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According to the IUCN, all elephant species are endangered. African forest elephants are listed as critically endangered , while African savanna and Asian elephants have been listed as endangered.
African bush elephants and Asian elephants are listed as endangered and African forest elephants as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). One of the biggest threats to elephant populations is the ivory trade, as the animals are poached for their ivory tusks.
There are approximately 415,000 African elephants left in the world. The World Wildlife Foundation said that, in 2016, experts estimated their population had fallen by 111,000 over the course of a ...
A population estimate by conservationists conducted separately from this study put the two species combined at between 415,000 and 540,000 elephants as of 2016, the last year of the study period.
African forest elephants are hunted by various hunter-gatherer groups in the Congo basin, including by Mbuti pygmies, among others. It is unknown how long the active hunting of elephants in the region has been practised, and it may have only begun as a response for the demand for ivory beginning in the 19th century or earlier. [55]
The pre-eminent threats to the Asian elephant today are habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation, which are driven by an expanding human population, and lead in turn to increasing conflicts between humans and elephants when elephants eat or trample crops. Hundreds of people and elephants are killed annually as a result of such conflicts. [12]
African elephants are listed as endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, with only approximately 415,000 left in the wild as of 2021.
Between 1979 and 1989, the African elephant population decreased from 1.3 million to 600,000. Ivory became a billion-dollar market, with about 80% of the supply taken from illegally killed elephants. [2] [3] As of 2014, according to a report by the Wildlife Conservation Society, about 96 African elephants are killed for their tusks every day.