In south-western Chad, a stone's throw from Cameroon, there are two lakes that shouldn't exist the way they do: Lake Léré and Lake Tréné. Their waters are home to the African manatee, a herbivorous aquatic mammal up to three metres long and half a tonne in weight that, in theory, has no business being in a landlocked country. The explanation is geological and spectacular: about 7,000 years ago, the Mayo Kébbi river drained Mega-Lake Chad into the Niger basin and, through it, into the Atlantic. When the mega-lake receded, the manatees were left stranded here.
Around these lakes stretches the Binder-Léré Wildlife Reserve, created by presidential decree in 1974 over 135,000 hectares and listed as a Ramsar wetland of international importance on 14 November 2005. It is a mosaic of lakes, permanent and seasonal streams and marshes along the Chad-Cameroon border, with the country's third-largest elephant population —about 120 animals—, hippos, roan antelopes, giraffes, ostriches, baboons, oribis, Grimm's duikers and remarkable waterbirds.
And there's more: a few kilometres upstream, on the Mayo Kebbi river, the Gauthiot Falls drop 45 metres. They are considered the most spectacular in Chad and are revered by the Moundang people. The falls are also a biological frontier: they stop the rich fish life of the Niger system from passing into the Lake Chad basin, which is why some fish —Labeo lereensis is named after the lake— live in Léré and Tréné but not in Lake Chad.
Lakes Léré and Tréné are a living remnant of the geography of the Green Sahara. About 7,000 years ago, during the African Humid Period, Mega-Lake Chad overflowed through the Mayo Kébbi valley into the Niger basin and, through it, into the Atlantic. African manatees came along that corridor and were left stranded here when the mega-lake receded and the outlet disappeared. The Moundang, whose kingdom has its capital in Léré and whose sovereign bears the title of Gong, lived alongside them for centuries and revere the nearby Gauthiot Falls, named in 1903 by the French captain Faure in honour of the secretary of the Society of Commercial Geography. Manatees became rare around 1924 and their numbers kept falling despite legal protection, as they were hunted for their meat and fat. In 1974 a presidential decree created the Binder-Léré Wildlife Reserve over 135,000 hectares; in 2005 the site joined the Ramsar list, and since 2019 it has been managed by the French NGO Noé, with plans to turn some 1,000 km² into a national park.
Read the full history ↓The Chad of rains, cotton and oil, and of the elephant that came back: Zakouma, the Manda savanna and the last manatees of Léré.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
To explain why there are manatees in south-western Chad, you have to go back some seven thousand years. During the African Humid Period, when the monsoon shifted north and the Sahara was covered in lakes and grasslands, Lake Chad reached an enormous size: geologists call it Mega-Lake Chad or Paleolake Chad, and it became one of the largest bodies of fresh water that has ever existed on the planet.
A lake that size needs an outlet. Mega-Lake Chad's was in the south-west: the valley of the Mayo Kébbi river acted as an overflow channel towards the Benue basin, from there to the Niger and, finally, to the Atlantic Ocean. During that period, the Chad basin was not endorheic: it was connected to the sea.
African manatees arrived through that corridor, making their way upstream from the Niger Delta. And fish came through that same corridor too, and they remain the biological signature of the episode to this day. When the climate dried out, the mega-lake retreated and the Mayo Kébbi outlet disappeared, the connection was cut. The manatees were left trapped in lakes Léré and Tréné, more than a thousand kilometres from the nearest sea, in a country that today has no access to the ocean and no rivers that reach it.
The anomaly is completed by the Gauthiot Falls, on the Mayo Kebbi itself: a 45-metre drop that acts as an impassable barrier and stops the rich fish fauna of the Niger system from crossing into the Lake Chad basin. That wall of water is the reason four species — Synodontis violaceus, Synodontis ocellifer, Labeo lereensis and Arius gigas — live in lakes Léré and Tréné but not in Lake Chad. The scientific name of Labeo lereensis even carries the lake's name.
The Moundang people live in this part of Mayo-Kebbi, on both sides of today's border between Chad and Cameroon. Unlike many societies in southern Chad, which are organised in lineages without centralised power, the Moundang developed a hierarchical political structure: a kingdom with its capital at Léré and a sovereign whose title is the Gong.
That chieftaincy is still alive. Léré is today the capital of the Moundang kingdom and the residence of the Gong, and the institution keeps considerable symbolic and social weight across the whole province: settling disputes, authority over land, arbitration between communities, a ceremonial role. In a country where the state reaches the outlying regions late and poorly, traditional chieftaincies are still real structures of government.
