Sahara: The Forgotten Ecosystem

Journeying into the fickle and ever changing Saharan landscape reveals the hidden lives of the desert’s most-endangered species.

- Ugo Mellone

People often ask why I’d want to photograph wildlife in the Sahara. Well, I have always felt drawn towards vast open spaces, but I also enjoy tackling difficult subjects neglected by other photographers, and telling their stories. As ecosystems, deserts are hugely underrated – yet they are equally deserving of the attention lavished on tropical rainforests and coral reefs.

Incredibly, the Sahara occupies almost one-third of the African continent and is hugely biodiverse, yet it remains largely overlooked, even by the world’s most prominent conservation organisations. Sadly, this immense, beautiful desert-scape has become a paradigm of the ongoing mass extinction that our planet is currently experiencing: its large mammals have either disappeared from more than 90 per cent of their ranges, or have gone extinct in the wild.

Spanning 11 countries and battered by widespread political instability, the Sahara does not lend itself to conservation action, nor documentary by photojournalists. I started working in this desert back in 2008, and have returned most years since, spending between one and six weeks camping out in the sandy wilderness – either with a companion or alone.