EcoWorldly

In the Sahara, life hangs in the balance. As nomadic lifestyles vanish, urbanization threatens one of the desert’s last elephant populations. Conservationists must work fast to quell human-elephant conflict in the most arid habitat on Earth.

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For two millennia, the Sahara Desert has been home to the Tuareg people. Nomadic pastoralists, the Tuareg have existed in a climate so barren that few others would consider life possible. These nomads, called the “Blue Princes” of the desert for the indigo turbans the men wear, were once the leaders of trans-Saharan trade between Mali’s fabled Timbuktu and the distant Mediterranean.

Subsisting peacefully alongside the Tuareg have been the desert elephants of Mali, the northernmost herd of elephants and one of the very last to survive in the parched Sahara. Like the Tuareg, the desert elephants are nomads. They roam an area of over 24,000 square kilometers, the longest recorded migration of any elephant herd.

But life is changing rapidly for the Tuareg and other nomadic peoples of the Sahara. In Mali, government agricultural development policies and subsidies are encouraging desert nomads to give up their traditional lifestyle and settle in towns and villages. As towns grow, so does the area’s human footprint. Development and agriculture are putting strains on water resources, disrupting the once peaceful coexistence between people and elephants. Without careful planning, say environmental groups, conflicts between elephants and people will likely worsen.

“The bad feeling of some pastoralists towards elephants,” said Mohamed Agbilal, head of a tribe at Tinabou, “came from the fact that in recent years the human population and the number of cattle increased in the region and led to the creation of settlements around the lakes. The competition between elephants and humans and their cattle for drinking water and for food has led to conflict between them.”

Luckily, there’s still window of time for successful intervention to alleviate the conflict and save Mali’s desert elephants, say conservationists. But they emphasize that now is the time to act.

Researchers from The WILD Foundation have already completed phase I of an extensive field study that gives critical information about the elephant herd’s composition and movements. Working in league with Save the Elephants, Africa Parks Foundation (Netherlands) and Mali’s Direction Nationale de la Conservation de la Nature, WILD is now preparing phase II, which will ultimately provide conservation guidelines for local communities and government agencies.

“Conditions are very favorable for developing a strategy to protect these desert elephants,” reports WILD’s field project page. “There is still considerable goodwill towards the elephants amongst local populations, there is strong interest in developing a conservation strategy from the highest levels of the Malian government, and development aid agencies have also indicated a willingness to coordinate agricultural development with conservation measures.”

Conservationists hope to convey the message that humans and elephants can still coexist peacefully, and they hope local communities and the government will be receptive to working out a solution. As O.Tall, a local elder herder put it, “there is space for everyone: pastoralists, transhumants, nomads, villagers and wildlife on condition that it’s known who belongs where.”

Image credit: Photograph by Carlton Ward, taken on location in Mali and used by EcoWorldly with permission from The WILD Foundation.

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