Program:

The desert elephants of Mali (a joint project of ICFC and Wild Foundation)

Purpose | Actions and Results | Background
Slide shows: Fire-breaks | Awareness/Education Campaign

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Program Partners and Personnel

Our partner for this project is the Wild Foundation (WILD). Based in the U.S., WILD has been working in the Gourma area of Mali since 2003 and with Save the Elephants has studied the Gourma elephants and their range, migrations and conservation needs.^{1, 2}

The key personnel for this program are WILD President Vance Martin, Project Leader Dr. Susan Canney of Oxford, U.K., and Nomba Ganame, who works full-time on the project in Mali.

Additional support for this project from parties other than ICFC is going towards (1) the costs (mainly construction of boreholes and cisterns) of relocating people from Lake Banzena, funded by the governments of Mali and the USA; and (2) conservation related teacher training and educational outreach and ecotourism development, funded by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Background

Elephants once occupied a largely continuous range across West Africa, from the coastal forests to the Sahara, but are now restricted to small, fragmented and geographically isolated populations, over half of which contain fewer than 100 individuals. Numbering an estimated 350-700 individuals in 2004-2005, the desert elephants inhabiting the Gourma region of Mali are a notable remnant population. Possibly because of the tolerance of local people, the isolation of the region, and their small, low-quality tusks, this population largely escaped the rampant poaching that extirpated populations across the Sahel in the 1980s. The largest population in West Africa, they are accorded high priority in the World Conservation Union's regional elephant strategy.

To cope with the widely dispersed and variable nature of the Gourma's resources, the population has evolved a unique nomadic strategy that includes a migration circuit of around 600 km. They range broadly throughout the year from the bend of the Niger River in Mali during the dry season, southward to the border region with Burkina Faso during the wet season.

Elephants historically lived in relative harmony with the peoples of the Gourma, but the recent trends of reduced rainfall, along with the spread of agriculture, ranching, settled human communities and water development programs have changed the relationship between elephants, humans and the Sahelian ecosystem. Humans and elephants are now competing more for the same land, crops and water resources.

In the last months of the dry season the population was dependent on two large lakes — Gossi and Banzena. Settlement around Lake Gossi in the 1980s ended its use by elephant herds. More recently, Lake Banzena has come under pressure from transient cattle herders and a new settlement of several hundred people who moved to the area following the installation of a well.

In the last seven years, studies have detailed the migration and ecology of the Gourma elephant population¹ and elephant-human conflicts at Lake Banzena². A surprise finding, for example, is that 96% of the cattle using Banzena belonged to "prestige herds" owned by wealthy urban-dwellers. A key conclusion of the studies is that Lake Banzena must be freed from human use to ensure its continuance as critical habitat for elephants. This can be accomplished through a combination of measures that are a priority of this project. Other aspects of our work address the need to protect elephant habitat elsewhere along its annual migration route.

Elephants at Lake Banzena. (Nomba Ganame)

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1 Canney, S., K. Lindsey, E. Hema, V. Martin, I. Douglas-Hamilton. 2007. The Mali elephant initiative: a synthesis of knowledge, research and recommendations concerning the population, its range and the threats to the elephants of the Gourma. Wild Foundation, Save The Elephants and Environment and Development Group.

2 Ganame, N., B. Bah and A. Maiga. A study on the liberation from human and livestock pressure of Lake Banzena in the Gourma of Mali. 2009. (English summary of a larger study in French). Wild Foundation and the Mali Ministere de L''Environnement de de l'Assainissement and the Direction Nationale Des Eaux et Forets.

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Purpose

The project entails crucial steps to protect key habitats for elephants of the Gourma region of Mali. It is part of a longer term effort to secure the future of this northern-most elephant population through lasting protection of important dry season and migration habitats.

This effort involves:

• freeing Lake Banzena (critical habitat late in the dry season) from human use through (a) voluntary relocation of a small resident community and (b) discontinuing free access by transient cattle herders;
• establishing community and inter-communal conventions (local laws) to reserve habitat for elephants;
• participation in planning and meetings with government to encourage regional land use that is compatible with elephant needs;
• educational outreach and assistance with ecotourism development.

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Actions and Results

Freeing Banzena from Human Use

The project began by tackling the early stages of relocating the recent human settlement at Lake Banzena. The settlement was agreeable to relocating to an area of suitable pasture if water infrastructure could be provided there. Steps involved (the first two have been completed) are:

• Meetings with local people to establish the best location for resettlement, at a safe distance from elephant habitat;
• Establishing and training management committees and structures for the first borehole at the relocation site and determining the location for the remaining two or three boreholes;
• Overseeing the construction of the boreholes and cisterns;
• Following relocation of community members, overseeing initial implementation;
• Establishing a grain store/shop in the relocation area to prevent the need to travel to Banzena;

The use of Lake Banzena by transient herders was also disallowed and a system introduced whereby local communities will charge fees to use water and pasture resources elsewhere in Gourma.

