Air Support Environment - ULM hippopotamus survey with Alexis Peltier

OIPR Bat Hawk aircraft pilots are trained in February and March by renowned pilot Alexis Peltier.

Alexis, aviation specialist for national parks, has more than 40 aerial wildlife inventories to his credit. In particular, he carried out the aerial inventories of the Comoé National Park in 2016 and 2022.

This mission also allowed the OIPR to carry out a new technological innovation : an automatic photographic aerial inventory of hippos in the Comoé National Park with a microlight aircraft, in collaboration with the University of Liège, Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech.

OIPR pilots are also trained in this methodology which can be used regularly for ecological monitoring.

The North-East Zone Directorate of the Ivorian Office of Parks and Reserves is in the process of strengthening the surveillance of the Park through very efficient ecological monitoring, in particular thanks to aerial inventories of fauna and cartography based on aerial photographs. These activities are part of the Comoé National Park Biodiversity Protection Project, Phase II, funded by German financial cooperation through KfW, with technical support from the AHT Group / AMBERO / CSRS consortium.