INVESTIGATION: How conflict with humans endangers Nigeria’s wild elephants

In mid-January, James Achu, a 62-year-old farmer from Cross River State, South-South Nigeria, was upbeat about the upcoming banana and plantain harvest season. He looked forward to benefitting from the high prices of food crops in the country. But his dream turned into a nightmare after forest elephants from the neighbouring Cross River National Park (CRNP) invaded his farm and left a trail of destruction in their wake.

 

Mr Achu’s farm is located in Bamba, one of the Mbe Mountain communities in Boki, Cross River State. In recent years, elephants have eaten crops and destroyed many farms in the communities that house one of Nigeria’s protected conservation areas.

After hours of navigating the narrow, bushy pathways to the invaded plots, the farmer and this reporter arrived at the sections of the 11-hectare farmland that the elephants have turned into their playground during the annual harvest seasons.

A large portion of the farm hosts cocoa, varieties of tall trees capable of producing choice woods, and herbs scattered across the dense forest.

Mr Achu showed this reporter a banana and plantain plantation located about 100 metres from a stream that separates the national park from the community forest. The plantation had been overrun by the elephants. With a bunch of bananas selling for N8,000, the farmer imagined how much money he would have made from his ruined plantation.

Several other farmers in the communities and in Bauchi State, where the Yankari Games Reserve is located, had the same experience as Mr Achu.

“There is no need for replanting because even if you replant, they (elephants) are still coming,” Mr Achu said, gesturing in frustration. “This year, I told them that I would not complain again; I am not a child. I know what to do.”

There are nine communities in the Mbe Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary area. The inhabitants are mainly farmers growing crops such as banana, plantain, bush mango (ogbono), cocoa, cassava and oil palm. PREMIUM TIMES gathered that elephants encroach farms in four of the communities— Bamba, Wula II, Bokalum and Abo-mkpang —which share boundaries with the Cross River National Park. The communities are about an eight-hour drive from Calabar metropolis in the Cross River capital.

The Cross River National Park is one of the largest remaining forest blocks in the Guinean Forest biodiversity hotspot. Both the Oban and Okwangwo divisions of the park are home to vulnerable species such as chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli), the heavily trafficked white-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis) and forest elephants. PREMIUM TIMES only visited the Okwangwo division axis in Boki Local Government Area.

Loggers operate between the Biakwan-Boki Local Government Area highway and roads leading to the Mbe protected areas. The persistent sound of chainsaws emanating from the dense forests highlights the scale of their logging operations, which are believed to be illegal. There are also lorries conveying logged wood, while statues of wildlife species and crops are at the entrance to each community.

Human Elephant Conflicts in Nigeria

Like the menace of farmer-herder clashes and kidnapping for ransom affecting many rural communities across Nigeria, the destruction of crops by elephants has become a significant problem for many farmers in Nigeria’s tropical rainforest and savanna ecological zones.

These elephants’ activities are fueling hostile behaviours among locals and posing significant threats to the population of the elephants. The farmers who spoke to our correspondent did not admit to killing elephants, perhaps because they know that the law prohibits this. However, some locals said angry farmers used to hire poachers to chase elephants away from their land.

Nigeria is among the few countries in Africa with a unique elephant population. The nation is blessed with both forest and savanna-dwelling species, scientifically known as Loxodonta cyclotis and Loxodonta africana respectively. It is estimated that about 90 per cent of Nigeria’s elephants are found in or close to protected areas (national parks, game reserves, etc), while 10 per cent live outside the protected areas.

However, the animals are facing greater threats from human activities and climate change.

“Scary trends”

In recent years, Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) has emerged as a predominant threat to the declining elephant population across Nigeria’s major ecological zones.

This issue is exacerbated by illegal logging, expansion of agricultural activities, and extreme weather events, among other contributing factors.

According to the Natural Resources Conservation Council (NARESCON), the main threats to Nigeria’s elephant population include poaching and illegal ivory trade, habitat loss and fragmentation, livestock grazing, HEC and legal/institutional challenges.

