Rare forest elephant on camera trap in Liberia

This video says about itself:

Rare forest elephant filmed in Liberia

27 February 2015

A camera-trapping survey carried out by Fauna & Flora International in north-west Liberia has yielded a number of interesting results, including the country’s only footage of elephants filmed outside a designated protected area.

From Wildlife Extra:

Liberian camera trap survey captures rare footage of forest elephants

Camera traps in Liberia have captured footage of chimps, pygmy hippos and elephants. This is the country’s only footage of elephants filmed outside a designated protected area and includes scenes of a forest elephant heaving its massive body up a steep slope with surprising agility.

The cameras are part of a biodiversity baseline study carried out by Fauna & Flora International (FFI) in Wonegizi Proposed Protected Area, which aimed to gain a better understanding of the current health of the ecosystem and its wildlife.

“The initial surveys found at least three elephants in the area, but we have barely scratched the surface – we suspect that a more intensive, elephant-focused survey might reveal many more,” explained FFI’s Project Adviser, Josh Kempinski.

This not only highlights the importance of the area for biodiversity, but also strengthens the case for formal protection and will likely prove an important step towards the official designation of Wonegizi as a protected area.

Poaching and habitat loss have reduced forest elephant populations in Central Africa by 63 percent since 2001. This poses consequences not only for elephants but also for the region’s forests, a new study finds. Without intervention to stop poaching, as much as 96 percent of Central Africa’s forests will undergo major changes in tree-species composition and structure as local populations of elephants disappear and surviving populations are crowded into ever-smaller forest remnants: here.