Where is the African Elephant heading to ?

At first, poachers were hungry for pangolins in Africa but later turned to the precious jumbo-the Elephant. Probably, death remains the only way to get away with an elephant tusk. The the demand for this “gold” is going up day by day. However, to get the real picture of what is has been happening for years, we need to know how many there are now and how many were they in the past. This can help us estimate how many they will be in the future or how long they will take to extinct.

We might assume that we have too many elephants in the African parks and this is what is contributing to the merciless ecosystem damage. The fact is that we cannot know the exact number unless we count them and know their impact. We also need to understand the effect of ivory poaching on the elephant population, on the environment, and to the economy. Anyone with a ready market is looking for an elephant tusk.

Ian Douglas–Hamilton who is a Kenyan elephant conservationist conducted the first reliable estimate of elephant population in Africa. This was from 1976 to 1979. He estimated the total to be 1.3 million. In early 1990s, he found to have dropped to 600,000.

The Great Elephant Census that was coordinated in elephant range countries gave shocking results of the current elephant population. It was conducted by Elephants Without Borders together with the Paul Allen Foundation. The population was estimated to be 352,271 elephants in 18 countries. This represents 93% of the savannah elephants in these countries.

In 15 countries where repeated count was available, populations declined by 30 percent between 2007 and 2014. The current annual rate of species decline is 8 percent.

A country like Mozambique has lost 48% of its elephants in the last five years. The Niassa region in this country indicated a 63% population decline in three years. The most severe poaching on elephants has been of forest elephants that went down by 63% between 2002 and 2012.

It is only in W-ARLI-PENDJARI COMPLEX that includes Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin where the population indicated a double increase since 2003 but reported a 9% carcass ratio. The GEC reported a relatively stable population of elephants in Kenyan parks. The population in the other countries seems to be declining day by day. In most of the countries, the carcass ratio was more than 10% with a country like Cameroon being around 83%.

Since we cannot protect the elephant tusks, we must protect the jumbos themselves. They are a wealthy heritage that earns African nations a lot from the tourists. It is the duty of all of us to protect these animals and enjoy their beauty even for the the coming generations.