In 1974 and 1975 respectively, Nigeria signed and ratified the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). By implication, Nigeria is obligated to the responsibilities of implementing all relevant texts of the Convention in Nigeria, part of which is to enforce the law banning the killing of endangered species in protected areas and the illicit trafficking of protected animals and body parts.

In Nigeria, the Endangered Species (Control of International Trade and Traffic) Act, 1985 (Decree No. 11 of 1985) bans the killing of endangered animals. The law prohibits hunting, capturing, or trading in animal species threatened by extinction and mandates the government to conserve and protect wildlife in compliance with international treaties.

However, the laws governing conservation efforts are seldom enforced, largely due to the lack of political will.

In 2022, an investigation by PREMIUM TIMES and Mongabay found evidence of systematic failure by law enforcement and the judiciary to hold wildlife poachers and traffickers accountable.

Despite being a CITES signatory, over the last decade, Nigeria has emerged as a key destination, leading source and transit point for wildlife trade. Due to its porous borders, corruption, transport links to Asia, and poor law enforcement, wildlife traffickers have made Nigeria a key exit point for ivory smuggled from Africa to Asia.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), between 2009 and 2017, almost 30 metric tonnes of seized ivory, and in 2019 at least 51 metric tonnes of seized pangolin scales, originated in Nigeria.

Nigeria made its largest seizure of pangolin scales in January 2020, when officials recovered 9.5 metric tonnes of scales worth an estimated N10.6 billion ($25.9 million).

Meanwhile, to curb the killing of elephants for their ivory, the Nigerian government developed a national Ivory Action Plan in 2015 and joined the Elephant Protection Initiative (EPI) in 2018. Still, the booming ivory trade has remained unchecked amidst the failure to successfully prosecute individuals involved.

In 2021, the Nigeria Customs Service intercepted 18.7 metric tonnes of elephant tusks, rhino horns, pangolin scales and claws at various exit points across the country.

In February 2022, it seized 145 kilogrammes (320 pounds) of elephant tusks and 840 kg (1,852 lbs) of pangolin scales at a notorious market in the affluent Lekki district of Lagos.

As of November 2023, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, a critical indicator of the health of the world’s biodiversity and an essential tool used to inform conservation action and policy, assessed 5,213 species in Nigeria.

Of this figure, 503 (10 per cent) species were classified as threatened— critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable—and 162 (3 per cent) as “data deficient.”

The IUCN data showed that over the past three decades, Nigeria’s elephant population has declined from an estimated 1,200-1,500 to an estimated 300-400. Of this figure, about 200-300 are described as forest elephants, while about 100 are considered savanna elephants.

This prompted the IUCN to classify Africa’s forest elephants as “critically endangered” and the savannah elephant as “endangered.”

In August last year, the federal government, supported by WCS and the Elephant Protection Initiative, adopted a 10-year plan to protect the country’s remaining elephants. The ambitious plan, seen by PREMIUM TIMES, details the current situation and provides an urgent framework for the long-term conservation of elephants across the Nigerian territory.

“It’s essential to understand that this is a last-chance initiative, with irreversible effects if the plan doesn’t achieve its objectives, which is why it’s an operational plan, with clear objectives and a pipeline of funds,” said WCS Nigeria country director, Andrew Dunn, the lead author of the document.

“Saving Nigeria’s last elephants will require more than just funds; it will require a significant change in attitude at all levels and a paradigm shift by federal and state governments towards a realisation that human wellbeing and global health is inextricably linked to biodiversity loss and climate change,” Mr Dunn said.

In an interview with PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Dunn said Nigeria’s conservation laws are good but that the penalties to defaulters need to be updated to complement recent realities.

“Crop-raiding is impoverishing us”

For many farmers, however, the elephants are a menace. In Bokalum village in Cross River, a farmer, Tudi Akansi, known among locals as “Kaci muci,” a Hausa phrase which translates to “Eat let’s eat,” shared his experience with forest elephants.

The farmer narrated how elephants have been destroying cocoa, banana, and cocoyam farms in his community since 2005.

“Elephant farm raiding is impoverishing farmers in this community,” Mr Akansi. The father of 12 children stated that the farmers complained to the authorities, but nothing has changed.

