Current Conservation Status

In 1900, approximately ten million elephants roamed sub-Saharan Africa.  However, by 1989, fewer than 500,000 elephants remained, restricted to a small fraction of their former range. In 1989, countries that are party to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) voted to uplist elephants to Appendix I, in order to curtail the unregulated trade that was decimating their numbers.

Today, there are an estimated 600,000 elephants in Africa. In the past decades, elephant numbers have recovered in some countries, while still suffering decline due to poaching and habitat loss in others.  The West African elephants are severely imperiled, persisting only in small populations in isolated habitat remnants.  Central African forest elephants, Loxodonta cyclotis, continue to lose ground to logging and poaching for ivory and meat.  In some parts of East and southern Africa, savannah elephants, Loxodonta africana, suffer from poaching and from conflict with local people, particularly as land is converted to agriculture.  By contrast, some elephant populations in southern Africa are steadily increasing, but lack the space to migrate or shift their range in response to their needs for food and water.