‘Deeply disturbing’: Africa's elephants rapidly declining as poaching thrives
An alarming study has revealed the number of savanna elephants in Africa is rapidly declining and the species are in grave danger of being wiped out as demand for international and domestic ivory trade continues to drive poaching across the continent.
Africa’s savanna elephant population dramatically plummeted by around 30 percent between 2007 to 2014.
The population is currently declining at around 8 percent a year, according to a survey funded by Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen.
"If we can't save the African elephant, what is the hope of conserving the rest of Africa's wildlife?" elephant ecologist Mike Chase, the lead researcher, said in a statement.
"I am hopeful that, with the right tools, research, conservation efforts and political will, we can help conserve elephants for decades to come."
The extensive survey encompassed 18 countries using dozens of airplanes to record the data.
The study has been formally labelled as the Great Elephant Census.
It involved approximately 90 scientists and estimated a population of 352,271 savanna elephants.
During their research, scientists discovered 12 carcasses for every 100 living elephants.
These discoveries indicated poaching at a high enough level to cause significant population decline.
Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania experienced greater population declines than previously known, and elephants are now facing local extinction in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and Zambia.
However, the study also found that numbers of elephants in South Africa, Uganda and parts of Malawi and Kenya were stable or partly increasing.
Allen, who provided $7 million for the effort, said he decided to launch the census after hearing three years ago that there had not been a comprehensive count of African elephants in decades.
"I took my first trip to Africa in 2006 and have been fascinated by elephants ever since," he said.
"They are intelligent, expressive and dignified — but not to be underestimated. So, as this latest poaching crisis began escalating, I felt compelled to do something about it."
The research team used the limited existing data as a baseline for the study.
However, this survey is reportedly more comprehensive and will serve as a more reliable baseline for future observations.
Ivory trading that threatens elephants is banned internationally.
However, the domestic trade of ivory within countries is legal nearly everywhere.
The decline in savanna elephants, like the dwindling numbers of African forest elephants, is directly tied to criminal poaching activities.
Some even have ties to terrorist groups, according to Washington's nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency.
"Trade in ivory has been a driver of destabilization wherever it occurs in Africa," agency President Allan Thornton said.
Thornton said one-time auctions of stockpiled ivory to China and Japan in 2008 resulted in a spike in illegal poaching, and the rate of decline among Africa's elephants has been accelerating since.
In areas with a high rate of population decline, the savanna turns into an overgrown thicket devoid of grasslands that sustain other wildlife and becomes overrun by disease-carrying tsetse flies, said James Deutsch, director of Allen's Vulcan Inc. Wildlife Conservation.
That land becomes useless for tourism when the elephants are removed, he said.
"Once you remove elephants from parks, it becomes very hard to gain the political will to maintain those parks," Deutsch said.
U.N. Environment deputy head Ibrahim Thiaw said African nations are realising that wildlife is worth saving because it brings in tourist dollars to fund education, health care and infrastructure.
"As depressing as these numbers are, I hope they act as a further spark for action and change," Thiaw said in a statement.
"The Great Elephant Census tells us we must act, and now."
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