In early 2001, I was invited to
participate in a conference entitled,
"Niger River
Aquatic and Riparian Vertebrate Conservation," which was held in
Bamako, Mali. Many people who aren't up to snuff with African
geography have no clue where Mali is, but the famous city of
Timbuktu occurs right in its center. The country is huge,
about twice the size of Texas, and includes the Sahara in the north,
and semi-arid Sahel in the south. After the conference,
Dr. Christopher Raxworthy (major advisor at KU 1999–2000)
and I spent a couple weeks collecting amphibians and reptiles from
various places in southern Mali.
During our travels through southern Mali,
we stopped at this village to look for herps in the vegetation
adjacent to a stream. We were told by the village elder that
we needed to hire "protection" to do this.
Here I am with the driver of our vehicle
and our armed escort. The price for our protection was rather
high, but the older gentleman in the background had offered to work
for free if we could hook him up with an American wife.
They never did say why we needed protection, but after about an hour of watching us catch frogs, they became bored and slipped away. The water near the village snaked through in a small creek about 20 feet across at its widest point, but when we noticed crocodiles were in it, we limited collecting to small puddles adjacent to the larger body of water.
Here are some of the interesting herps we
encountered in Mali, some of which are endemic to West Africa.
Ptyodactylus ragazzii
Agama weidholzi
Agama agama
Chalcides ocellatus
Hemitheconyx caudicinctus
Amietophrynus maculatus
