@jasperdoest

Edmond Dimoto, assisted by Lisa-Laure Ndindiwe Malata, surveys the flowers, fruits, and leaves of a tree in Lopé. For 25 years, he has hiked in the forest nearly every month to help create the longest continuous study of tropical trees in Africa. From 1986 to the present, scientists @stirlingunifc and @parcsgabon have monitored tree species that are important to the diet of gorillas, chimpanzees, and elephants. Once a month, tree crowns are observed from the ground (via binoculars), and the proportions of each canopy that are covered with flowers, fruit, and leaves are recorded. The researchers used these data to quantify changes in the probability of encountering flowers, unripe fruit, and ripe fruit for 73 species over a 32-year period (1986–2018). They found that trees at Lopé are reproducing less often and that the probability of encountering flowers and fruit has declined significantly over time, which could have major consequences for the megafauna of the Central African rainforest. Edmond still sees room for hope: “When I look at Lopé NP, I see two different landscapes; the savanna landscape and the forest. Together they form a mosaic that is constantly in motion, which gives the forest the opportunity to gain ground. The forest can still expand. There’s room for change,” he says. Despite these hopeful words, it seems like the animals in the forest are facing a major challenge as it is likely that climate changes experienced at the site have contributed to this shift in reproduction—a problem that won’t be solved overnight. Photo @jasperdoest #onassignment @natgeo in #Gabon. The story was recently published in the May edition of the magazine, which is a special issue dedicated to the state of the world’s forests.

A seedling of Detarium macrocarpum in a pile of elephant dung. For a Detarium macrocarpum seed to germinate it has to pass an animal’s digestive tract. Therefore this species’ seed dispersal depends fully on the forest’s megafauna. Of all animals, the forest elephant is the largest agent of seed dispersal in African rain forests. It has a digestive system that allows many seeds to pass undestroyed. The elephant moves long distances and may therefore disperse huge numbers of viable seeds over large areas. More so, seedlings grow more rapidly in elephant dung than in forest soil as it provides a micro-environment more suitable for seed germination and early seedling establishment. Photo @jasperdoest #onassignment @natgeo in #Gabon. The story is currently published in the May edition of the magazine, which is a special issue dedicated to the state of the world’s forests.

After talking to the scientists about photographing forest elephants in Gabon, it became clear that we needed to be very careful. Forest elephants are extremely quiet when they move through the forest and since they can’t see very well, they charge everything that smells or sounds suspicious. So when my assistant @briceroxan suggested to track the elephants on foot, I got a bit nervous. But what an experience! Brice was absolutely amazing and knew how to read the forest like no other. I’m so grateful for the opportunities to observe these magnificent beings up close and personal. We often had to move fast, not because they’d charge us (they only did once in 2 months time) but to make sure we wouldn’t be cornered by different groups. So I often had to run through the jungle, trying to keep up with Brice while carrying the big lenses 😅. Couldn’t help singing CCR songs in the back of my mind. Photo @jasperdoest #onassignment @natgeo in #Gabon. The story is currently published in the May edition of the magazine, which is a special issue dedicated to the state of the world’s forests.

This emaciated female forest elephant may be evidence that climate change is harming even the most untouched forests. She wasn’t the only one, as I witnessed many elephants like her during my visit to Gabon. It should have been the time of year where elephants would be in their prime condition after feasting on the annual abundance of fruit, but it was clear this wasn’t the case. She’s clearly in bad physical condition, with individual ribs visible, depressions in front and back of the pelvic bone and a prominent backbone from tail to head, with deep depressions in the lumbar region. It’s an alarming sight. The archival photos from former station manager Katherine Abernathy show Billy, a forest elephant bull that was a frequent visitor to the research station in Lopé in the early ’90’s. As you can see Billy was enormous, unlike anything the researchers witness today. Scientists think higher temperatures and less rainfall are to blame for a dramatic drop in the amount of fruit on the trees in Lope’s forests. The lack of fruit appears to be making it harder for elephants to get the nutrition they need. Photo @jasperdoest #onassignment @natgeo in #Gabon. The story is currently published in the May edition of the magazine, which is a special issue dedicated to the state of the world’s forests.

