During 6 months and a half, I covered an area of 900 squared km in the SW of the Park. I found chimpanzee signs in most of the area, at least 5 different groups still thrieving in good health. Poaching had affected them, but they weren't decimated yet. The local mixture of traditional animist and muslim beliefs had led poachers to target many other species better than chimps, allowing these incredible animals to survive.
Elephants were also still there. Maybe not the great herds that roamed the savanna in the last century, but good family groups of forest elephants dwelled in the gallery forest. How all these great animals had remained undetected for most of the last decade?
They had learned to become invisible.
I used for this preliminary phase of the Comoé Chimpanzee Conservation Project a simple light equipment that allowed me to work fast and cover as much area as possible. As part of the equipment, I used 20 camera-traps that I placed in the most promising hot spots of the chimpanzee territories. Beside the many chimps that I will introduce to you in next posts, we got many other animals, proving that, despite all the poaching, the Comoé National Park was still full of an incredible diversity of big vertebrates.
You can get a first glimpse in this video:
ANIMALS OF COMOÉ NATIONAL PARK