Saving the Sahel
by Howard Youth
On a map, the ecological zones of the Sahel appear to stack up like the layers of a cake, according to ecologist John Newby. In this case, he’s describing the desert, not dessert. A senior advisor for the species program at the Switzerland-based World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF International), Newby speaks lovingly and knowledgeably about the Sahara’s southern boundary, the Sahel. He lived there in the 1970s and fell in love with its varied fauna, including endangered antelope that Newby and his colleagues hope to help restore to some semblance of their former abundance.
In Arabic, the word Sahel refers to the “shore” of the sea of sand, but the transition from grassland to desert is more varied than you might imagine. “The characteristic soil types, vegetation, and climatic zones are in north-to-south-running layers,” Newby explains. Moving north, rainfall decreases, and acacia-studded savanna fades gradually to tussocky grassland. Spotty vegetation patches then yield to a stark, gargantuan span of mountains, rocks, and sand—the mighty Sahara.
Although the stacked habitat layers vary in thickness, they are generally thin but very wide. The Sahel spans from Atlantic-hugging Senegal east to Egypt’s Nile Valley, a distance roughly equal in width to the United States. Yet aside from its inhabitants—mostly nomads, livestock herders, and subsistence farmers—and foreign hunters, few pay any attention to this fragile region, something Newby, Smithsonian’s National Zoo veterinarian Steve Monfort, Zoological Society of London wildlife biologist Tim Wacher, and others hope to change.
Chad and Niger hold some of the most promising remaining habitats, which is why the team set their sights on surveying Chad first, to be followed later this year by Niger. They hoped to get a fix on the status of the remaining antelope and other wildlife, and figure out the potential for conservation programs there. Only recently has Chad emerged from almost three decades dominated by civil war, unrest, periods of deadly drought, and war with Libya. Last year, Monfort, Newby, and Wacher traversed 2,100 roadless miles—roughly the distance from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, Utah—in three Toyota Land Cruisers. They were joined by two other biologists, including Djadou, a Chadian wildlife official, two Chadian drivers, a Chadian cook, and two Italian outfitters. Traveling eight hours a day in temperatures that at times exceeded 115 F, they surveyed wildlife, animal tracks, habitat quality, livestock, people, and other landscape components—usually while on the move. In the evenings, they plotted many of these features using Global Positioning System devices. Their careful mapping and plotting of geographic coordinates will enable scientists to track future changes. Thanks in good part to Newby’s fluent Arabic, the team also interviewed locals to try to locate rare animals. What they found was surprising.
First, in many places the Sahel vegetation was the lushest Newby had ever seen. “We’d drive through vast stretches where there was nothing, then—boom—the habitat would change. It just depends where rainfall was or wasn’t.” The growth of grasses, trees, and shrubs will sustain wildlife large and small for the next decade. Other areas, missed by the recent rain, seemed listless and barren. “The desert comes to life with water, that’s for sure,” says Monfort. Despite exceptional rainfall that left large areas of lush forage, the team could not locate species that were once abundant in the area. “It was like the ‘Empty Forest Syndrome,’ where equatorial rainforests look fabulous, but the wildlife is not there because it’s been hunted out,” says Monfort. Thanks to tips provided by local nomads, the team did spot 15 dama gazelles, the world’s largest gazelle species. These elegant white and reddish desert antelopes are extremely skittish. Most were found in only one small area. “We were surprised that they were so confined,” says Monfort, “and it confirmed that these animals are under pressure and in danger of extinction there.”
Following nomads’ advice, the team was lucky enough to find a pair of desert phantoms. On the heat-shimmered horizon, they spotted two distant—and very wary—addax. Perhaps a few hundred of these corkscrew-horned antelopes survive in the wild in remote pockets of the Sahel and Sahara. Among antelopes, this species is best adapted to desert, wandering widely in response to infrequent rains. Their hardiness usually puts them beyond reach of grazing livestock and hunters and is perhaps the reason they’ve yet to follow the fate of one enigmatic creature that the team could not find: the scimitar-horned oryx.
“Interviews with nomads revealed no sightings of oryx in 20 years,” said Monfort sadly. Once hundreds of thousands of scimitar-horned oryx inhabited the Sahel, frequenting lush areas that are also popular with hunters and livestock herders. The white and rust-orange desert wanderers are now believed to be extinct in the wild. Sustained drought likely dealt the final blow. Despite tireless searching, the team could not locate other once-characteristic creatures. Cheetahs (Acinonyx jubatus) did not show, and members of the region’s endemic red-necked ostrich subspecies (Struthio camelus camelus) were nowhere to be seen either. The world’s largest bird, the ostrich lays the world’s largest egg on bare ground and is an easy mark for human hunters. “They’re really getting it from both sides,” says Monfort. “Adults are being killed and the eggs are being robbed.” In many parts of Chad, it’s likely that the ostrich now shares the fate of the oryx. So have the many human settlements that once ringed Lake Chad, a shrunken lake straddling Chad’s western border with Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon. Two thousand years ago, the lake extended much farther into Chad’s interior where, today, smooth dry lakebeds stand out on the sun-baked plains. On these lonely expanses, Newby, Monfort, Wacher, and their colleagues found many giant catfish bones, pottery shards, stone tools, as well as old ostrich eggshell fragments.
