“The new report should attract more attention to forest elephants. Less visible and easily monitored than savanna elephants, they tend to be overlooked by the governments and donors,” said Kathleen Gobush, the lead assessor of the African elephants. “Their needs are overshadowed by those of their larger cousins as Endangered and Critically endangered species,” Kathleen noted.
Using data dating back to the 1960s for savanna elephants and the 1970s for forest elephants, Gobush and her colleagues built a statistical model to estimate population reductions over time.
Elephants are one of the most highly sought species by wildlife traffickers. In order to establish the level of risk, experts at IUCN have agreed that African elephants are actually classified in two species. The savanna elephant is larger, has curving tusks, and roams the open plains of sub-Saharan Africa while the forest elephant is smaller and darker, has straight tusks, and lives in the equatorial forests of Central and West Africa.
The Director for African species at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Bas Huijbregts, said the potential positive conservation impact of splitting forest and savanna elephants into separate species cannot be overstated. “Challenges to both species are very different, as are the pathways to their recovery,” he said.
The forest elephants’ population has plummeted by 86 percent in the last 31 years while that of the savanna elephants has dropped by 60 percent in the last 50 years, according to the IUCN, which noted that both species whose current population is estimated at about 415,000 have suffered sharp declines since 2008 due to a significant increase in poaching that peaked in 2011.
The persistent demand for elephant ivory because of its beauty and artistic uses has dramatically reduced the elephant population across the African continent, speeding the loss of a keystone species that plays a critical role in maintaining the biodiversity of natural ecosystems.
The multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals (CITES) banned the international trade of ivory in 1989, but not all countries have adhered to the Convention, and there have been peaks and valleys for ivory sales over the past three decades.
Many Asian and Southeast Asian countries still contribute to the illegal ivory trade. Prior to the global COVID-19 pandemic, an estimated 20,000 African elephants were still being killed each year for their ivory, and the trade routes for African elephant ivory are still largely flowing to dealers in Asia, but in recent years, China has increased its efforts to stop the ivory trade.
“Rebuilding elephant populations requires protecting their habitat as well as continuing to clamp down on poaching and ivory trafficking,” said Scott Schlossberg, a data analyst at Elephants without Borders, a Botswana-based wildlife protection Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).
“We support the IUCN decision at this time to update the African forest elephant to critically endangered and the savannah elephant to endangered, and believe it tracks with criteria in accordance with their red-listing process,” said Dr. Philip Muruthi, the Vice President of the Africa Wildlife Foundation (AWF) in charge of species conservation and science.
The IUCN’s assessment also noted that there have been successful conservation programs in Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville for the forest elephants and the Okavango-Zambezi Trans frontier Conservation Area for the savanna species.
Bruno Oberle, the IUCN Director General said in a press statement that this proves elephant decline can be reversed. “We must work together to ensure their example can be followed,” he said.
The IUCN relies on a variety of factors to determine an animal’s conservation status, such as how much its numbers and ranges have dwindled.
Wildlife is the leading tourist attraction and source of tourist revenue in Africa. Elephant populations provide unique photographic safaris that attract millions of tourists mostly from Europe and America visit wildlife protected areas in Africa.
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