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 According to many authoritative atlases and maps, Bui National Park
is already underwater! But the dam first planned in the 1920s was not started until August 24th 2007.
When Mampam Conservation were banned from working in Bui National Park, Ghana, in 2001, it marked the end of independent biological reseach in the area. Now work has begun on a controversial hydroelectric dam that will destroy the riverine habitat of the park and, we believe, lead to the local extinction of many animal species including the hippopotamus.The destruction of Bui National Park has gone almost unremarked. This site aims to provide a record of Bui National Park prior to its innundation
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 Surveys conducted since 1990 suggested that the hippo population in Bui National Park was increasing. However the survey commissioned for the Bui Hydroelectric Project suggests that only 200 animals exist in the park, about half the number that was suggested by previous studies.
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 An Environmental Impact Assessment for the Bui Dam Project was prepared by Environmental Resources Management in association with SGS Environment. Many of its claims are impossible to verify because the government of Ghana prohibited independent biological research in Bui National Park in 2001. A number of the claims made in the assessment are surprising. One of the most extraordinary claims in the assessment is that "hippopotamus will benefit from the increased area of littoral habitat provided by the reservoir".
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 In March 2001 the government of Ghana banned my research in Bui National Park. The area is due to be flooded by a hydroelectric dam in 2002. Other than the late Paul Choribe, my teams and I are the only scientists to have conducted biological research at Bui in all 29 years of the park's existence.
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 Hippos have survived at Bui because they do not have to compete with people and livestock. When the dam is constructed all their current foraging areas will be flooded and the animals will be forced to move upstream to find food. This will bring them into direct conflict with people because riverine areas outside the park are farmed by people and heavily grazed by domestic animals. The impact of 400 (or 200, according to the most recent surveys commissioned by the Ghanian government) hippos moving into areas inhabited by humans is not difficult to imagine.
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 Between May and August 1997 a team of 41 people carried out construction work and surveys of animals in Bui National Park, Ghana. The Park has been protected since 1971 but no previous work on the diversity of the area had been carried out. The area is under threat from a hydroelectric project that will destroy all riverine habitats within the protected area. Click here for the Bui Hippo Project
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The Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary: Separating the Fact from the Fantasy
Daniel Bennett, April 2001
The Nature Conservation Research Council of Ghana claims that the Bui hippos could survive around Weichau, where about 50 hippos still exist along about 40km of the Black Volta. However they decline to produce any evidence to support this claim, which I believe to be extremely doubtful and unsupported by any scientific evidence. It is hard to imagine that any trained biologist could make such outrageous claims. When I asked for confirmation that NCRC had conducted any research on hippos in Ghana they threatened me with legal action!
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 The Fish of Bui National Park, Ghana
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Download the Bui Environmental Impact Assessment here >
Download the Bui Environmental Impact Assessment Appendices here >
Reuters featured article on the Bui Crisis here
"A leading conservationist in Ghana, John Mason, has argued that the hippos are the “least threatened species at Bui,” saying that they will likely migrate away on their own once construction begins." source here
$25 Million for "Bui City" here
Calgary Zoo website supports the idea that the Bui hippos may migrate to Weichau and stay there. source here
Down to Earth Magazine November 2007 here
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 The hippo (Hippopotamus amphibius) is considered widespread and secure by the IUCN (Eltringham in Oliver 1993). However populations in West Africa have been in decline for at least a hundred years and only 7,000 animals are thought to be left in the entire subcontinent, compared with 150,000 animals in Eastern and Southern Africa.
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Bui Hippo Project 
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