What factors are driving this forest loss?

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The international demand for natural resources like African rosewood, diamonds, gold & other minerals…

puts a massive strain on Sierra Leone’s few remaining wild spaces. Rural community members and their land are exploited to fuel this demand. Often communities receive little to no benefit, aside from the prospect of physically intense, illegal, and often dangerous work for less than 5¢ a day.

Before 2018, no roads existed inside the Outamba Kilimi National Park. Today, wide roads for logging trucks criss cross the landscape, all to fuel the overseas demand for tropical hardwoods. These activities disrupt wildlife, causing elephants to flee the forest and travel closer to villages, chimpanzees to look for food in farmer’s fields, which also cause issues for the communities who have shared their space relatively peacefully with wildlife for generations.

What would you do to support your family?

While habitat loss due to natural resource extraction is one of, if not the, main threat to wildlife in Sierra Leone, it’s not as simple as stopping the extraction from happening. People living in the rural areas around Sierra Leone’s last wild ecosystems often have no options for earning a cash income. Many people are subsistence level farmers, often not even growing enough to feed their families, and almost never having a substantial amount to sell. While the jobs like logging and mining are not seen as desirable they are usually the only option.

Uncontrolled slash and burn agriculture alters landscapes and puts people at risk.

While burning and agriculture have gone hand in hand for centuries around the globe, uncontrolled burns in savanna landscapes like those in northern Sierra Leone can cause widespread damage. Villages have burned down when a wind shifts and a fire moves the wrong way. The fires spread across the Outamba Kilimi National Park every dry season, which slows forest regeneration. This is particularly crucial as the park has just experienced a mass logging event which began in 2019. These fires also pose a risk to wildlife, cause habitat disturbances, and can make it harder for animals to find food.

When wildlife can’t find food in the forest, they venture onto farms. Because the people living alongside this wildlife are subsistence level farmers, and any lost crops mean hungry days for them and their families, farmers will do anything to protect their crops.

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Wildlife populations are struggling to recover from centuries of exploit.

Ivory, pygmy hippos, and leopards, oh my.

Elephant tusks used to be exported from Sierra Leone by the thousands, and during colonial rule, British soldiers could head to the north of the country and kill as many as 10 elephants in a single sport hunting trip. Today, it is estimated that less than 150 forest elephants remain in Sierra Leone.

Dr. Geza Teleki, who helped establish Outamba Kilimi National Park, Sierra Leone’s first national park, said in 1986: “The colonial government continues to tolerate all forms of wildlife exploitation.”

The small country of Sierra Leone attracted the attention of primatologist, Dr. Teleki, due to its massive export of chimpanzees to medical laboratories in the United States of America. Teleki could not understand how sometimes up to 250 chimpanzees per year were being exported from a country the size of Sierra Leone. After managing Jane Goodall’s field site, Gombe, for several years, Teleki and colleague Lorri Baldwin conducted the first chimpanzee survey in Sierra Leone in 1979 and estimated that there were only around 2,000 chimpanzees remaining in the country. After negotiating with President Siaka Stevens, the President agreed to put a ban on all animal exports if Teleki could raise the money to establish the first national park in Sierra Leone.

This trade that Teleki managed to halt, very nearly before Sierra Leone was completely depleted of wildlife to feed an ever-growing international market, started with a German-American named Henry Trefflich. Trefflich ran an enormously large wildlife importing company based out of New York City. Though he sourced animals from across the globe, his only international base was in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It was said by the end of his 40 plus year career he had imported 1.5 million monkeys, over 4,000 chimpanzees, and a wide variety of other species from around the world. This trade was eventually taken over by two new players, one of whom was the notorious Dr. Frans Sitter, known locally as the one armed white man, he operated over 200 pit traps and handed out hundreds of guns in Northern Sierra Leone to ensure he had a steady supply of wildlife. He also ran a hunting safari camp at what is now the Outamba Kilimi National Park tourist centre. He exported pygmy hippopotamus, leopards, and all manner of reptiles in addition to thousands of chimpanzees.

Sierra Leone’s wildlife also played a major part in launching the career of Sir David Attenborough. Attenborough’s first television appearance came when he appeared in front of the camera, rather than behind, as intended, as he went on an animal collecting trip for the Zoological Society of London and the Museum of Natural History in London. He spent several weeks traveling across the country in the 1950’s collecting baby animals of all sorts to bring back to Britain, including a baby chimpanzee and several hundred birds.

This type of animal collecting has persisted in Sierra Leone, and today it is easy enough for any foreigner to buy any wild animal that they want. Unfortunately some people believe that they are helping the animal by purchasing them to get them out of the situation that they are in. This is never the case as any time an animal is purchased by a visitor to Sierra Leone it reinforces the idea that these animals are worth catching to be sold. Please never buy any wildlife or wildlife products as you will only fuel the demand, whether you intend to or not. If no one will pay for the animals, people will stop selling them.

Never purchase wildlife or wildlife products like bone, shell, or skins.