enabled the activation of communication between the slightly just a few conservation companions in disclose to provide protection to these elephants. For the first time, the governments of these three countries in the Mano River Union—which also contains Sierra Leone—hold approach together to safeguard natural world migrating across their borders.

Safeguarding the elephants thru negative-country collaboration

Attributable to multiple change visits across this transboundary landscape, natural world rangers from Guinea’s CFZ, Liberia’s Forestry Model Authority (FDA) and Côte d’Ivoire’s Ministère des Eaux et Forêts (MINEF) are conscious of the lie of the land across the borders in all three countries. Which potential, there is already an delivery channel of communication amongst the relevant professionals of their respective countries, which has been considerable in helping to construct obvious that these elephants are repeatedly chaperoned as they explore unusual territory.

As the brothers blazed a trail across Liberia, as an illustration, the elephants had been tracked for quite a lot of weeks by FDA rangers, with the enhance of neighborhood eco-guards. When the groups realized that the elephants had been heading for the Côte d’Ivoire border, they straight knowledgeable their Ivorian counterparts, at which level MINEF rapid deployed rangers on the bottom to take hold of over round the clock surveillance.

That spirit of collaboration has been many instances build to the test in latest days, with the elephants zigzagging between Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire, accompanied by rangers from the respective countries. On the time of writing, they are being monitored by Ivorian workers after crossing into Côte d’Ivoire for a second time on 13th October, however given their latest display screen fable, their truthful trudge could per chance well most likely no longer but be over.

Day-to-day updates on their space are being equipped, in disclose to make a greater perception into their migration sample. There is concept that the two males will most likely be following a historic route that used to be outmoded by elephants in the days sooner than the broader woodland landscape turned fragmented; it’s possible that the older brother could per chance well most likely hold accompanied his mother on one in all these journeys sooner than she used to be killed by poachers in 2016.

In mild of this, there is clearly an urgent desire to construct actual corridors to construct obvious the security of the elephants, as well to assorted migrating natural world and—crucially—the communities with whom they’ll inevitably approach into discontinuance contact. The Species Working Neighborhood of Liberia has established an emergency committee—which contains FFI, the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation, Liberia Chimpanzee Rescue and Security, and Elephant Study and Conservation—with a search to growing a prolonged-term motion concept to safeguard these and assorted elephants wherever they skedaddle for the interval of the Better Guinean Woodland landscape.

The success of such a initiative will no doubt hinge on continued collaboration between the natural world authorities of all three countries. The initial signs are extraordinarily encouraging and, for the sake of these ravishing elephants and West Africa’s assorted iconic natural world, we fervently hope that the finest is but to approach.