For the first time in six years, an elephant was seen in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park. Grainy black-and-white footage shows Ousmane, a bull 35 to 40 years old named after a park ranger, in the forest at night, stopping to look at the camera trap that recorded his presence. Ousmane hadn’t been seen since 2019. At the time, just five to 10 elephants remained out of the hundreds that once roamed there. With no recorded sightings for years, conservationists questioned whether any were left there. “[This video] reignited hope that elephants are in the park,” said Philipp Henschel, regional director for West Africa and Central Africa for the conservation nonprofit Panthera, which installed the cameras in Niokolo-Koba National Park in partnership with Senegal’s National Parks Directorate. “He might not be the last elephant currently alive in this ecosystem.” Henschel added that Ousmane is a hybrid, his ancestry a mix of critically endangered African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) and savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana). https://imgs.mongabay.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025/06/17113910/Ousmane.mp4.mp4 Ousmane, the bull elephant that was captured by the camera trap in Niokolo-Koba National Park recently. Video courtesy of Panthera. Elephants’ demise across the region, and the continent, began during the colonial era. Intensive poaching for ivory, combined with disappearing habitat, decimated West African herds. Niokolo-Koba’s elephants were hit hard, dwindling from a few hundred in the 1960s to fewer than 10. Other wildlife numbers also declined so dramatically that UNESCO added Niokolo-Koba to the World Heritage in Danger List. But conservation and monitoring programs launched in…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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