Africa’s overall elephant population has seen the worst declines in 25 years, mainly due to poaching — according to IUCN’s African Elephant Status Report launched at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES, taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The report is an authoritative source of knowledge about the numbers and distribution of African elephant populations across their 37 range states in sub-Saharan Africa.
It presents more than 275 new or updated estimates for individual elephant populations across Africa, with over 180 of these arising from systematic surveys. The report summarizes — for the first time in almost a decade — elephant numbers at the continental, regional and national levels, and examines changes in population estimates at the site level.
Based on population estimates from a wide range of sources — including aerial surveys and elephant dung counts — the estimates for 2015 are 93,000 lower than in 2006. However, this figure includes 18,000 from previously uncounted populations. Therefore, the real decline from estimates is considered to be closer to 111,000. The continental total is now thought to be […]
