The Washington Post - USA (2020-09-14

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MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A


NATIONAL OFFICE OF PROTECTED AREAS OF BURKINA FASO

A blanket covers the body of a ranger beside a pickup truck that was torched by insurgents.


PHILIPP HENSCHEL/PANTHERA

A lion in W-Arly-Pendjari park. Skins sell for up to $2,100, according to conservation group Panthera.


BY HENRY WILKINS
AND DANIELLE PAQUETTE

ouagadougou, burkina faso
— T he land used to be a tourist
magnet, a haven for elephants
and lions. Now park officials in
the West African nation of Burki-
na Faso say extremists have
turned wildlife reserves into a
battlefield, targeting rangers and
exposing endangered animals to
poachers.
“ One of my colleagues was
killed right in front of me,” said
Brahima Kabore, 34, a ranger in
the country’s east.
T he forest takeover marks an-
other violent chapter in Burkina
Faso’s four-year fight against mil-
itants loyal to al-Qaeda and the
Islamic State who are vying to
control vast swaths of West Afri-
ca. The government-protected re-
serves offer a double dose of value
to armed groups, analysts say:
secluded places for hideouts and
illegal poaching activities to ex-
ploit.
A ttacks have doubled in Burki-
na Faso’s rural areas every year
since 2016, forcing more than a
million people from their homes
in what the United Nations has
called the world’s fastest-growing
humanitarian crisis.
T he conflict has also devastat-
ed tourism in the country, which
drew crucial income from camp-
ers, hunters and animal lovers.
Now leisurely excursions
throughout the verdant, hilly ter-
rain are unthinkable, park offi-
cials say. Even the guardians have
retreated.
Two years ago, more than 100
rangers worked in reserves across
eastern Burkina Faso. “Now they
have all withdrawn to the out-
skirts,” said Paul Djiguemde, who
leads the force.
A t least eight rangers and local
guides have died in the chaos
since 2018, he said. So have doz-
ens of Burkinabe soldiers who
were sent in to protect them.
A ssailants have torched every
ranger station but one in the
Burkinabe section of the 4.2-mil-
lion-acre W-Arly-Pendjari park.
(The transnational property,
which is also part of Niger and
Benin, is nearly twice the size of
Yellowstone National Park.)
Visitors from around the world
once flocked here to enjoy the
sights. Now no one enters the
woods without a military escort.
Dozens of rangers have re-
ceived combat training in an ef-
fort to strike back, guiding special
operations through the grounds,
park officials say. The fighters
hide their weapons and train in
the otherwise uninhabited forest,
which offers rare leafy cover in
the semiarid region.
Kabore, a Burkinabe ranger
since 2011, signed up to protect


his country’s wildlife.
The job was simpler then. He
loved spotting animals. His favor-
ite are lions.
“Despite the harm that this
animal can do, it is a shy animal
when we walk in the park,” he
said in a recent phone interview.
“It hides.”
When peace began to fray, Ka-
bore volunteered to train with the
army and join special missions to
search for extremists.
One day in 2018, the men
received a tip about an enemy
hideout. They sneaked through
the woods with rocket launchers.
Then they fired toward the spot,
hoping to scare the fighters off.

Their opponents fired back,
killing one of Kabore’s comrades
on the spot. He remembers a blur
of bullets and calling the army for
backup. Before the military plane
arrived, though, the rangers had
won.
They inspected the hideout,
which contained a cache of
bombs, guns and ammunition. Its
occupants had fled.
But what stood out to Kabore
was something he rarely saw in
the forest: the clothing of women
and children. The place looked
like a small village.
It dawned on him then: This
wasn’t a temporary base.
“If they moved there with their
families, they are never going to
abandon the park,” he said, “un-
less we are able to get rid of
them.”
The land he loves is home to
scores of valuable animals, in-
cluding the world’s biggest popu-
lation of endangered West Afri-
can lions.
L ion skins sell for up to $2,100,
according to Panthera, a conser-
vation group tracking lions in the
region.
A bout 350 of the big cats roam

the park and have been spotted in
adjacent hunting concessions, ac-
cording to the researchers’ latest
tally. (Lion hunting was legal in
Burkina Faso until the operations
closed in 2017 because of the
diminished security.)
A s militants chased away rang-
ers, poachers gained easier access
to the lions, elephants, crocodiles
and various types of antelope,
said Djiguemde, the ranger lead-
er.
“ Poachers who manage to get
in are in cahoots with the terror-
ists,” he said, “and with the ab-
sence of park employees, poach-
ing has intensified.”
T he true scope of the problem
is hard to quantify, and evidence
linking insurgents to poachers is
lacking. But rangers on missions
have found them together in the
woods, Djiguemde said.
C onservation groups can no
longer track the estimated 150
lions on the Burkina Faso side of
the border with Benin. Two lions
collared in Benin vanished last
year after entering the country.
“A team crossing over to inves-
tigate just found the cut-off col-
lars,” said Philipp Henschel, Pan-
thera’s West and Central Africa
director.
O n a recent visit to a market in
Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouaga-
dougou, a reporter saw two lion
hides for sale.
T he militants aren’t known to
hunt the animals themselves, but
poachers probably pay them a tax
to conduct their illicit business in
the parks, the rangers say. Other-
wise, it would be too dangerous
for the poachers to move through
the park.
Such shadowy arrangements
are an old militant tactic.
The Lord’s Resistance Army, a
rebel group from northern Ugan-
da led by warlord Joseph Kony,
profited from elephant poaching
in East Africa. The Janjaweed
militia of western Sudan faced
accusations of slaughtering ele-
phants in northern Cameroon.
“That is the common practice
for these groups: to identify
where illicit activity is going on
and tap into it,” said Daniel Eizen-
ga, a research fellow at the Africa
Center for Strategic Studies.
In West Africa, militants have
staged attacks in several previ-
ously calm wildlife reserves.
Fighters stormed the Giraffe
Zone in southwestern Niger last
month, killing six French human-
itarian workers, their Nigerien
driver and a guide. And in May
2019, gunmen kidnapped two
French tourists from Benin’s
Pendjari National Park and killed
their guide.
[email protected]

Paquette reported from Dakar,
Senegal.

Militants, poachers overrun reserves


In Burkina Faso, rangers
face violence as they try
to protect rare wildlife

“Poachers who manage


to get in are in cahoots


with the terrorists, and


with the absence of


park employees,


poaching has


intensified.”
Paul Djiguemde, ranger leader
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