Elephants In The Dust

POPULATION TRENDS

Between 1970 and 1990, many thousands of elephants were killed for their ivory, leaving the African elephant populations at an estimated number of 300,000–600,000 (Said et al . 1995). The main declines in elephant numbers were in Central and East- ern Africa. Following the drop in numbers during the elephant killings of the 1980s and the events surrounding and including the CITES ban, populations have picked up in some range States, and in 2007, the total African elephant population was estimated to be between 470,000 and 690,000 (Blanc et al. 2007). Since then however, the tide seems to have turned. Poaching levels have been increasing steadily across much of the con- tinent since 2006. Current estimates suggest major declines in elephant populations in Central Africa, as well as in some populations in West Africa where the numbers have been frag- mented and small for decades. Populations remain stable and high in much of Southern Africa, while the threat to eastern

populations is increasing as poaching is rising and spreading east and southwards in Africa. The latest estimates of the to- tal number of African elephants range between 419,000 and 650,000 elephants, however, these are predominantly found in Southern and Eastern Africa (IUCN/AfESG 2013). Distribution across sub-regions The overall sub-regional distribution of the African elephant indicates that approximately half of the total elephant popula- tion is found in Southern Africa, while less than 30 per cent are found in Eastern Africa. West Africa is home to the smallest number of elephants, only two per cent of the total number of elephants on the continent. The remaining 20 per cent of African elephants are found in Central Africa, although ele­ phant numbers from this region are particularly fraught with uncertainty (estimates based on Blanc et al. 2007). As with the

African elephant population: a di cult count

420

82

44

108

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

500

600

450

550

650

African elephant population estimates, thousands

DEFINITE COUNT

PROBABLE COUNT

POSSIBLE COUNT

SPECULATIVE COUNT

Note: Estimates are based on various surveys methods with di erent levels of reliability and data quality. Values are approximated to the thousand.

Source: IUCN/SSC, African Elephant Specialist Group, 2013.

Figure 5: The latest estimates of the total number of African elephants range between 419,000 and 650,000. Overall data reliability at the continental level has declined as many important populations have not been surveyed for over ten years.

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