Surveying elephants is hard, risky work. Dedicated biologists have been doing this challenging task across Africa for decades.
Systematic surveying started in the late 1960s but has been sporadic, as access to remote areas takes logistical planning, funding and well-trained teams. Surveys can easily be derailed by civil unrest or lack of available survey teams. Consequently, the information on the numbers of elephants across Africa is spotty. Even for a single population, survey effort and coverage can change over the years.
Still, the efforts of governments and conservation organisations to count elephants have amassed a remarkable dataset, held by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and its African Elephant Specialist Group. It’s a complex dataset, which has made it harder to see general scale trends in the numbers of elephants, until now.
In a new study, my colleagues and I have put together data from 1,325 surveys of elephant populations – everything we could find – to evaluate how elephant numbers in Africa have changed over the last 50 years or so.
This research provides the most comprehensive assessment of trends in the two species of elephants in Africa: the forest elephant and the savanna elephant.
The results were eye opening. African elephants have experienced serious losses in contemporary times (between 1964 and 2016). The average population trend for African savanna elephants was a decline of 70%. Forest elephant populations declined by over 90%. While declines in the species had been widely recognised, understanding of the overall magnitude and regional context was lacking until now.
We found that over the past 50 years there has been a shift in the distribution of elephants across Africa. Population sizes have shifted too. Three-quarters of today’s forest and savanna elephant populations are smaller than 500 individuals.
Our team of African elephant conservation and survey data analysis experts have highlighted the areas most at risk of losing their elephant populations. We’ve also provided area-specific insight to elephant conservation successes and failures. The research shows that maintaining current elephant numbers, let alone reversing declines, requires new thinking and conservation innovation.
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Declining elephant numbers are not surprising, given the level of ivory poaching and the degree of human population growth and associated landscape modification across Africa over the past 60 years. And this killing continues. Hundreds of elephants are illegally killed each year, according to the Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants programme.
The scale of the decline merited listing savanna elephant species as endangered and forest elephant species as critically endangered.
But this was not without controversy. In places, growing elephant populations are creating management challenges, such as in and around Chobe National Park, Botswana.
Thus, the reality at some sites does not match the overall, average trend of populations across the continent. Our analysis was structured to give insight into the diversity of trends. We also did this for the two species separately.
We were able to dissect which populations had experienced losses and which had gains, finding that trends varied by population.
We found that southern Africa experienced the greatest diversity of trends.
Half the sites were stable or increasing over the study period. Populations in Botswana and Zimbabwe, in particular, grew robustly and now hold the majority of savanna elephants in Africa.
Increasing populations were rare in other regions. All the populations of savanna elephants in the northern part of sub-Saharan Africa showed declines. Many populations in the northern savannas of Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Mali have been lost. Most remaining populations in the region are under serious threat. Only remnant populations remain in the northern savannas, typically isolated from each other.
East and central Africa, where most elephants once resided, underwent serious losses over this period due to ivory poaching.
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Reversing the downward trend is difficult. Ivory poaching has driven large scale declines over relatively short periods of time in Africa. Stemming the ivory trade has proven difficult as it requires global recognition and action.
Over the longer term, erosion of elephant range finishes off remnant populations. Once elephant populations are lost, an area may lose its protection, accelerating landscape changes.
Concerted efforts must be made to slow the erosion of remaining wildlands.
Despite the broad scale decline, there are numerous examples of populations that are stable or increasing. Some are even within areas with few persisting elephant populations. These successes suggest ways to reverse elephant declines: tackling habitat loss, landscape conversion and ivory poaching.
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Firstly, public-private partnerships in protected area management should be considered.
In many countries, there’s not enough management capacity, leading to “paper” parks. These are parks that are legally gazetted but in fact are not functional. Institutional partnerships between relevant government departments and the private sector – non-governmental organisations focused on conservation – can uplift management efforts. This can also drive progress towards economic sustainability of protected areas.
We have seen several examples of this with African Parks, a non-governmental organisation that directly manages numerous protected areas across Africa with government support.
Secondly, working with neighbouring communities and land use managers to maintain the integrity of the landscape for wildlife like elephants is crucial.
Large-scale landscape planning for co-existence with elephants in lands adjacent to protected areas can take the form of tourism expansion. Land can be converted to growing crops that wildlife do not eat, like chilli. Wildlife-friendly and multi-use buffer zones can also be created.
Thirdly, ivory poaching must be tackled. Law enforcement must function in protected areas and their surroundings. Similarly, it’s important to reduce demand for illegal wildlife products, and the economic pressures that drive the wildlife trade.
Africa’s human population will more than double over the next 50 years, putting more pressure on Africa’s wildlands. New efforts are needed to stop the decline of elephant populations and restore lost populations.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: George Wittemyer, Colorado State University
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George Wittemyer receives funding from the U.S.A. National Science Foundation and Save the Elephants, a Kenya based non-profit organization. He is a professor at Colorado State University and serves as the Chief Scientist for Save the Elephants. 
