As the world’s largest terrestrial mammal, the elephant has acted as a majestic symbol of the African continent for thousands of years. In recent times, West African populations of the species have become extremely vulnerable. An estimated 90 per cent of their range has been destroyed. This loss of habitat and illegal killing raised concerns about the future of this threatened species.

The West African Elephant Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) provides an international framework for Range State governments, scientists and conservation groups to collaborate in the conservation of elephant populations and their habitats. The MoU was launched under the auspices of the Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) on 23 November 2005, in close cooperation with the African Elephant Specialist Group (AfESG) of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (IUCN/SSC).

West African Elephant Range States include Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. An up-to-date list of the MoU’s Signatories can be found in its Agreement Summary Sheet.

Conservation Status

Centuries ago, the African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) inhabited most of the African continent. In traditional African culture, the elephant represents power and strength. Besides their symbolic importance, elephants also play an important ecological role in both savannah and forest ecosystems.

Today, elephants are found in 37 sub-Saharan African countries, with the largest populations in Southern and Eastern Africa. Often overlooked is the dire status of elephants in West Africa.

Elephant habitats include both humid forest and the arid Sahel. As people move into these areas, elephants have less space and the number of human-elephant conflicts increases. Roads and railways also split the elephant range into isolated populations. Two-thirds of these populations have less than 100 elephants, a problem since larger groups have the highest probability for long-term survival. Even larger populations are faced with numerous threats including illegal killing and rapid habitat loss.

Action Plan

These problems cross borders between countries, much as the elephants themselves do. Furthermore, the conservation status varies significantly between countries. These concerns led a number of governments and non-governmental organizations to begin sub-regional elephant conservation efforts.

The AfESG has worked on elephant conservation issues since the 1970s. With support from the World Wide Fund for Nature, AfESG developed the Strategy for the Conservation of West African Elephants in 1999. Around the same time, CMS set out to develop a legislative and institutional structure that governments and other groups could use to coordinate elephant conservation efforts.

AfESG and CMS then combined efforts. The AfESG strategy was appended to the MoU and forms an action-oriented basis for ongoing conservation efforts. AfESG is working on behalf of the CMS Secretariat as the MoU’s coordinator in addition to acting as the technical advisor to the MoU. The MoU allows stakeholders to meet regularly to review strategies and implementation.

The strategy to conserve elephants and their habitats in West Africa has three main components: to better understand the status of elephants, to maintain and possibly increase the numbers and to improve elephant habitats. To do this, governments and organizations want to better understand and control the ivory trade, reduce the rate of habitat loss, curtail the illegal killing of elephants, work on collecting better information to improve understanding of elephant conservation, improve cooperation and other activities.

Activities

Governments and other groups have been involved in a wide range of activities to protect elephant habitat and populations. The MoU aims to facilitate further collaboration since in West Africa, many of the most viable elephant populations span the national boundaries of two or more countries. The MoU provides an intergovernmental structure to help monitor and coordinate conservation activities. As the MoU coordinator, AfESG provides technical assistance to catalyse transboundary conservation activities and implement existing national conservation strategies. The AfESG also helps prepare meetings and enables information sharing.

AfESG has provided technical assistance for a number of conservation activities.

Efforts are underway to provide important elephant conservation corridors between Burkina Faso and Ghana. The Eastern corridor includes the Nazinga Game Ranch and the Kaboré Tambi National Park in Burkina Faso and the Ghana north-east forest reserves. The Western corridor would create a link between the Mole National Park in Ghana and Nazinga Game Ranch in Burkina Faso. The AfESG facilitated a dialogue between stakeholders over managing the two corridors.

A feasibility study has been launched to manage a migratory corridor between the Gourma elephant reserve in Mali and the Sahel Burkina area in Burkina Faso.

In 2006, an action plan was developed for the Ziama-Wenegisi transfrontier elephant conservation corridor. This area includes forested land in south-east Guinea and a proposed natural reserve in north-west Liberia which are rich in biodiversity and contain numerous endemic and threatened species such as the African Elephant.