Pendjari Park Hopes to Be New Elephant Sanctuary in West Africa 30 January 2018, by Sophie Bouillon

Pendjari park hopes to be new elephant sanctuary in West Africa 30 January 2018, by Sophie Bouillon

Now Yoa knows how to tranquilise an elephant for 15 minutes to give the species a chance at survival against hunters desperate for their ivory.

The elephant was knocked out with an anaesthetising dart after being tracked through tall grass for almost an hour by an overhead plane and two pick-up trucks.

The extremely delicate operation—the animal could get hurt, or hurt people—was supervised by an experienced South African vet, who was brought to Benin especially to fit about a dozen collars on a herd of elephants and a pride of lions.

A herd of elephants gathers around a waterhole in "We need to know their movements to help us Pendjari National Park, northern Benin protect them," said Pete Morkel, his face weathered from years in the bush.

"West African elephants are fairly aggressive by Matthieu Yoa smiles at a job well done. The ranger nature because they've been slaughtered in this and his colleagues have just put a satellite tracking region for centuries." collar on an elephant in the Pendjari National Park in northern Benin.

"It was very strong," he says in halting French, visibly emotional about what he has just done to help protect the animal.

Although Yoa was born just a few kilometres (miles) outside the huge 4,700-square-kilometre (1,814-square-mile) park, the 23-year-old had never seen the wild animals until two months ago.

"Except in documentaries," he said.

He was finishing his studies to become a bricklayer when he read in a local newspaper that conservation organisation African Parks was African Parks veterinarian Pete Morkel, centre, and recruiting about 60 new rangers. rangers put a collar on a tranquilised elephant

He was one of the 35 students selected out of 1,700 candidates for the first batch. Hopes to double population

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Another particularity of West African elephants are their very small tusks.

"They also have smaller tusks, since poaching has changed their genetic make-up. All those with big tusks have been killed," he added.

Portuguese traders who arrived in what is now Benin in the 15th century bought ivory from the Kingdom of Dahomey and the trade reached its peak in French colonial times.

After a short lull in the 1990s, ivory smuggling restarted about a decade ago with the expansion of the Asian market. A graduation ceremony for rangers at the Pendjari National Park training facility near Tanguieta Last December, nearly a tonne of elephant tusks exported from Ivory Coast were seized in Cambodia. But to do so, it must first review security in Pendjari, The 279 tusks were likely headed for China, though which has been hit by a network of the country completely banned trading in ivory from traffickers—including some who work at the park. January 1 this year. Lessons for future rangers "The elephant population is small in West Africa and is essentially concentrated around Pendjari In a small newly built office, Marketa Antoninova, and the WAP, where there's no more than 6,000," project manager for African Parks, looks at bright said Jean-Marc Froment, head of conservation for lines on her computer screen. African Parks. "Thanks to GPS trackers, we can watch the The WAP is a vast cross-border park that covers movements of the deployed teams of rangers," she Pendjari in Benin as well as protected areas of said. neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. "They're leaving on seven-day missions on foot African Parks was chosen by Benin's government over about 50 kilometres (31 miles), across the in 2017 to run Pendjari. park, but we tell them their destination from day to day." It now wants to double the animal population in the next 10 years and be able to reintroduce elephants Previously, the rangers knew their patrol routes and other species in a number of West African before leaving Tanguieta, the river town where their parks. base is located.

"It was enough for them to let poachers know where they would be during the week," Antoninova said.

In the new training centre, 30 men in the second stage of tryouts climb up and down a stony hill under a blazing sun.

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Others take a class under a large canopy made of thatched grass converted into a classroom.

In notebooks decorated with football star Cristiano Ronaldo, the students write down the lessons: "What is a bribe?", "What is abuse of power?", "What is biodiversity?"

"The fight against poaching cannot be done only with weapons and bans," said Froment.

"You have to know how to communicate our passion, to understand why it's important to preserve nature and that can only be done with time."

© 2018 AFP APA citation: Pendjari park hopes to be new elephant sanctuary in West Africa (2018, January 30) retrieved 25 September 2021 from https://phys.org/news/2018-01-pendjari-elephant-sanctuary-west- africa.html

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