Created in 2002, Minkébé National Park (MNP) is situated in the extreme northeast of Gabon, and covers an area of about 7560km². The Park is set within a huge forest block of 32260km² and is among the more intact and isolated forests in Central Africa. Today the forest is largely uninhabited, though in pre- colonial times, settlements were scattered through the forest. During the colonial era, resettlement planners moved villages toward roads and navigable rivers. Today, temporary hunting camps occur on the peripheries of the forest and gold mining communities live in the interior near the park borders. Baka pygmies from Gabon and southern Cameroon live throughout the northern sector of the Minkébé forest, where they are involved in large-scale elephant poaching for village-based gun owners and ivory traffickers. Minkébé is well known for its wildlife which includes a high density of elephants and other large mammals. However, the elephants of Minkébé are known to be threatened by poaching, notably in the north of the Park near the border with Cameroon. The park is managed by the government of Gabon with the assistance of WWF.
Elephant dung density inside the park was considerably higher than in the zone outside the park. Mean dung density outside the park in the high human impact stratum was of 4807/km2, in contrast to the density in the two strata within the park of 4981 dung/km2 (moderate human impact) and 6498 dung/km2 (low human impact). Unfortunately, an estimate of elephant abundance based on dung density is highly error-prone because dung degradation rates and defecation rates required for the conversion are not known for this site. However, using estimates of 90 days for degradation time and 19 defecations per day, an average elephant density of 3.1/km2, or a total of 29146 elephants in the total area of the survey zone, or 22678 in the Minkébé NP can be calculated. Among all MIKE sites that surveyed, Minkébé contained the highest dung density and due to its large area, probably holds the highest elephant population in the protected areas network of Central Africa.
The MIKE elephant inventory zone (above) included both the national park, and an area outside the park to the northwest known to be heavily hunted, in order to sample elephant abundance across a gradient of human impact. The survey zone with a total area of 9319km², was divided a priori into 3 strata of low, medium, and high human impact. Sixty-one systematically placed line-transects were connected by “recces” (survey paths of least resistance). Standardised methods (with small modifications) were used to count elephant dung, ape nests, a suite of other ecological and human signs. A team of technicians from WWF-Gabon completed the survey over a 10-month period (August 2003-June 2004).
Forest Elephant Survey