It’s not every day a ghost is caught on camera, and this one has a trunk, tusk, and large ears. An elusive elephant dubbed a “ghost elephant” was spotted by a camera trap in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park. The animal is a critically endangered African forest elephant, so this sighting is energizing conservationists about saving the species.
The rare footage, captured by the wild cat conservation organization Panthera and Senegal’s National Parks Directorate, shows a glimpse of the forest elephant during an evening stroll. He pauses in the camera’s direction before carrying on walking in the moonlight, not realizing he’s providing the first images of his species in the park in five years.
Panthera & Senegal’s National Parks Directorate (DPN)
Back in the ’70s, some 450 elephants roamed the park. But when Ousmane, named after a veteran park ranger, was last seen in January 2019, he was thought to be one of only five to 10 of his kind still present. Because he’s the sole elephant to be photographed or filmed since 2020, researchers speculate that he’s now the only one left.
“Elephants are under immense pressure in West Africa. Only a few populations of the pachyderms survive in this region,” Philipp Henschel, west and central regional director of Panthera, said in a statement to Newsweek. “Niokolo-Koba National Park, where this individual was filmed, is the last area in Senegal where this endangered species survives.”
Elephants aren’t the only species Panthera and the Directorate are working to help restore. In 2011, the partnership began anti-poaching efforts and scientific monitoring initiatives to help critically endangered West African lions make a comeback in the park — and their population has since more than doubled. Last July, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee removed the park from the List of World Heritage in Danger, noting the “wealth of wildlife,” including lions, in the area.
Just a month before that, an endangered giant pangolin, the only one of Africa’s four pangolin species believed to reside in Senegal, was captured on camera in the park for the first time in over two decades. “Nobody suspected that the pangolin is still alive in [this park],” Panthera’s Coordinator of Fauna and Habitat Monitoring, Mouhamadou Mody Ndiaye, said at the time, according to New Scientist.
Now, officials hope to officially confirm if Ousmane is the last survivor in the park — and if so, whether or not introducing more elephants may be a possibility to give a much-needed boost to the overall population.
“Detailed surveys are currently underway to assess if the elephant we recently filmed, Ousmane, is the sole survivor in the park and therefore Senegal,” Henschel told Newsweek. “If this was found to be the case, we will assess the feasibility of translocating a herd of females into the park, so as to [find] a new breeding elephant population in Senegal.”
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