1013. Sixty Percent of African Elephants Were Killed from 2002 to 2011

By James Gorman, The New York Times, March 5, 2013

Sixty percent of the forest elephants in Africa were killed from 2002 to 2011, scientists reported on Monday, putting a number to the rampant slaughter of both forest and savannah elephants for their ivory.

The increase in killing of elephants in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo to feed a voracious international ivory market is well known, said Fiona Maisels, of the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Stirling, in Scotland, one of two primary authors of the paper published in PLoS One. But, she said, international action requires hard data. “So we just provided it.”

To nail down the numbers, she and Samantha Strindberg of the conservation society, the other primary author, compiled data gathered in 80 surveys in central Africa, which covers about 95 percent of the forest elephant’s range. Scores of scientists, mostly African, participated. The paper has 62 authors.

The two kinds of elephants are considered separate species by some conservation groups and subspecies by others. Unlike the savannah elephants, which can be seen from truck, plane or helicopter, forest elephants are not easy to spot. The studies relied on walking long straight lines through dense forest, noting the presence of dung and other evidence of wildlife.

The decline in forest elephants, the authors conclude, is “catastrophic,” and the best way to protect remaining elephants, they write, is “reduction of poaching and trade in elephant products.”

Most of the forest elephants live in central and western Africa and Dr. Maisels estimated there are about 80,000 left. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimated the total number of elephants in Africa as probably around 500,000, perhaps higher.

In the 1930s and 1940s, there were three to five million elephants, according to estimates by the World Wildlife Fund.