“We complained to the National Park headquarters in Akamkpa. They told us that we should be exercising patience and that they would bring explosive mechanisms to scare the elephants away. Instead, it brought more elephants into our farms every year to date,” he said.

“Go to our farms, no agricultural activities are going on there,” the farmer added, stating that if not for the conservation education the community was receiving from WCS, they would be hunting elephants in retaliation.

“We are in the epicentre of elephant habitation and we just don’t have rest. We are just appealing for the federal government to come and take care of their elephants so that we will have rest,” he said.

Women farmers not left out

On a Friday morning in January, the sun cast a warm glow over the town halls of Cross Rivers’ Wula II and Bokalum villages, where a vibrant assembly of women smallholder farmers had gathered.

Their faces, lit with anticipation, reflected the dedication they had for their craft as they waited patiently for the arrival of this reporter and later took turns to exchange their farming experiences.

The atmosphere was alive with the sounds of chatter and laughter, filled with the promise of collaboration and knowledge-sharing among these resilient women, each with a unique story to tell.

The farmers took turns narrating how the presence of elephants negatively impacts their farming activities. However, they said the WCS was providing them with improved seedlings of Bush mango and cocoa, cash gifts and conservation training to support their businesses and reduce pressure on protected areas.

Their stories highlighted the resilience of farmers in adapting to wildlife interactions and finding ways to protect their livelihoods.

The story is different in some other Cross River communities, where farmers expressed frustration over a lack of government support and accused the National Park authorities of refusing to compensate for crops destroyed by wild elephants.

“Just as compensation is given to the Fulani farmers up north, it should also be extended to us here. We are all Nigerians. They (the government) should come and see how we are surviving too; either by way of support or outright compensation. Otherwise, there is no hope for this plantain or cocoa,” Mr Achu said.

Mr Akansi advised the government to prepare a zone in the conservation areas where the elephants can be reared educatively to prevent encroachment.

The Conservator General of the federation, Ibrahim Goni, and the CRNP Conservator of Park, Joseph Ntui, declined to comment on the issues when presented with our findings and the allegations made by community members.

However, a senior official of the Cross River National Park, who asked not to be named since he was not authorised to speak on the issue, confirmed to PREMIUM TIMES that they were aware of elephants raiding the communities.

“We cannot compensate the farmers because it is not sustainable,” the official said.

He explained how the farmers contribute to the problem.

“They cultivated their farms too close to the national park so the elephants could easily stray into the farms because they didn’t allow the buffer area trees in the community forest to remain. They have cut down everything because they want to farm,” the national park staff told PREMIUM TIMES.

On 4 March, Victor Abang, a lawmaker representing the Ikom and Boki local government areas in the House of Representatives, raised a motion on the killing of citizens and destruction of crops by wild elephants in Boki.

He said many residents and farmers in Bamba and surrounding areas were unable to access their farms because they feared elephants from the national park would attack them.

“The continued killing of citizens and destruction of farmlands by these elephants has severely impacted the local economy and food security. Even as we speak, these wild animals continue to ravage farmlands in Bamba and surrounding communities in Eastern Boki, worsening the plight of our people,” the lawmaker said.

“If urgent measures are not taken by relevant authorities to protect the affected communities and their farmlands, frustrated locals may resort to self-help, endangering both human lives and the already threatened elephant population,” he noted.

Casualties in Yankari

As in Cross River, PREMIUM TIMES observed that many farms close to the Yankari Games Reserves in Bauchi State, northeastern Nigeria were invaded by wild elephants from the reserve.

Adamu Muhammad lamented that his maize, cassava and bambara nut (Okpa) farm, located about a kilometre from the Yankari reserve boundary, was completely ravaged by Savanna elephants last September.

“If there’s a way to eradicate the elephants, I’ll be glad because they always eat up my crops,” Mr Muhammad told PREMIUM TIMES in Hausa.

The farmer said he projected to harvest between 25 and 30 bags of Okpa nuts last year but got only 12 to 13 bags while his cassava and maize seedlings were eaten up a few days after they were planted.

Despite complaining to the appropriate authorities, he said he was given no compensation.

