Elephant Conservation: Important Things You Need to Know

Elephants are majestic mammals that serve a variety of purposes. Known as a keystone species, they're particularly important to maintaining the biodiversity of their inhabited areas, as they help to clear paths in dense forests for other animals, reduce bush cover for browsing and grazing animals, disperse seeds, and even create micro-ecosystems for tadpoles and other organisms with their footprints.

Yet, due to a myriad of factors, including the illegal ivory trade and habitat loss facilitating human-elephant conflict, the elephant population in Africa and Asia has declined considerably in the last century. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the number of African elephants has declined from about 12 million in the early 20th century to about 400,000 today, with poachers killing at least 20,000 each year. The population of African forest elephants, known as "climate heroes" since they help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by increasing plant and tree species density and abundance, declined by 62 percent from 2002 to 2011.

Here is a closer look at the impact of poaching and how the WWF and other animal welfare and environmental organizations are working to protect wild elephants.

Poaching and the Illegal Ivory Trade

Elephants use their tusks to gather food, move objects, and dig holes to find water, among other purposes. However, poachers target elephants for their tusks because of the money they can make selling ivory in the illegal wildlife trade. While China has made a concerted effort to stop elephant poaching, ivory is still in high demand in Asia, where it is used for jewelry and traditional medicine.

Poachers have killed 90 percent of the African elephant population in the last 100 years. Poaching rates declined considerably after 1989, when governments worldwide came together to effectively ban international commercial trade of ivory, but the illegal practice has unfortunately become more commonplace in the last decade due in large part to consumer demand in Asia. Ethiopia, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are among the most common countries of origin for shipping elephant ivory to Asian countries, while in Botswana poachers are targeting elephants in protected national parks.

Poaching is a complex issue fueled by financial opportunity. Of the 173 people who admitted to poaching in a 2017 survey published in Conservation and Society, 164 said they would give up the practice if they had other means to support their families. In other cases, elephants, facing increasing habitat loss due to human settlements and the construction of infrastructure, are forced to find food in farmland. This sometimes leads to humans killing elephants to protect their crops and livelihood.

The WWF and How It Is Protecting Elephants

The WWF is one of many animal welfare organizations working to protect African and Asian elephants. It works with TRAFFIC, a global wildlife trade monitoring network, to identify popular ivory trade routes and published the Identification Guide for Ivory and Ivory Substitutes to help law enforcement and wildlife inspectors recognize illegal ivory products. In addition, it has fostered partnerships with online retailers, tourism companies, and social media platforms to help change consumer behavior and reduce the demand for ivory.

Recognizing the impact that human-wildlife conflict has on the elephant population, WWF also works with wildlife managers and other key stakeholders to reduce the frequency of harmful encounters. It helps farmers, for example, set up electric fencing and other deterrents to keep elephants from destroying their crops. It also provides anti-poaching training to rangers and game guards in the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), which is home to more than half of the elephants in Africa.

The Use of Satellite Technology

WWF utilizes GPS collaring to accurately track elephant movements in KAZA, a 200,000-square-mile area spanning five countries, including Botswana, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. By understanding their movements, the organization can help researchers and policymakers create more effective conservation strategies.

Conservation groups and governments collared roughly 300 elephants in KAZA from 2009 to 2023, gaining critical insight for conservation management from about 4 million GPS data points. Notably, the data points highlighted the impact of human settlements on elephant navigation, particularly how human-made obstacles obstructed their routes to water.

Other Organizations Committed to Conservation

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) is another conservation organization committed to protecting elephants from poaching. Addressing the root of the problem, it strives to create alternative income-generating opportunities for people who live in areas where poaching is a major problem. In Kenya, it is helping Maasai women launch their own small businesses via vocational training, while it is also supporting a project in Zambia through which farmers, including some former poachers, receive training in sustainable, eco-friendly agricultural techniques.

Save the Elephants, The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Elephants Without Borders, Wildlife SOS, and Elephant Nature Park are among the other groups working to protect elephants. The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust has reintegrated more than 250 orphaned elephants into natural habitats, while Elephant Nature Park has rescued in excess of 100 elephants from logging and tourism industries and provided a home for them at its northern Thailand sanctuary.