RENEWING RAINS
Despite a dearth of larger animals, the generous winter rains did benefit other wildlife. The team saw more than 4,000 tan-and-white dorcas gazelles, including many young ones. These greyhound-sized, short-horned animals sometimes browsed for leaves within sight of nomads’ camels. The team benefited from the expert birding skills of both Wacher—author of a field guide to birds of Senegal and the Gambia—and Newby. They identified almost 200 bird species, including colorful bee-eaters and rollers and three types of bustard. Some of the Sahel’s small, dun- colored mammalian predators also made frequent appearances, at least to the camera traps Djadou and Wacher set up each night. Lured by leftover meal scraps, curious animals tripped infrared beams that triggered the cameras. Fennec fox (Vulpes zerda), a denizen of open, sandy plains, and the golden jackal (Canis aureus), which popped up in habitats from grassland to desert-stranded palm groves, were the most common. Pallid fox (Vulpes pallida), Ruppell’s fox (Vulpes ruppelli), African wild cat (Felis libyca), and striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) made cameo appearances, while pawprints were all that revealed the presence of a pair of sand cats (Felis margarita).
As illustrated by the Chad survey, the rain-thirsty Sahelo-Saharan region—while not the world’s most biologically diverse area—is very important for wildlife. In addition, many of Europe’s migratory birds, from tiny warblers to stately storks, also winter there. Yet the region has received little public attention. Monfort, Newby, and Wacher have made improving prospects for Sahelo-Saharan wildlife their joint mission. Monfort, a long-time expert on the reproductive biology of scimitar-horned oryx, has helped breed this species at the National Zoo using artificial insemination. At least 2,000 currently live in zoos and other institutions worldwide. But Monfort thinks that restoring animals to the wild is the next important step.
“I realized that unless someone spearheaded a reintroduction effort, all of our work with the captive management of the oryx would be for nothing,” he says. In 1998, at a meeting of zoo scientists dedicated to antelope breeding, Monfort proposed, and later helped found, the Sahelo-Saharan Interest Group (SSIG). This informal international network now consists of scientists from 14 countries who share research and survey information and strive to chart a course for conserving the region’s antelope and other wildlife. Two recent projects spearheaded by SSIG members included the Chad and Niger surveys, as well as other endeavors for training, park development, and reintroduction efforts in Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal, and Algeria. Where possible, these projects target reintroducing antelopes, Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia), ostrich, and other animals. Newby is also launching a nonprofit organization called Living Deserts, which he hopes will not only increase awareness of desert wildlife’s plight but also help devise programs and incentives that involve local people in conservation efforts.
Following this year’s Niger trip, Monfort, Newby, Wacher, and their SSIG colleagues plan to push ahead with establishing an Africa-based, arid-land wildlife breeding facility. “The current state of most wildlife populations [of large Sahelo-Saharan animals] requires some form of reintroduction,” says Newby. A regional breeding facility would establish a stock of animals and provide a place to train wildlife managers and set up regional conservation programs. Once on the ground, the center will probably take about two years to get going, according to Monfort. “Then, realistically, we’re talking about five to ten years to get animals back into the wild,” he says. North American and European zoos will be crucial in training African officials to manage Sahelian wildlife.
Nomads in the north drive their camels across the Sahara as they’ve done for centuries, putting relatively little pressure on the ecosystem. In contrast, widespread poverty and a harsh climate dictate that most Chadians and Nigeriens in the southern Sahel try to coax millet from scrabbly soil or herd livestock. Fearing the toll the next drought might take, herders desperately breed as many head of cattle as possible and gravitate toward drilled water wells that keep the herds alive. Traditionally, fewer herders ranged more widely in search of forage for their animals, having less impact on the land. Today’s boom-bust mentality and an unwillingness to move herds leads to widespread over-grazing, which degrades habitats important to desert antelope. “With wells, you get herds with access to water but no grazing. You can get a classic dust bowl situation out there,” says Newby. Compounding this problem, well-drillers frequently hunt wildlife found near their work sites.
The big problem, according to Newby, is that inhabitants lack alternatives, and there’s very little buffer between good and bad years. “Right now, the situation is not improving, so people are destroying their habitat for want of better alternatives,” he says. Moreover, the human population is growing fast: Chad has 8.7 million people, and Niger has 10.3 million, growing by 3.3 and 2.7 percent each year, respectively. But the team remains upbeat about balancing the needs of Sahelo-Saharan people and wildlife.“We believe antelopes and people can coexist,” says Monfort, “but both antelope and people of the Sahel are nomadic, and any winning conservation strategy will need to deal with the fact that both compete for the same resources.”
