Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Numbers declined and by the early 90s it was estimated that the total number of both savannah and forest elephants had reached 63 to elephants in the entire country.
We used Pearson correlation to determine the correlation between the presence of forest elephant and site variables size of the forest, percentage of area converted into plantation, size of the forest left, size of human population inside the PA, poaching index, distance to the nearest road, population density in the Department, level of protection of the PA. To examine the effect of ecological traits on elephant extirpation, we used Principal Components Analysis PCA to check for multicollinearity among variables.
Based on dung count elephant presence was confirmed in only 4 of the 25 protected areas surveyed. PAs with higher level of protection have higher probability to be home of elephant population. The viability of these populations is uncertain, since they have a small size and are isolated. Aggressive conservation actions including law enforcement for the protection of their remaining habitat and ranger patrolling are needed to protect the remaining forest elephant populations.
Africa is home to at least , elephants, an estimated 5, of which are found in West Africa [ 1 ]. Genetic evidence suggests two distinct species among African elephants: the forest elephant Loxodonta cyclotis and the savanna elephant L. Among the large mammals of Africa, the elephant is probably one of the most affected by human activities.
The greatest threat to them in West Africa comes from habitat loss due to human encroachment [ 4 ]. Elephant habitat in West Africa has been fragmented, most of which are subjected to significant pressures from human population growth, the spread of agriculture, and livestock production surrounding the parks [ 4 ].
