By Festus Damilare U. | Fact Frontier
I took a month off and traveled across Nigeria with a single question in my mind: which animals in this country are truly on the brink of disappearing, and where can they still be found? I spoke with rangers, local guides, and villagers, and I walked through reserves, national parks, and forest edges.
My journey took me from the misty hills of Cross River State to the flooded creeks of the Niger Delta and up into the savanna landscapes of Kainji and Yankari. I did not see every animal with my own eyes, but I stood in the places where they still survive and listened to the people who protect them.
In Cross River State I first heard about the Cross River gorilla. This is the rarest gorilla in the world and critically endangered. Fewer than 300 are thought to remain, split across the mountains of Afi, the Mbe range, and the Okwangwo division of Cross River National Park.
They live in small, isolated groups in rugged terrain. Alongside them lives the Nigeria–Cameroon chimpanzee, the most threatened of all chimpanzee subspecies. It is endangered and restricted to the forests of southeastern Nigeria and parts of Cameroon. Patrols in the area showed me old nests, signs of feeding, and snares left by hunters.
I also learned about the drill, a powerful monkey related to the mandrill. The drill is endangered and lives in the same forests of Cross River State, including Oban, Okwangwo, Afi, and Mbe.
Local hunters described the sound of a drill troop as a deep chorus of barks carrying through the trees. In swampy areas and lowland forests I was told about red-capped mangabeys, another endangered primate now in steep decline. Older rangers remembered seeing large troops decades ago, but farms and logging have eaten away at their habitat.
Perhaps the most striking story in the Niger Delta is that of the Niger Delta red colobus. This monkey exists only in a small pocket of marsh forest in Bayelsa State. It is critically endangered and considered one of the most threatened primates in the world.
Its entire range covers barely more than a thousand square kilometers. Further east another red colobus, Preuss’s red colobus, hangs on in isolated fragments of forest but is also critically endangered.
While following rangers in the Cross River forests, I also heard stories of elephants. These are African forest elephants, smaller than the savanna elephant, and they are critically endangered.
Their populations have collapsed across Central and West Africa. In Nigeria they survive in Cross River National Park and possibly in other scattered forest reserves. On the other side of the country, in Ogun State’s Omo Forest Reserve, rangers described how elephants are still seen, but farms and logging camps are moving deeper into the forest each year.
In the savanna I set out to understand the situation of lions in Nigeria. The picture is bleak. The West African lion is a critically endangered population. Nigeria’s last lions survive in Yankari Game Reserve and Kainji Lake National Park. Their numbers are very small, and their range has shrunk to a fraction of what it once was.
Markets and forest paths also revealed another group of animals under threat: pangolins. Nigeria has three species, the white-bellied pangolin, the black-bellied pangolin, and the giant pangolin.
Two of these are endangered and all are heavily hunted for meat and scales. Pangolins are now among the most trafficked mammals in the world, and Nigeria is one of the centers of this illegal trade.
Fishermen along the rivers of the Niger Delta and the Cross River told me about manatees, also called sea cows. These are West African manatees, a vulnerable species found in rivers, lagoons, and coastal waters. They are secretive and rarely seen, but they are caught accidentally in fishing nets and sometimes hunted.
I also heard of a reptile that has almost disappeared from Nigeria: the West African slender-snouted crocodile. It is critically endangered. Once recorded from rivers and wetlands in the south, today it is almost never seen. Conservationists suspect it may already be gone from much of its Nigerian range.
On Nigeria’s coast I joined local beach patrols who look out for sea turtles. Four species nest or are seen in Nigerian waters: the hawksbill, green, leatherback, and olive ridley turtles.
The hawksbill is critically endangered, the green is endangered, the leatherback is endangered in some populations, and the olive ridley is vulnerable. They lay their eggs on quiet beaches, but many nests are lost to hunting, fishing nets, or coastal development.
By the end of my month-long journey, I had compiled a list of endangered animals in Nigeria that included gorillas, chimpanzees, drills, red-capped mangabeys, red colobus monkeys, elephants, lions, pangolins, manatees, crocodiles, and sea turtles. There are also many endangered birds, reptiles, and fish that I did not have the chance to study closely, but they too are part of this story.
A few patterns became clear. The forests of Cross River State are the last refuge for many of Nigeria’s rarest primates. Protecting these forests is essential. Forest elephants remain scattered in low numbers and need large intact habitats.
Lions survive only in two reserves, and without stronger protection they could disappear from Nigeria altogether. In the Niger Delta, the red colobus monkey and the manatee face threats from oil development, logging, and hunting. On the coast, turtles need safe nesting grounds and protection from nets. Pangolins are vanishing because of international trade in their scales.
Everywhere I went, I saw both danger and hope. In Omo Forest, rangers who once poached elephants now protect them. In the Mbe Mountains, local communities have organized patrols to keep hunters away.
In the Niger Delta, fishermen still remember seeing manatees and hope their children may see them again. On the beaches, conservation groups walk at night to guard turtle nests under the moon.
If Nigeria is to save its endangered animals, the work must continue at all these levels: protecting the big landscapes, stopping the illegal trade, supporting local communities, and monitoring populations carefully. The Cross River gorilla, the West African lion, the Niger Delta red colobus, the forest elephant, and all the others are not just wildlife. They are part of Nigeria’s identity and natural heritage.
My month of travel was only a beginning. The endangered animals of Nigeria still survive, but just barely, and their survival depends on whether we as a society choose to keep their forests, rivers, and savannas alive for the future.