Yet, even if local people work toward more sustainable grazing practices, another uncontrolled menace plagues Sahelo-Saharan wildlife—over-hunting. For years, wealthy Middle Eastern hunters and resident soldiers, riding in four-wheel-drive vehicles, hunted the now-extinct oryx. Today, they chase down dorcas gazelles, bustards, and other wildlife. “The impact on wildlife of poor land use from herding pales in comparison to the impact of over-hunting by hunting parties,” says Newby.
Since the team’s most recent survey in Chad, they have learned that tourist hunters from Persian Gulf states have driven into the Ouadi Rim-Ouadi Achim Faunal Reserve and killed 470 Nubian (Neotis nuba), white-bellied (Eupodotis senegalensis), and Arabian (Ardeotis arabs) bustards. “We were extremely disappointed. Someone granted them access to the area, and money was certainly involved,” says Monfort. Newby shares Monfort’s disappointment. “Any kind of benefit the rains brought is totally wiped out by unsustainable hunting.” Except in a few big-game hunting zones in the south, hunting is illegal in Chad and Niger. However, enforcement is difficult. Chad and Niger have central governments, but many areas are governed regionally by tribal factions whose support will be critical to the success of any conservation initiatives. In addition, hunting parties sometimes buy access to wildlife areas from local government or leaders by paying for a mosque, a well, or some other community project. While conservationists plot their strategy for how to balance human and wildlife needs, zoos already supply some Sahelo-Saharan countries with antelopes the zoos have been breeding for years. For logistical reasons, most antelopes reintroduced into North Africa derive from European zoos, a factor which limits genetic diversity. “This situation must change in the future,” says Monfort, “because a substantial proportion of the [gene pool] needed for establishing a ‘world herd’ exists in North American zoos.”
Although the challenges are daunting, the region’s wildlife picture is not all bad. Tunisian national parks have embarked upon reintroduction programs to acclimate, breed, and release Cuvier’s and slender-horned gazelles born in German and Spanish zoos and scimitar-horned oryx from six zoos in five countries. In two Moroccan parks, addax, oryx, dorcas gazelles, as well as introduced dama gazelles and ostrich, are in place or being introduced. In Algeria, where political violence led to a government ban on firearms, wildlife populations are bouncing back. Barbary sheep, cheetah, Cuvier’s gazelles, and addax populations are growing, and oryx and dama gazelles may someday be reintroduced there.
Since the mid-1980s, Senegal, at the Sahel’s far western corner, has hosted a growing herd of dama gazelles and scimitar-horned oryx. From eight gazelles, contributed by a Spanish zoo in 1984, and eight oryx given by an Israeli zoo in 1999, the populations have increased to 49 and 18, respectively. These animals live in a 20-acre enclosure within a faunal reserve, and the opportunity to observe the behavior and welfare of these pioneer animals has made officials better prepared for future additions.
These introductions bring up an important step in restoring Sahelo-Saharan antelope populations—though not an ultimate solution—which is the issue of fencing. “All reintroductions in North Africa to date have involved fenced releases,” says Wacher, one of the world’s foremost experts on antelope reintroduction. Wacher does much of his work at the King Khalid Wildlife Research Center in Saudi Arabia, a wildlife reserve and breeding center run by the Saudi National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development. There, he helps manage one of only two unfenced arid-land antelope releases. What Wacher and his colleagues learned by studying released sand gazelles (Gazella subgutturosa) in Saudi Arabia will apply to efforts to restore Sahelo-Saharan antelopes. “When you put a whole population together, they radiate out and over the course of time they span a very, very large area,” Wacher says. Over a period of 18 months, a majority of the gazelles ranged between 770 and 1,160 square miles. However, 300 gazelles ranged up to 15,400 square miles—an area about the size of Maryland and Delaware combined. Some even popped up in neighboring Yemen.
The largest North African fenced area is nearly eight square miles—100 times smaller than the average home range of the Saudi antelope. “What that tells you straight away is that you’re never going to restore the ecology of a species in an area like that,” says Wacher. “Fenced areas are very useful tools to instill interest and get projects off the ground, but it’s not really a reintroduction at this point if you mean to restore natural processes,” he says. In Saudi Arabia, Wacher also monitors a fenced area of 770 square miles into which oryx and gazelle were introduced. After fewer than ten years, the gazelle population crashed when drought stressed the animals and they concentrated in one fenced corner of the reserve. Wacher is not against fenced releases in principle, but warns that even 770 square miles is not enough, and there must be hands-on management. “In the central Sahara, that might not be easy to do. There must be somewhere in the Sahara where you can reintroduce these animals on a big scale,” says Wacher. Yet, fenced releases mark an important beginning, an example of how—from zoos to fenced enclosures to open range—the region’s wildlife may someday tiptoe its way back to prominence, with local involvement, institutional cooperation—and a little bit of cooperation from the weather.
—Howard Youth is a contributing editor to ZooGoer.
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ZooGoer 31(3) 2002. Copyright 2002 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.
