
By ALISTAIR THOMSON
Reuters News Agency
Friday, January 4, 2002
Page A9
MONT PEKO, IVORY COAST -- A large round footprint in the mud shows where an elephant had stood while devouring the succulent pods from cocoa trees. "They have destroyed everything; what can we do?" asked a woman cradling a young child outside her mud house.
It is rare for people to complain about elephant sightings in Ivory Coast. Despite its name -- or rather because of it -- most visitors to the West African country leave without so much as a glimpse of the reclusive creatures.
The herds that remain after centuries of hunting tend to stay deep inside half a dozen parks and protected forests, such as Mont Peko in the west of the country. Experts are not even sure how many elephants are left.
Hugo Rainey, a British zoologist, was studying hornbill birds in Mont Peko when the elephants sallied forth last month, destroying the cocoa crops.
"Every night there was drumming and whooping to keep the elephants away," he said. "But in spite of the drumming, we found the elephants had been raiding crops about 300 metres from our camp."
"I haven't seen that before in Ivory Coast; normally the elephants here are so shy you never hear about them," he said.
Such reticence is not surprising. During the 1980s, when poachers killed an average of 200 African elephants a day for their tusks, the population plummeted to an estimated 625,000, down from 1.3 million in 1979. A 1989 international ban on ivory trading is credited with saving the species.
Herds in southern and eastern Africa have since recovered, but populations in West Africa appear to have lagged behind.
Estimates of Ivory Coast's herds range from a few hundred to the low thousands. In a 1998 report, the African Elephant Database listed 51 definite sightings and said dung counts and other clues suggested there could be as many as 500 in the country.
"We don't know how many elephants there are," said Tano Sombo, head of Ivory Coast's nature protection service.
"We don't know if they are venturing out of traditional havens in the national parks more now because there are more of them, or because their habitat in the parks is being destroyed."
Ivory Coast's lush primary forests have been slashed by uncontrolled logging, and a recent study estimated that only two-fifths of the country's forests remain.
After trees have been felled, the land is often used for cocoa plantations or subsistence farming, leaving the elephants with an ever-decreasing territory.
In Mont Peko, farmers asked the local authorities to help scare off the elephants, but little happened beyond a couple of officers coming to shoot guns into the air.
"In Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe crop raiding by elephants is more of a problem, so there are projects to curb it without harming the elephants," Mr. Rainey said. "Here there are none."
On elephant paths through Mont Peko's virgin forest, occasional piles of fibrous dung sprouting rice and cocoa seedlings bear witness to stolen crops.
Elephants feast on rice and the yellow and red cocoa pods whose beans make Ivory Coast the world's top cocoa producer. They love the leaves and nutritious tuber of cassava, which they unearth by gripping the stem with their trunks, kicking away at the base and destroying everything around it.
Frustrated farmers are reluctant to take action against the invaders, and not only because of the legal ban on hunting. Most locals believe elephants are protected by a spell and say anyone who tries to harm them will be cursed.
Ivory Coast's elephants are mainly forest dwellers, shy and smaller than their savannah cousins.
Their ears are often tattered, torn as the animals move through dense forest.
The desire for ivory is not the only threat to the elephants here: They are also hunted as food.
"Elephant meat is good. People say different parts taste different: Some bits are like chicken, some like beef," said Venance Ollo from the northeastern Ivory Coast, where elephant flesh is prized.
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