The Moundang relationship with the landscape is not just practical. The Gauthiot Falls are a place venerated by the Moundang people, as the Ramsar site's own fact sheet records. That matters beyond the picturesque: in modern conservation strategies, places that already have local sacred status tend to be the best protected, and those that lose it are the first to degrade.
The European name of the falls, on the other hand, dates from 1903. That year Captain Faure, an officer accompanying the French colonial administration, "discovered" the series of drops and named the largest after Gauthiot, secretary of the Société de Géographie Commerciale. The overlap of the two names — the sacred and the colonial — sums up the region's history rather well.
The African manatee, Trichechus senegalensis, is a herbivorous sirenian that can exceed three metres and four hundred kilos, and spends its life grazing on aquatic plants in shallow water. It is slow, trusting and easy to hunt, and its meat and fat have always been prized. That combination made it vulnerable across its whole range, from Senegal to Angola.
In lakes Léré and Tréné, manatees were historically abundant. Local sources place the turning point around 1924: from then on they became rare. The decline did not stop. Today their numbers appear to be falling sharply and the species survives in a situation described as very precarious, despite being legally protected in Chad and listed as vulnerable on international lists.
The reasons are the predictable ones. Direct hunting for meat and fat, which still happens despite the ban. Competition with small-scale fishing, which is the main economic activity of the local population and shares exactly the same space: nets, canoes, beds of aquatic vegetation. Habitat degradation from riverside farming and livestock. And a chronic lack of resources to enforce the law.
The Léré manatee is not an isolated case within the reserve. Reports on the area note that most of the flagship species have disappeared or fallen to alarming population levels that call for rapid intervention, as a result of uncontrolled poaching and habitat loss. Among them are elephants: the reserve holds the country's third-largest population, about 120 animals, after devastating massacres — 89 animals killed in March 2013, 19 in February 2018 and 7 in August 2019.
The first date is 1974. That year a presidential decree created the Binder-Léré Wildlife Reserve over 135,000 hectares — 1,350 square kilometres — in south-western Chad, taking in lakes Léré and Tréné, the associated wetlands and the surrounding savannah up to the border with Cameroon. It was part of the conservation effort Chad made in its first decades of independence, which also included Zakouma National Park (1963) and Manda.
The second is 14 November 2005, when the reserve was added to the Ramsar Convention's list of wetlands of international importance. The site's fact sheet describes a complex of varied wetland types — lakes, permanent and seasonal streams, marshes — on the Chad-Cameroon border, with manatees, crocodiles, hippos and cheetahs among the threatened species present, and as a feeding area for large numbers of waterbirds. It also notes the importance of fishing for the local population, along with farming, hunting and livestock.
The third is 2019, when the French NGO Noé took over management of the area. It is the same delegated-management model African Parks applies in Zakouma and the Ennedi: an internationally funded organisation takes charge of operations — patrols, monitoring, community work — in partnership with the state. According to the organisation itself, after it took on the Binder-Léré complex, elephant poaching stopped and forest cover regenerated. On the horizon is the classification of about 1,000 square kilometres as a national park, under a public-private partnership scheme.
That track record counted when, on 10 December 2025, the Government of Chad entrusted Noé with the ten-year management of Manda National Park, in Moyen-Chari. Binder-Léré was the proof of concept.
Léré is the capital of the Lac Léré department, in Mayo-Kebbi Ouest province, and had 89,237 inhabitants in the 2009 census. It has a small airstrip, a market, the Gong's court and an economy built around fishing, farming and livestock. It has no tourist infrastructure of any kind.
That is precisely what makes it interesting and difficult at the same time. There are no hotels with published rates, no established local operators, no tickets, opening hours or circuits. What there is: a lake with manatees, a 45-metre waterfall forty kilometres away, elephants, hippos, crocodiles, roan antelopes and waterbirds, a living traditional chieftaincy, and a landscape of hills and wetlands that is among the most beautiful in Chad.
Getting there takes logistics: a full day by 4x4 from Moundou via Pala, supplies loaded up in the big town, water, fuel and a local guide. And it takes judgement about safety: the reserve reaches the border with Cameroon, and the British Foreign Office advises against all travel within thirty kilometres of all of Chad's borders, as well as against all but essential travel to the rest of the country; the US Department of State has kept Chad at Level 4 — Do Not Travel — since April 2026.
There is also a local movement that wants to change the place's status: voices from Chadian academia and civil society have been pushing for Lake Léré to be added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. It would be a huge leap for a corner that today appears on no itinerary. For now, the lake remains what it has been for seven thousand years: a remnant of the green Sahara with manatees inside, protected above all by its own remoteness.
