Saving the last West African giraffes in Niger

4 December 2018

For almost 50 years, the highly threatened West African giraffe has been absent from Niger's Gadabedji Biosphere Reserve.

Illegal hunting, climate change and habitat loss have all contributed to the population's decline.

An ambitious conservation initiative has now re-introduced eight giraffes into the reserve, in the first conservation effort of its kind for the West African subspecies.

Under the initiative, spearheaded by the Nigerien authorities, the eight giraffes were captured in the country's Giraffe Zone, a government-defined region approximately 60km (37 miles) south-east of the capital, Niamey.

Until this move, the world's last West African giraffes had only been found in and near this Giraffe Zone.

There, West African giraffes share their habitat with local communities, and compete with them for space and natural resources.

The animals face a number of threats, including human population growth, hunting and agricultural encroachment.

Giraffes have now started to migrate out of the Giraffe Zone as a result of the growing population of both humans and giraffes themselves.

As a result, the animals have come into conflict with humans who are not used to their presence, and also stray into restive areas on the border with Mali.

Read on  

Addax Facts: Endangered Antelope Faces Extinction

By Alina Bradford, Live Science Contributor | July 2, 2016 12:12am ET

The addax is a species of antelope. Addaxes are also known as white antelopes and the screwhorn antelopes. They are critically endangered; there may be only three remaining in the wild. Extinction may not be imminent, however; about 2,000 are kept in zoos and on ranches around the world.

Size & description

Male addaxes usually weigh 220 to 300 lbs. (100 to 135 kilograms), and females are about 10 to 20 percent lighter, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. They stand 37 to 45 inches (95 to 115 centimeters) at the shoulder. 

Both females and males have long, spiral horns that typically are 30 to 43 inches (76 to 109 cm) in length. The horns have 1.5 to 3 spiral twists, according to the Animal Diversity Web (ADW).

The addax’s long flat hooves are like snowshoes. They keep the animals on top of the ever-shifting sand so they don’t sink.

They have white or almost white coats that keep them cool by reflecting sunlight.

Habitat

The addax once ranged across northern Africa. Today, the only population is found in the Termit & Tin Toumma National Nature Reserve in Niger, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). This area is part of the Sahara Desert.

Continued ...

The dangers of working in conservation - And how vital it is to carry on in times of danger

The Sahara Conservation Fund continues its work across the Sahara despite the dangers

April 2013. Working in one of the world's harshest environments to save some of the world's rarest wildlife in the world's largest desert is a challenge at the best of times, and one that the Sahara Conservation Fund (SCF) has undertaken since its launch in 2004. Now however, with wars, uprisings and the influence of Al Qaeda spreading across much of the Sahara and bordering areas, the challenge for the SCF has added dimensions. 

Niger

When SCF first began its signature project in eastern Niger to establish the Termit and Tin Toumma National Nature Reserve and to protect some of the world's rarest species, like the addax, dama gazelle and desert cheetah, security was not an issue and one could work safely almost everywhere. 

After a spate of kidnappings in Niger and Mali, however, and then the war in Libya and its aftermath, armed military escorts were deemed a sensible precaution when travelling in the desert and carrying out regular wildlife research, protection and monitoring work. Unfortunately, since the war in Mali began earlier this year, security has further deteriorated and the vast desert area we work in is now strictly forbidden to westerners, with access severely regulated for national staff. 

Continued: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/scf-sahel.html

Scimitar-horned Oryx to be reintroduced into the wild in Chad

Extinct in the wild since 1990s - Courtesy of  Sahara Conservation Fund 
April 2012. The last wild scimitar-horned oryx probably died sometime in the early 1990s in the vast, open, sub-Saharan grasslands of Chad or Niger. 

The species' disappearance mirrors to a very large extent the colonization of its prairie rangelands by human beings and the growing impact of technology, changing land-use and climate change.

Once abundant - Hunted to extinction
The oryx was once abundant across its Sahelian habitat, from the Atlantic coast in the west to the Nile Valley in the east. For lack of accessible water for many months of the year, the area was only lightly occupied by nomadic herders. And while the oryx has always been a target of choice for traditional hunters, the odds were always in the antelope's favour until modern firearms and off-road vehicles made their appearance, first in North Africa, where the oryx became extinct by the mid- 19th Century, and then more gradually south of the Sahara.

Coupled with periodic drought, changing land-use patterns, habitat loss and civil strife, hunting has had a catastrophic impact on the oryx and many of the other species, like the addax and dama gazelle, with which it shares the Sahel and Sahara.

