According to information revealed during a press tour, organised from 19 to 22 November by the Environment and Press Research Group (GREP), in partnership with the regional bureau of the Marine Programme for West Africa (WWF WAMER) and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Senegal, there is a "very advanced" degradation of the fauna and the flora of the park.
Located at 600 kilometres at the south-east of Dakar, between the regions of Tam bacounda, Kédougou and Kolda in the southern part of Senegal and very close to G uinea, the National Niokolo Koba Park (PNNK), created in 1954, covers a surface of 913,000 hectares, stretching over 800 kilometres of tracks and divided into three zones of intervention (east, centre, north).
The importance of the fauna and the flora, composed of all the vegetal and animal species of the savannas of West Africa and the essential of the biodiversity of Senegal had raised the need to displace, in the 1970s, hundreds of villages from the place, to create this park, which, today, by the action of man and the absence of funding, is in danger of disappearance.
According to the commissioner of the PNNK, Commander Samuel Diémé, who guided the 20 journalists who toured the park, diverse factors contributed to the current situation of this world heritage.
Dieme listed the different problems as: poaching in all its forms, the absence of planning, the insufficiency of the means of funding, of surveillance, the degradation of the tracks and inaccessibility, the obsolescence of the communication network, bush fires, the premature drying up of the water ponds, the invasion of the water ponds by plants like the mimosa pigra and the mytragena imernis, the diminution of all the species of the fauna.
The result is a fall in tourist activity characterised by the scarcity of visitors, who deplore, among other things, the disappearance of some species, the difficulty of access for animals due to the absence of practicable tracks, the high cost of transportation from Dakar to Tambacounda.
On the average, only about 10 foreign tourists visited the park in one year, majority of them French.
There is the low functioning budget for the reserve which is now 122 million CFA F per year, which is too small, according to the coordinator who said that a priority plan of action elaborated in September 2007 had estimated it to 14 billion CFA F every three years for the park to function normally and settle the financial deficit.
The PNNK commissioner pleaded for a better synergy between the ministry of tourism and that of environment to save PNNK, which has already been classified since July 2007 by UNESCO, among the 31 sites registered on the list of the world heritage in peril.
"Today, it is urgent for the state to do something to rescue this park and to enable it to play its role, otherwise the national park of Niokolo Koba will disappear from the tourist map of Senegal within about two years, which will result into an impoverishment of the surrounding populations that rely on the park," said Diémé.
On the possibility of privatising the park, Dieme said the personnel of the PNNK wants a public-private partnership for the management of the park as well as the involvement of the populations in the process and rejected any form of total privatisation of the latter.
The Niokolo Koba Park is crossed by the River Gambia and contains over 1,500 species of vascular plants, 80 mammals, 350 species of birds, 36 species of reptiles, 20 species of amphibians, 120 elks and 60 species of fish.
Two aerodromes, an important network of water ponds, the camp of lion and about 30 control centres are also in the park.
Tambacounda - 24/11/2009
Pana
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