The field of investigation of the present study covers the territories of the eleven municipalities in which the Project “Promotion of sustainable agricultural production and the conservation of key biodiversity species through land restoration and the efficient use of ecosystems in Dallol Bosso and its surroundings” Project is active. It is a highly anthropized area whose various environments are too solicited, because it offers enormous opportunities for agrosilvopastoral and fishery production as well as for the development of several other economic activities, such as the exploitation of wood and other forest products and the traditional exploitation of natron.
However, this area is home to a diversity of biodiversity resources of national and even global importance, including: (i) the only viable population of giraffes in West Africa (Giraffa camelopardalis spp. Peralta); (ii) an increasingly growing population of Hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius); (iii) relics of a “tiger bush” forest formation typical and almost endemic to western Niger; and finally, (iv) a set of water points, sometimes in the form of strings of pools along the Dallol Bosso bed, sometimes sheltering several species of birds.
Precisely, this ecological importance of Dallol Bosso on the one hand, and the various pressures exerted on it, justify the conduct of the present study, the objective of which is to establish a baseline of ecological and socio-economic trends, followed by proposed indicators for the establishment of a monitoring system in the short, medium and long term, all in order to provide guidelines for the future preparation of reports on the state of conservation of ecosystems. composing said zone. It was conducted using a methodological approach characterized in particular by a broad consultation of actors at all levels, complemented by cartographic field work and documentation analysis.