Calabar, Nigeria, August 16, 2024 -- As Nigeria's elephant population approaches survival threshold, the federal government, supported by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Elephant Protection Initiative, has adopted a ten-year plan to protect the country's remaining 400 pachyderms. While its elephant population has declined by 99%, Nigeria has become the main exit point for wildlife products from Africa, with nearly a quarter of the world's seized ivory shipped throug...

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) has transferred four boreholes rehabilitated under the Watershed Protection for Safe and Sustainable Water Supply activity funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to three communities in Cross River State. 

 

A new study in the journal Biological Conservation has documented Nigeria’s staggering role in trafficking of wild pangolins, the anteater-like mammal whose scales are used in traditional Chinese medicines; all international commercial trade in pangolins and their parts is illegal.

Twenty participants from the National Park Service, Federal Department of Forestry, State Governments and NGOs attended a two-day workshop in Abuja from 23-24 June to identify sites where elephants are still found in Nigeria, as well as their status and threats. 

The Wildlife Conservation Society’s Nigeria Program released a series of camera trap images from Nigeria’s Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary revealing an array of primates and other wildlife that live in this 100 square kilometer (38.6 square mile) protected area that is smaller than the city of Paris.

A new study published in the journal Diversity and Distributions predicts massive range declines of Africa’s great apes – gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos – due to the impacts of climate change, land-use changes and human population growth.

The African savannah elephant and the forest elephant have now been classified as Endangered and Critically Endangered in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species^TM. 

WCS has released the first-known camera-trap images of a group of Cross River gorillas with a number of infants of different ages. The images were captured in the Mbe Mountains in Nigeria. Cross River gorillas (Gorilla gorilla diehli) are the most endangered gorilla subspecies, numbering only around 300 individuals and found only in an isolated region along the Nigeria/Cameroon border. Cross River gorillas are rarely seen, let alone photographed, even by remote cameras. Previously, camera traps ...

The EU announced a four-year, two million euro initiative to protect the Cross River Gorilla – the world’s most endangered great ape – and secure the Cross River National Park, while promoting sustainable livelihoods for communities that live adjacent to the gorilla’s forest home.

Three WCS rangers have won the African Ranger Award, which recognizes and supports the achievements and efforts of rangers working to combat the precipitous decline of Africa's wildlife species due to poaching, habitat loss, and the illegal wildlife trade.