Photographed at night with an infrared converted DSLR camera, a critically endangered African forest elephant chews on a Detarium macrocarpum fruit as she guides her calf. In 1987, the forest elephants typically needed to search only 10 trees to find one with ripe fruit, but by 2018, they had to check 50, reflecting a nearly 81 percent decline in the available fruit in Lopé’s forests due to changing climate conditions. Photo @jasperdoest #onassignment @natgeo in #Gabon. The story is currently published in the May edition of the magazine, which is a special issue dedicated to the state of the world’s forests.

The doughnut-shaped fruit of the Omphalocarpum procerum grows on its branches and trunk, which is common for rainforest trees. Scientists believe it’s an adaptation to promote pollination by insects, such as ants, found in the trees. Like most of plant species found in Lopé, Omphalocarpum trees rely upon animals to disperse their seeds. But, only elephants have jaws strong enough to crack open the hard, thick shell of Omphalocarpum. And since the elephants swallow the seeds without harming them, these trees rely upon the elephants as much as the elephants depend upon these fruits. In parts of Africa where poaching has eliminated the elephants, Omphalocarpum fruits rot on the ground, their seeds wasted and the trees are unable to reproduce. No species of animal or plant can survive alone. They are all part of an ecosystem within which a complex web of interactions exists. If any strand of that web is broken it will result in distortions which are difficult to predict and which may be impossible to repair.

I just love how elephants use their trunk. I could watch this clip all day…it’s just mesmerizing. To learn about their behavior, we captured these forest elephants elephant on infrared film eating fruit in the park’s rainforest. Forest elephants are the largest fruit-eating animals in the Central African forest ecosystem. Weighing nearly four tons, they require large amounts of food to satisfy their nutritional needs. African forest elephants have a broad diet that includes fruit, grass, other vegetation, and even bark, but research at Lopé has shown that fruit is dominant in their diet.

A baby elephant walks with its family on one of many paths that generations of forest elephants have cut through the rainforest, leading from tree to fruit-bearing tree. Elephants pass on the knowledge of what to forage, where to find it, and when it’s likely to be ripe. Forest elephants have an extraordinary low birth rate: they don’t reach sexual maturity until the age of 23 and only give birth every 5 or 6 years. If they are getting poorer quality food due to a decreased production in fruit, then the population’s ability to recover will be compromised, even with good protection. In order to tell this story, I needed to visualise the role of the elephants in their natural habitat. And the only way to do that in such a dense forest was by using camera trap systems. Based on the information the scientists provided, we asked National Geographic’s photo engineer Tom O’Brien (@mechanicalphoto) to build us elephant proof camera traps that would allow us an intimate peak into the elephants’ elusive lives in the forest. Tom put a tremendous amount of effort into this and even visited a zoo to learn about elephants…seriously hardcore and I really love him for that. Eventually Tom sent over 1100lbs (close to 500kg) of custom designed camera trapping gear to Gabon for me to install in the forest. It took a while before we started to get results, but once we started to understand their behaviour, our efforts started to pay off. Equipment photo: @thiessenphoto & @beckythale. PS. There’s only 30 minutes between me placing the camera trap and the elephants walking by in the video.

These are archival photos from former station manager Katherine Abernathy and her husband (Gabon’s current minister of climate and forestry) Lee White. The pictures show Billy, a forest elephant bull that was a frequent visitor to the research station in Lopé in the early ’90’s. As you can see Billy was enormous, unlike anything the researchers witness today. Emma Bush shared her concerns with Robin Whytock, her colleague at the University of Stirling, and the two began discussing how best to determine the impact the fruiting decline might be having on wildlife. Whytock had just started a project to assess biodiversity in Lope using dozens of camera traps he and his team installed throughout the reserve. He had also seen images of elephants from camera traps that another graduate student from Stirling had set up for her research. Many of the elephants looked alarmingly emaciated. Whytock eventually compiled a database of elephant photos taken by camera traps and photos from researchers who had worked in Lopé and after analysing this data they found a significant decrease in body conditions from 2008 to 2018. My editor and I knew that if we wanted to show the impact of the decreasing fruit production, we needed people to fall in love with forest elephants. Several conversations with the scientists followed, which made us realise that wouldn’t be an easy task. Not because forest elephants aren’t likeable, but because it wouldn’t be easy to observe their natural behaviour deep inside the forest—their home.