“Even this year, we cultivated a bulk of bambara nuts (Okpa) and they ate it completely. Same with maize. As it is right now, we just need help. We don’t even have food because the elephants ate them all,” the farmer who said he has been struggling to feed his two wives and 13 children said.

Several farmers across the Ya’wan Duguri, Gwana and Pali villages surrounding the Yankari reserve, shared similar experiences.

But unlike the CRNP, which is managed by the federal government, the Yankari reserve is managed by the Bauchi State Government and co-managed by WCS. The reserve contains the largest savanna elephant population in the country. It covers 2,244 square kilometres of Guinea Savanna woodland and is bisected by the Gaji River. Dry savanna woodlands and riparian vegetation, which support the thriving of animal species such as buffalo, hartebeest, baboons, and elephants, were observed during a visit in February. Unlike the southern part of Nigeria, the Yankari reserve area is characterised by tall grasses, shrubs and trees.

Human-elephant conflicts have been reported to be frequent, particularly during their annual wet season movement out of the park. However, with the expansion of irrigation season farming practices around the reserve area, farmers’ conflicts with the savanna elephants now cut across both seasons.

While poaching for ivory and human-elephant conflict are the primary threats to the elephant population in Cross River Park, human-elephant conflict is the major danger to the approximately 100 remaining savanna elephants in the Yankari Reserve.

At least six cases of human-elephant conflict are now reported monthly in the region, an analysis by WCS showed.

“One elephant carcass was recorded around the Buri area of the reserve, the first elephant carcass recorded since May 2015. There was no sign of a gunshot to indicate if the elephant was shot. Although the ivory was missing it was removed after the carcass had decayed, and we believe that the elephant most likely died from natural causes,” WCS said in its annual report.

Between 2018 and 2019, the wildlife organisation said three people were killed by elephants around the Yankari Games Reserves in Bauchi State. It, however, said the deaths occurred not as a result of conflict but because overzealous villagers were trying to get too close to the elephants to take photographs.

Regardless, the presence of roaming elephants in communities adjacent to protected areas highlights the significant habitat loss that is increasingly driving these animals away from their natural reserves and into surrounding inhabited areas, inadvertently exposing them to harm.

During PREMIUM TIMES’ visit to both Cross River and Yankari, it was observed that there are no buffer zones between the park/reserve and the community forests to control spillover animals.

Farmers also did not leave enough buffer between the parks/ reserve and their farms.

In Yankari, PREMIUM TIMES observed that locals have farmed a community forest that could have served as a buffer for the wildlife. On the corridors of the reserve, farmers were spotted burning wood for charcoal.

In an interview with PREMIUM TIMES, Yankari Game Reserve’s Principal Wildlife Officer, Naziru Zakari, said the reserve contains the last viable elephants in the country.

“If we lose them, it means we have lost all our elephants in the country,” the official said.

Asked if they had been seeing dead elephants in the reserve, Mr Zakari said the last time he saw elephant carcasses was about eight years ago.

“In most cases, it is the poachers who used to kill the elephants. I have only witnessed a case of natural death of an elephant since I got employed here,” he said.

Ongoing efforts

The WCS established a network of 18 elephant guardians around the reserve to provide an alert whenever elephants stray onto local farms.

Insert picture of a beehive, smelly fences and watch towers in Yankari

The organisation is also piloting the use of bee-hive fences, ‘smelly-fences (a concoction of fermented organic materials)’ and watchtowers around Yankari to deter elephants from local farms and reduce human-elephant conflict.

In his intervention, Isaac Bessong, an indigene of Boki and student at the University of Calabar currently researching HEC around the Mbe Mountains, urged the federal government to do more to conserve endangered species in the area.

“Elephants often leave the national park to damage crops, leading farmers to retaliate by killing them. This is causing a decline in the elephant population,” Mr Bessong said.

“If anyone goes against the law, the community should be the one with implementation, because the government can’t do it if the community partnership and collaboration are very weak,” he noted.

Page planned and produced by: Oladayo Jonathan

Infographics by: George Kaduna

This reporting was completed with the support of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development as part of the Centre for Investigative Journalism’s Open Climate Reporting Initiative.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in Nigeria supported our reporter to access some hard-to-reach communities visited for this investigation.