ELEPHANTS & IVORY

© IFAW/A. Ndoumbe/Bouba Ndjida National Park, Cameroon
The major threats to species diversity, both
historically and today, are habitat degradation,
fragmentation and loss, and hunting. The latter
may include hunting for food or hunting for the
marketplace (including both live and dead animals,
their parts and derivatives), 31 killing for “sport”
(e.g. trophy hunting), and the killing of animals
perceived as pests (i.e. problem animal control) or
competitors (i.e. culling). 32
In the case of elephants, habitat loss and
hunting have both been involved in their
precipitous decline in both distribution and
numbers throughout much of Africa and Asia.
While both factors remain operative today, it is
habitat degradation, fragmentation and loss,
driven by continued human population growth,
that are now considered to be the major threats
to elephants everywhere. Habitat degradation,
fragmentation and loss reduce the distribution and
numbers of animals relatively slowly and insipidly
over time. Over the long term, however, no species
(including elephants and, for that matter, humans)
can survive without viable habitats.
Illegal killing (poaching) of elephants for ivory
and other products has also been a major cause
of population declines, and remains a significant
and growing threat in some areas, particularly in
Central Africa, but elsewhere as well. 33 In contrast
to habitat issues, killing individuals or groups of
elephants has the immediate and highly visible
result of reducing the numbers of animals in
an area; the longer term implications are more
complicated and depend on a variety of factors.
Regardless, the discovery and documentation of
dead elephants, e.g. victims of poaching, or ivory
seized in international trade, have an immediate
and powerful visual and visceral impact, and –
superficially, at least – appear easier to quantify.
As a consequence, poaching and illegal trade seem
to receive more attention than habitat issues in
many discussions of elephant conservation today.
In this chapter, we attempt to place habitat
loss and the hunting of elephants into clearer
perspective, beginning with the ultimate threat,
which surely must be the ever increasing and
unsustainable 34 human population and its various
interactions with surviving elephant populations
(Figure 3).
Asian elephants live in some of the most
densely populated parts of the world. In contrast,
African elephants live on a continent that for
centuries was less densely populated than Asia.
Today, however, some African range states
are exhibiting the highest growth rates of any
human populations. 35 Furthermore, much of the
developed world continues to look to Africa as a
means of sustaining and growing its ecological
footprint in order to support and grow their
already unsustainable life styles. 36 This reality has
implications for elephants too.
39