Chad was last stronghold
Up until its extinction in the wild, central Chad was the oryx's last major stronghold, with a population of at least 5000 animals occupying the Ouadi Rimé-Ouadi Achim Game Reserve, an Indiana-sized piece of sub-desert rangeland established in the 1960s specifically for the species' protection. Migratory in behaviour, it was possible to witness massed herds of oryx numbering over a thousand when gathered in undisturbed areas of fresh grazing.

Civil war
Civil war in Chad in the early 1980s put paid to all that but luckily a number of oryx had previously been captured and dispersed amongst zoos to form the basis of what is today the quite substantial oryx populations held in captivity in formal breeding programs and private collections.

Reintroduction into Chad
Since 2009, SCF has been spearheading efforts to develop a strategy for the restoration of the oryx. This has included range state and expert meetings, as well as two major ground surveys carried out by SCF and its partners, Chad's Wildlife Department and the Zoological Society of London, in the framework of the Pan Sahara Wildlife Survey.

Currently, SCF are working closely with Chad's Environment Ministry and the Environment Agency of Abu Dhabi (EAD) and other players to develop a project to reintroduce oryx back to the Ouadi Rimé reserve. In the coming weeks SCF will be carrying out further fieldwork and holding high level meetings in Chad to forward this initiative and to set out a timetable for the project's implementation. Both Chad and the reserve offer a very significant but increasingly rare opportunity to restore this magnificent animal back to its native habitat.

We would like to thank the following organizations for their generous support in this truly ambitious project: St Louis Zoo, Addax & Oryx Foundation, Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, Al Ain Zoo, Convention on Migratory Species, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, and the Antelope, Reintroduction, and Conservation Breeding Specialist Groups of IUCN.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/scimtar-oryx-reintroduction.html

Niger’s addax hit by drought & oil

Courtesy of the Sahara Conservation Fund - By John Newby, CEO

November 2010. The failure of the rains in 2009 was a disaster for many parts of the Sahel, with countries like Chad and Niger suffering major crises, widespread famine and loss of livestock.

Although highly adapted to cope with extremes of heat and aridity, desert wildlife, too, suffers when drought is severe and pastures poor in quality and quantity. For the first time in several years our project team in Niger witnessed firsthand the impact of drought on Termit's addax, with several dead animals found. Surviving addax were dreadfully thin and as such at greater risk from other impacts on their survival, such as the exploration and drilling for oil in their Tin Toumma stronghold. The construction of drilling sites and the constant heavy vehicle traffic is keeping the addax out of many key areas of pasture.

Already the indelible and totally inadmissible smudge of oil spills is polluting an environment that has remained pristine since its creation eons ago. On raising the issue with one person, I was told glibly that it didn't matter because it was only a desert!


Another significant impact of prolonged drought or poor grazing on desert ungulates is a reduction in breeding. Not only do pregnancies fall off but foetuses are aborted and young calves abandoned. Luckily, these same gazelles and antelopes seem capable of switching the reproductive process back on rapidly when conditions improve. We sincerely hope to see a bumper crop of young animals following this year's excellent rainfall.


As we recently saw in Chad, not only has the rain brought on a major crop of annual plants but has also kick-started a new age class of perennials that will hope-fully grow rapidly, establish themselves and prosper. Once well established, the tussock grasses and thorny shrubs will often last many years, providing addax and gazelles with food, moisture and even protection when big enough to provide shelter against the wind and sandstorms.

For the first time in several years the drought was too severe for some of Termit's addax, with several dead animals found.

http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/addax-niger.html

First record of Greater kestrel in West Africa

June 2010. Sharp eyes and attention to detail have again paid off with the discovery of a Greater Kestrel (Falco rupicoloides) in Termit (Niger), the very first record for all of West Africa. The bird was spotted and photographed by project leader, Thomas Rabeil, and his team on February 16, 2010, during regular wildlife monitoring work. Unlike anything they had seen before, photos of the bird were sent to several world renowned bird experts, including Ron Demey and Nik Borrow, authors of the definitive Field Guide to the Birds of West Africa, Tim Wacher (Birds of the Gambia and Senegal), and Joost Brouwer and Ulf Liedén of the online Niger Bird Database. Greater Kestrel was their unanimous response.

We always knew Termit was a treasure house of Sahelo-Saharan biodiversity and an important overwintering and stopping off point for migrant birds from the palaearctic region but this amazing find goes to further underline its importance for biodiversity on an even larger scale.

Greater kestrel
The Greater Kestrel, also known as the White-eyed Kestrel, is a small to medium sized falcon with a known range limited to the semi-aridlands of East and Southern Africa. The nearest known populations are in eastern Ethiopia. One can only speculate why and how it turned up several thousand kilometres from its known range. Birds of prey are known to migrate over vast distances and can be drawn into unfamiliar territory by storms or swarming locusts.


John Newby, Sahara Conservation Fund.