Endangered species
> Elephant |
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| Elephant facts and issues |
Key issues | Facts
Key issues- Controlling unsustainable illegal trade in elephant products and implementing an effective system of enforcement.
- Retaining sufficient unaffected habitat and range for elephants.
- Alleviating human-elephant conflict, taking into account the needs of local people and the management of elephants as a resource of which local people can see the benefit.
- Monitoring elephant populations and the maintainance of accurate databases.
Facts
- IUCN status category:
- African elephant, Loxodonta africana: endangered. (2002 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species)
- Asian elephant, Elephas maximus: endangered. (2002 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species)
- African elephant populations stood at 1.3 million in 1979 (WWF Conserving Africa's Elephants, 1997) but in 1998, the African Elephant Database recorded a definite population of 300,000 restricted to 37 range states.
- Asian elephant populations stood at 100,000 in 1900, but were estimated to be between 35,000 and 51,000 in 2000 (Asian Elephants in the Wild: 2000 - a WWF Species Status Report). Asian elephants are found in 13 range countries; India has the largest population, estimated at 57 per cent of total numbers.
- African elephants are the world's largest land mammals, weighing up to 7,500 kgs.
- Elephants live for up to 70 years in clan units of six to 70 members, led by a female.
- Elephants reach sexual maturity at 10 years old, and their gestation period is 22 months.
- Elephants, once plentiful in Africa, have suffered dramatic population declines due to the rapid increase in the human population resulting in changes in land use, leaving insufficient undisturbed habitat and also as a result of the increasing demand for ivory tusks.
- With effect from January 1990, most elephant populations were listed on Appendix I of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). This banned international commercial trade in elephants from these populations and their products as it was recognised that efforts to control the ivory trade were insufficient to halt the decline in the African elephant and that the species had become seriously endangered.
- The elephant populations of Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe are listed on Appendix II of CITES, but with zero quotas, so again, international trade in elephants from these populations, and their products, is banned.
- Domestic internal trade in ivory still occurs legally in a number of African and Asian countries, although it is illegal to export ivory (except for carvings from Zimbabwe).
- The Borneo 'pygmy elephant' has been recognised as a new subspecies of Asian elephant. DNA sampling carried out by the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) and WWF Malaysia identified the new subspecies. Find out more
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WWF-UK > Research > Issues > Species > Elephant