Governance and Management of Elephant Reserve and Pastoral Reserve

In recent years elephant conservation has been advanced through community and inter-communal conventions that designate areas as protected elephant habitat. Building on this success, we supported communities in formulating conventions reserving Lake Banzena for elephant use, governing use of boreholes at the relocation site, and establishing a new pastoral reserve.

These local agreements have formal state recognition and the force of law. As project leader Dr. Susan Canney explains, they are "the core part of the social process at work". Inter-communal conventions bring adjacent communes together to review the areas in their communes that are used by elephants and to agree on rules of use. They specify the activities allowed and not allowed along the elephants' migration path, along with the community structures required for their monitoring, sanctioning and enforcement. Local conventions do the same thing but at the smaller scale of the area controlled by a single community.

Two key tools have emerged that make our approach innovative and workable:

• The designation by the local community of their new lands as sylvo-pastoral reserves, creating a legal mechanism by which the community can regulate resource use in its area of influence;
• The official designation of Brigades of Surveillance to protect the elephant reserve at Lake Banzena from human use; brigade activities are formalized in conjunction with government technical services.

The community also organized to create fire breaks needed to protect the new pastoral reserve; as a result, it was the only part of the north Gourma that did not burn in the period December, 2010-January, 2011.

The pastoral reserves were deemed such a good idea by adjacent communes that they followed suit, designating adjacent areas to make a total of 80,770 hectares of protected pasture.

Surveillance brigade (above); Fire brigade (below). (WILD)

Fire-breaks in the Gourma

The following slide show was modified from a presentation by Dr. Susan Canney, who remarks:
Every year the Gourma loses much of its resources in pasture and forage to bush fires which sweep through the grassy areas during the dry season when the grass is tinder dry. These are generally caused accidentally from activities such as tea-making, or smoking, but in the south, agriculturalists may start them in order to prevent the transhumant cattle herds from staying in their area.

A pastoral reserve is made to ensure that there is pasture through the dry season but it needs to be protected by fire breaks. These take a good deal of effort to construct but are very effective if done properly. They also require a great deal of community organization to bring differing clans and ethnicities to work together. Supporting this activity is a good way to instantly increase the amount of natural resources available to the population. 1_firebreak_tractor.jpg##This fire-break was built by the Banzena community using a tractor. 2_firebreak_furrow.jpg##<time=10> Here, for the fire-break protecting the pastoral reserve, the guide furrow has been cleared by camels dragging branches behind them and going over the same area several times. 3_firebreak_camels_rakes.jpg##<time=10> Camels were used and branches repeatedly dragged to form a furrow. An area of 30m to one side of the furrow is then cleared to form the fire-break. 4_firebreak_team_of_12.jpg##A team of 12 clear the vegetation with rakes. 5_firebreak_backburn.jpg##<time=10> Where the grass is long the vegetation is cleared by back-burning from the guide furrow against the wind to make control easier. 6_firebreak_short_grass.jpg##<time=10> Where the grass is short, the grass is not cleared by burning because the fire takes too long to pass and burns the seeds in the soils. 7_firebreak_beater.jpg##<time=10> The fire is controlled using beaters, as demonstrated by project staffer Nomba Ganame.

Education and Outreach with Surrounding Communities and Government

Another important aspect of the project is education and raising public awareness of the changes and the reason for them. Examples of community outreach include:

• Customized messages for radio broadcast that advertised the planned end to the provision of well water at Lake Banzena;
• Educational outreach related to elephants, ecology and conservation;
• Completion of a Tourist Code of Conduct brochure for local ecotourism;

Outreach with various levels of government has also been key in gaining support for the project, and it allowed us to engage in wider planning processes to protect elephant habitat.

Slide show: Awareness/Education Campaign   play   stop   <previous   next>  

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Assessment and Future Priorities

Things are going well. Malians take pride in their elephants and are receptive to measures to accommodate their needs. The relocated community and other residents of the area are enthusiastic partners in the process.

Some overarching results:

• the Banzena process has expanded over a larger area, and is thereby much strengthened as adjacent communities join in;
• there is 100% support from the top levels of government in the Ministries of the Environment and Agriculture;
• we are establishing the firm foundations of an approach that can be adapted and replicated throughout the elephant range, and elsewhere.

Our future priorities include:

• continued engagement with government officials towards harmonizing the Mali government's Regional Structure Plan with elephant needs;
• ongoing support of the relocation, and the creation of additional water points;
• monitoring and adaptive management at Banzena and the pastoral reserve;
• ongoing community workshops and radio emissions to ensure understanding of the process and the new regulations, plus the reasons, by all users;
• training workshops about elephants and audiovisual equipment that will be kept by a women's co-operative who can organize screenings of films about elephants and natural resource management (and raise some funds by charging a small amount).

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