New Trip Report: Senegal
Dominique Brugiere is just back from Senegal, where he bumped into Richard Webb. A difficult country to travel around independently, but some good mammals.
Senegal, 2019: Dominique Brugiere, 16 days and some good mammals including Pale Fox, Gambian Mongoose, Patas Monkey and African Manatee.
Jon
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
jeroen
Nice report and thank you too.
Very recognisable. I traveled by public transport there the first time. It guess it gives you a very real african experience, but not one I care for very much. The second time I was guiding a long tour there and then the scamming was everywhere indeed. One time I said to a police chief, who had kept us waiting in his office for a long time: ‘Okay: we will pay you the money, but just tell me how much please’. He then asked; ‘What is an average monthly income in your country?’ I replied with a straight face: ‘Well, that’s a difficult one, but I’d say about 15 euros’. ‘That’s your fine then!’ I hassled it down to 8 in the end…
African parks once was very busy taking over Niokola Koba but they gave up because not only the negotiating was pretty hopeless. IUCN: Despite the relatively good condition of the habitats within the park, the site is perilously close to becoming an ‘empty forest’, as most of the large mammal fauna has been lost to commercial poaching. The results of a detailed census (carried out in May 2006 by the African Parks Foundation, a Dutch NGO), suggest that populations of all ungulate species have suffered serious recent declines, with elephant now on the verge of extinction, buffalo reduced to about 457 individuals from an estimated 8,000 in 1990, roan numbering only 710 (from 6,000), and hartebeest 149 ( from 5,000 in 1990). Overall, there are now estimated to be a total of only about 2,115 large and medium sized ungulates (belonging to 11 species) in the park, and these are outnumbered by three times as many cattle, goats and sheep.
Pretty chilling… and that was 2006…