Just 352,271 African savannah elephants remain in the wild, it has been revealed. The Great Elephant Census was a project that aimed to count all the continent’s elephants by air. 90 scientists and 286 crew members have taken part in the ambitious study over the past two years – and the final total was far less than they had estimated.
30 per cent of the wild elephants died between 2007 and 2014 and in certain reserves in Tanzania and Mozambique that number was down 75 per cent due to poaching.
Ecologist Mike Chase told CNN: ‘When you think of how many elephants occurred in areas 10 or 20 years ago, it’s incredibly disheartening.
‘Historically these ecosystems supported many thousands of elephants compared to the few hundreds or tens of elephants we counted.’
As well as the census, Chase and his colleagues have tracked several of the magnificent beasts by attaching GPS satellite collars to them.
The results were revealed on the same day that scientists said 65% of African’s forest elephants had been wiped out.
The study by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society is the first analysis of the demography of an elusive animal that is hard to track because of its remote wooded surrounds.
But the thickly-forested tropical range it inhabits has not deterred poachers, who reduced its population by a staggering 65 percent between 2002 and 2013 to meet red-hot demand for ivory in China and other fast-growing Asian economies.
‘In the intervening time we are down significantly from that 100,000 – it could be as low as 70,000 now,’ Peter Wrege of Cornell University, one of the study’s authors, told Reuters.
‘To come back to the population it was before 2002, based on their natality rates, it could take nearly a century to recover,’ Wrege said.
The study by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society is the first analysis of the demography of an elusive animal that is hard to track because of its remote wooded surrounds.
But the thickly-forested tropical range it inhabits has not deterred poachers, who reduced its population by a staggering 65 percent between 2002 and 2013 to meet red-hot demand for ivory in China and other fast-growing Asian economies.
One of two species of African elephant – the other is the more numerous and larger Savannah elephant – the forest dwellers can hardly sustain this kind of lethal pressure because few other mammals reproduce so slowly.
The study found females begin giving birth when they are around 23, about a decade later than their Savannah counterparts. And female forest elephants only produce a calf every five or six years, compared to the three- to four-year interval of their Savannah kin.
Some of the worst poaching is taking place in forest-elephant range states such as Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo – poor countries that suffer from bad governance and conflict.
The findings come ahead of a major United Nations’ meeting in Johannesburg at the end of September where Zimbabwe and Namibia will push for permission to sell ivory stocks, a move opposed by many other African countries.
Those seeking to open up the ivory trade argue it will raise badly-needed funds for conservation, but others say it would provide cover to poachers and make products that threaten species such as forest elephants socially acceptable.
Overall, the illicit killing of elephants in Africa is believed to have declined from a peak of 30,000 in 2011 but remains far too high, according to a recent report.
