June 24, 2008 — Many Malians are unaware that 344 elephants live in Gourma, a southern Niger River region in the northern part of Mali.
Lake Gossi is visible from National Road 16 in Gourma. It is an important permanent water source once used by hundreds of elephants. Because of increasing human activity, the lake is now used by only a few male elephants.
As part of a recent visit by the World Bank to Gourma, I had the opportunity, along with a number of colleagues, to observe the Gourma elephants in an area near the village of Inadiatafane. According to the inhabitants of the village, some elephants enter the village at night to eat tree leaves. They also have been known to destroy village property.
Very early on the day following our arrival we encountered a herd of about forty elephants gathered together on a sand dune. Heeding the advice of PCVBGE project officials, we maintained a safe distance, facing the wind in order to prevent the animals from picking up our scent. We observed the herd in silence.
It was a remarkable sight. These mastodons, who consume several metric tons of food, are forced by the bareness of the surrounding environment to eat tree leaves, prickly shrubs and deadwood.
The elephants share the same desert area with the residents of the region and, according to the Gourma Biodiversity Conservation Project (PCVBGE), a Malian government project funded by the World Bank, may soon perish.Pachyderms once occupied the entire Malian territory, but in recent years have been forced by an increasing human population into Gourma, where food and water is scarce. With the exception of a few others, the Gourma elephants are the only ones left in Mali.
To save themselves, each year the Gourma elephants embark on a 600-kilometer journey that is their annual migration. They move south, avoiding populated areas, along watercourses and thickets that provide shade and cover. Toward the end of the dry season the elephants converge on Banzena, an area in the south of Gourma. When the rains begin, the elephants continue south in search of food, trekking through the Porte des elephants hills, the last remaining pass not blocked by human settlement. Along the way, the elephants stop in Hamniganda, near the Burkina Faso border, to take advantage of the vast salt marshes. They then return north.
Despite the elephants’ efforts to save themselves, without intervention they will die from lack of water and food.
The Gourma Biodiversity Conservation Project is hoping to save the elephants by promoting coexistence between the animals, nature and their human neighbors in an area where resources are scarce.
Launched in 2005, and funded for a six-year period, the project covers three administrative regions in Mali (Mopti, Tombouctou and Gao) and 18 communes.
The group works in four key areas:
The establishment and effective management of conservation areas by the Conservation Area Management Associations (OGACs);
the improvement of the capacities of beneficiary communes to plan and manage biological resources in their own development programs;
the coordination by these communes to plan and better organize management of their land and biological resources; and
the ability of public institutions to provide advice to and help the communes and communities to manage their biological resources.
So far, PCVBGE has been able to establish conservation areas on seven sites; launch a biodiversity awareness campaign on local radio in the six languages spoken in Gourma; and conduct an elephant survey in the local community.
The local residents, who have embraced the project, say resources are needed to continue.
"While biodiversity conservation and development go hand in hand, development can only take place with funded local initiatives," said the Mayor of Douentza, a town in Gourma.
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