A forest elephant reaches for the fruit of a Detarium macrocarpum tree in Lopé National Park. Fruit is the most nutritious part of the elephant’s diet. Trees such as this one, can only germinate after passing through an animals digestive tract. It’s another example that shows how the forest and its inhabitants depend upon each other. Scientists have discovered that this delicate and complex balance is now shifting. They found that trees at Lopé are reproducing less often and that the probability of fruit production has decreased with more than 80% in 30 years. The long-term collapse in fruit availability now threatens the Central African forest megafauna which as it continues is expected to have disproportionate impacts on the functioning and metabolism of the entire ecosystem.

A selection of the fruits and seeds found in Lopé National Park and photographed in the studio setup I installed at the park’s research station. Fruit is a keystone resource for many of the African megafauna. In 2016, Emma Bush, a doctorate student at Stirling University @stirlingunifc started to analyse the fruiting dataset after which she and her team published an alarming paper in @sciencemagazine, that showed that it is likely that climate changes experienced Lopé have caused a staggering 80% decrease in fruit production. To understand the implications for the forest and the megafauna it sustains, National Geographic Editor at Large @kurtmutchler asked me to travel to Gabon in October to document the fruit, the forest and its forest elephants. The story is currently published in the May edition of the magazine which is a special issue dedicated to the state of the world’s forests.

With around 80 percent of the country forested, Gabon has an estimated 8,000-10,000 species of plants–of which three quarters depends on animals for their seed dispersal. The Cylicoiscus gabunensis tree in this photograph for instance, is an impressive large tree found in mature forest in Lopé. It produces numerous of winged seeds that are eaten and dispersed by several species of primates, which are abundant Lopé National Park.

Forest elephants spend most of their time within the lush undergrowth, searching for fruit, which forms a large part of their diet. But because fruit availability can be strongly seasonal, there are times when forest elephants may need to leave the forest interior to seek alternative foraging sites. The grasslands in the middle of the equatorial forest in Lopé National Park are remnants of arid periods since the last ice age 12,000 years ago. Covering more than 1,900 square miles in Central Gabon, the uncommon mosaic of savanna and tropical rainforest is rich in biological diversity. Named Gabon’s first wildlife reserve in 1946, it became a national park in 2002. In October last year, I spent two months in this incredible national park #onassignment for National Geographic magazine. The story is currently published in the May edition of the magazine which is a special issue dedicated to the state of the world’s forests.

Deep within the evergreen forest of Gabon’s Lopé National Park, a forest elephant looks at me through the foliage. I'm close—closer than I ever expected to be. Last year National Geographic editor-at-large Kurt Mutchler asked me if I could travel to Gabon to cover an urgent story for a special issue of the magazine about the state of the world’s forests. Months later, my assistent Brice and I find ourselves eye to eye with this beautiful animal. I can feel my heart pounding in my throat, a mix of healthy nerves and excitement as I'm being accepted by this large herbivore inside the forest it calls home. The Central African country of Gabon is home to the most forest elephants, about 95,000, two-thirds of the entire population. While poaching for ivory and habitat loss have reduced their overall numbers by 86 percent in the past 31 years, the forest and its megafauna are both well protected in Gabon. However, recent research outcomes indicate that climate change has put them at risk. I invite everyone to read the story, which is currently published in the May issue of National Geographic Magazine. I want to give a warm thank you to @kurtmutchler for his guidance and support during this challenging time, @yudhijitbhattacharjee for his written voice, my assistant on the story @briceroxan for all his hard work, knowledge and friendship, all the incredible ecologists I worked with @stirlingunifc and @parcsgabon. I’m honored to have made a contribution for this special issue. A special thank you goes to @susanbgoldberg @whitneycatherinejohnson, @kfmoran and @sadiequarrier for trusting me to cover the story. And last but certainly not least National Geographic’s Photo Engineer @mechanicalphoto, for all his efforts in the custom made elephant proof camera traps (more about that later).