LANDSCAPE CONNECTIVITY AND WILDLIFE CORRIDORS IN EASTERN SENEGAL

This project aims to secure functional landscapes for west African large mammals while ensuring human-wildlife coexistence across different land-use systems—national parks, hunting zones, and community reserves and across the gradient of Guinean and Sudanese savanna and Sahel in Eastern Senegal. The protected areas are crucial strongholds for large mammal conservation but are limited in extent and increasingly threatened by climate change.

Target landscape and wildlife corridors represent critical habitats for large mammals, including predators (West African lions, leopards, African wild dogs), West African chimpanzee, and many species of herbivores. Besides Critically Endangered Western giant eland and vulnerable Western hartebeest, which are currently restricted only to Niokolo Koba National Park, and vulnerable red-fronted gazelle restricted to Community reserve Boundou, there are several species which are still distributed over the whole area of interest, as western subspecies of roan antelope, bushbuck, red-flanked duiker, and warthog.

Key activities include monitoring wildlife community diversity and target species distribution through camera trapping, assessing landscape connectivity through genetic diversity, movement patterns, and diet resources, and identifying critical mammal habitats within each land-use type. The project also emphasizes empowering local communities by integrating their ecological knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes into management decisions.