Are Elephants Endangered? Ivory Poaching and Habitat Loss

What is the conservation status of each elephant?

Until 2021, the IUCN treated African elephants as a single species, listed as Vulnerable. Genetic research had shown that bush and forest elephants are separate species, so they were assessed separately for the first time in 2021, and both were moved to higher threat categories.

“Endangered” means a species faces a very high risk of extinction in the wild, and “Critically Endangered” means an extremely high risk. These ratings describe the species as a whole; some local populations are doing well while others are disappearing.

How many elephants are left?

The 2016 African Elephant Status Report estimated about 415,000 African elephants of both species. The same year, the Great Elephant Census, an aerial survey of savanna elephants in 18 countries, counted about 352,000 and found a 30% drop between 2007 and 2014, mostly due to poaching. Botswana holds the largest population, roughly 130,000 animals.

Forest elephants are much harder to count in dense rainforest, but surveys suggest they have suffered the steepest losses of all. Asian elephants number roughly 48,000–52,000 in the wild across 13 countries, and about 60% of them live in India.

Why are elephants endangered?

Poaching for ivory. Elephant tusks are made of ivory, which has been carved for centuries. Poaching peaked in the 1970s and 1980s, when African elephant numbers fell sharply, and surged again from about 2008 to 2015 as ivory prices rose in Asia. Poachers target the biggest bulls first, removing the oldest and most experienced animals. Elephants are also killed for meat and, in Asia, for skin.

Habitat loss and fragmentation. Forests and savannas are being turned into farms, plantations, roads and towns. Elephants need huge areas to find food and water, and when their habitat is cut into small pieces, they become trapped in isolated patches. More than half of the African bush elephant’s range lies outside protected areas.

Conflict with people. As farms push into elephant habitat, elephants raid crops and sometimes damage homes. People are killed, and elephants are shot, poisoned or electrocuted in return. In India alone, around 1,500 people were killed by elephants between 2019 and 2022, and hundreds of elephants die in conflict-related incidents.

Slow breeding. Elephants are pregnant for about 22 months and usually have a calf only every four or five years. This makes it hard for populations to recover from heavy losses. See How long are elephants pregnant?

Why are Asian elephants in trouble?

Asian elephants face a slightly different mix of threats. Because only some males carry large tusks, ivory poaching is less of a threat than in Africa, although it has badly skewed sex ratios in places such as Periyar in southern India. The bigger problem is space. Asian elephants share their range with some of the densest human populations on Earth, and they now survive mostly in fragments of forest and grassland surrounded by farms, tea estates, roads and railways.

Thousands of Asian elephants also live in captivity, working in logging, tourism and temples. Capturing wild calves for this trade has added to the pressure on some wild populations, especially in Myanmar and Thailand.

How has poaching changed elephants?

Heavy poaching has even changed how elephants look. Because poachers kill elephants with tusks, tuskless animals have a better chance of surviving and breeding. In Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, where most elephants were killed during the country’s civil war (1977–1992), the share of tuskless females rose sharply. A 2021 study linked this to a gene variant, an example of human-driven evolution.

What is being done to protect elephants?

International commercial trade in elephant ivory has been banned under CITES since 1990, and China, the largest market, closed its legal domestic ivory trade at the end of 2017. Rangers, anti-poaching patrols, sniffer dogs at ports and DNA testing of seized ivory help track and stop trafficking.

On the ground, conservation groups and governments protect parks and the corridors that link them, so elephants can move safely between habitats. To reduce conflict, farmers use early-warning systems, community guards and deterrents such as chili-based barriers and beehive fences, which also give them income. In parts of southern Africa, where elephant numbers have grown, conservationists manage populations by expanding space and linking reserves across borders.

Can elephants recover?

Elephants can recover where they are well protected. Numbers have risen in parts of southern Africa and in some Kenyan parks after poaching was brought under control. The future of the species depends on keeping poaching low and, above all, leaving enough connected land for elephants and people to share.