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General Statistics

Country Area - 56,790 km²
Range Area - 6,307 km² (11%)
Protected Range - 75%
Information Quality Index (IQI) - 0.00
CITES Appendix - I
Listing Year - 1990

Current Issues

There are very few elephants remaining in Togo. During civil disturbances from 1990-1992, people were encouraged to settle in the protected areas, and it is believed that the majority of elephants were killed or fled to neighbouring countries at that time (Okoumassou et al., 1998). Some attempts have been made to rehabilitate the parks, but their suitability for elephants is limited because they are now heavily settled (Polo-Akpisso et al., 2015). There is a UNDP project to rehabilitate Kéran National Park (République Togolaise, 2015). Fazao-Malfakassa National Park was being managed by the Franz Weber Foundation, but they withdrew at the end of 2015 (Weber, pers. comm., 2016).

In recent analyses of ivory seizure data in ETIS, prepared for CITES, Togo has been identified as a country with a worrying involvement in illegal ivory trade (CITES Secretariat, 2012; Milliken et al., 2013, 2016).

Togo published its national strategy for elephant management in 2003 (Ministère de l’Environnement et des Ressources Forestières, 2003).

Numbers and Distribution

There have been no surveys carried out in Togo in the last ten years to the standards required for generating an estimate. There may be 74 to 114 elephants in areas not systematically surveyed. These guesses likely represent a minimum number, and actual numbers could be higher than those reported. Together, this estimate and guess apply to 4,085 km², which is 65% of the estimated known and possible elephant range. There remains an additional 35% of the estimated range for which no elephant population estimates are available.

There were formerly three main areas of elephant range: in and around Kéran NP and Oti-Mandori Faunal Reserve in the north, the Fazao-Malfakassa massif in the centre of the country, and Fosse aux Lions National Park in the north-west. There has been a small increase in the guessed number of elephants in Fazao-Malfakassa NP, but this is probably the result of increased knowledge, rather than a real increase in numbers. 

Twenty nine sightings of elephants were recorded in the Kéran area in the north of Togo between 2011 and 2014 with a maximum of ten individuals in one sighting in 2013 (Polo-Akpisso, pers. comm., 2016b). This replaces a guess of zero from 2004 (Bouché et al., 2004b). The range map has been changed to show the area where these were recorded as known range, with the remainder of the previous range changed to possible range

Sixty one sightings and elephant tracks were recorded in Fazao Malfakassa NP from 2012 to 2014, and eight individuals were seen in a group in 2014 (Polo-Akpisso, pers. comm., 2016a). However, former park management believes that there are 60-100 and this has been entered as a guess (Weber, pers. comm., 2016), which replaces a previous guess of 61 from 2002 (Okoumassou, pers. comm., 2002). The range map has been changed to show the area where elephants were recorded as known range, with the remainder of the previous range changed to possible.

There is no recent information from Fosse aux Lions NP. There was an estimate of zero in the AESR 2007, and therefore it is recorded as a lost population and changed to non-range. There is also no recent information from the Abdoulayé Faunal Reserve to the east of Fazao Malfakassa, so the existing guess of four elephants has been retained but degraded.

Elephants recorded in Oti-Kéran-Mandori are probably visitors from Benin and Burkina Faso.