Elephants Elephants - Wildpro - Twycross Zoo

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The most critical problems facing elephant conservation are lack of financial
resources and growing human populations. Expanding agricultural activities
are increasingly causing degradation and destruction of elephant habitat. This
is most evident in West Africa which has the most fragmented elephant
ranges. Over 40% of elephant range is in central Africa but only 10% of the
area is protected. This is forest habitat and the region supports the main
population of L. a. cyclotis. Southern Africa has the largest number of bush
elephants, in mainly savannah habitat. Forest elephants only occur in forests
but the bush elephant ranges from lowland and montane forest, upland
moors, swamps floodplains all types of woodland, scattered tree savannahs
and range into subdesert.
2.6 Conservation and Protection
The red list (IUCN 2003) assigns the category and criteria EN A1b to the
African elephant. Thus it is categorised as Endangered in the wild due to
criterion A, i.e. population reduction verified by measurements of population
decline. In 1989 the African elephant was listed as Appendix I on CITES and
this effectively placed a complete ban on the international trade in ivory and
ivory products. However the species was downlisted again to Appendix II in
some southern African countries in 1997. This was and is somewhat
controversial (Sharp 1997) (Payne et al 1999). The African elephant is currently
(i.e. 2004) listed as CITES Appendix I except for certain countries in southern
African (Botswana, Namibia, RSA and Zimbabwe) where it is Appendix II
with certain restrictions including quotas and permit controls see (CITES
2000). The sale of elephant products from the Southern African countries will
continue to be a controversial issue, as is the methodology needed for
successful monitoring.
The Asian elephant is also categorised as Endangered with the criterion A1cd,
i.e. due to population reduction. The species is CITES Appendix I throughout
its range.
CITES has two monitoring systems for elephant trade (and see
www.traffic.org): MIKE (Monitoring Illegal Killing of Elephants) is the
approved instrument for tracking the situation across Africa and Asia and
ETIS (Elephant Trade Information System) is the designated system to
monitor illegal trade in ivory and elephant products. ETIS was designed by
TRAFFIC.
CENSUSING ELEPHANTS IN THE WILD
Part of elephant conservation is the monitoring of populations in the field
(Kangwana 1996). Aerial surveys are commonly employed to count elephants
in open habitats. These methods are not suitable for censusing forest dwelling
elephants and dung counts have been used for this sort of survey (Barnes
2001). This method has been shown to be relatively reliable and in many cases
more precise than aerial surveys. However, the rate of decay of dung can vary
in different areas, in some cases by as much as 50% (Nchanji and Plumtre
2001) and this factor has to be taken into account when calculating