OMO FOREST RESERVE, Nigeria — Sunday Abiodun, carrying a sword in one hand and balancing a musket over his other shoulder, cleared weeds on a footpath leading to a cluster of new trees.
The rangers are focused on nearly 6.5 square kilometers of strictly protected land where elephants are thought to live and is a UNESCO-designated Biosphere Reserve, where communities work toward“The rangers’ work is crucial to conservation because this is one of the last viable habitats where we have forest elephants in Nigeria, and if the entire area is degraded, we will not have elephants again,” Olabode said.
“Back then, I used to see students on excursions, researchers and tourists visit the forest to learn about the trees and animals I was killing as a hunter,” he said. “So, I said to myself, ‘If I continue to kill these animals for money to eat now, my own children will not see them if they also want to learn about them in the future.’”
The roughly hourlong journey from their administrative office to the camp is difficult, with a road that is impassable for vehicles and even motorcycles when it rains. But once there, ecologist Babajide Agboola, who mentors the rangers and helps document new species, declared, “This is peace.” The rangers have installed motion-detecting cameras on trees in the most protected part of the forest to capture footage of animals and poachers. In a 24-second video recorded in May, one elephant picks up food with its trunk near a tree at night. Other images from 2021 and 2023 also show elephants.
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