"We let him get away," said a discouraged Louis Diakité. In early March, the founder of the N'Zi River Lodges private reserve in central Côte d'Ivoire, near Bouaké, decided to give up his pursuit of "le Gros," (the Big One) a 10-year-old forest elephant. It was heartbreaking. The former hunter, now a wildlife conservationist, wanted to provide sanctuary to the elephant on his ecotourism site. It's already home to buffalo, antelope and a rhinoceros.

Adopted by the local villagers who gave it this nickname, the animal had recently come under threat: Some wanted him dead after he caused the death of a man in November 2023. Despite the considerable resources deployed to keep him safe, "le Gros" escaped from his reserve enclosure six times. His multiple getaways, which have been going on for several months, are a part of the problem surrounding elephants, the emblem of the entire country.

This is a paradox because, in Côte d'Ivoire, elephants, although officially protected and a source of national pride – the football team, crowned AFCON champions in February, is known as the "Elephants," as are many hotels and businesses – are also under serious threat. While the state reported nearly "100,000 (elephants) in the 1960s," a report published in 2020 by Ivorian researchers in the journal Plos One estimated that there were 225 in the country. By studying dung, attacks between humans and elephants and interviews with stakeholders in the field, a decline was measured between 2011 and 2017, one that was described as "widespread and catastrophic."

500 elephants left

Colonel Salimata Koné, director of Wildlife and Hunting Resources at the Water and Forests Ministry, told Le Monde that there are still around 500 elephants left, which is half as many as 20 years ago. Most are forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis). Measuring a maximum of 3.5 meters at the shoulders, they are smaller than their savannah-dwelling cousins (Loxodonta africana) which are found in small numbers in the center of the country. At home in the cool forests of Central and West Africa, they are often difficult to locate in their natural habitat.

This is not the case for "le Gros" who, on the contrary, has made a habit of approaching villages. "He'd been in the area for nine years," Pierre Kignon , secretary to the chieftaincy of the village of Massa, in west-central Côte d'Ivoire, remembered. "When he came too close to us, we'd ask his forgiveness and, normally, he'd turn back." But in November, while searching for food, the animal killed the oldest man in the village. "I saw the elephant standing there in front of his hut, eating the cocoa beans that were drying," he said. He is the nephew of the old man who was killed. "After ten minutes, it burst into the house" where the old man was sleeping. And so began a hunt for the animal. The villagers attacked him with machetes and severely slashed his tail. His days seemed numbered.

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