Elephant poaching and ivory smuggling levels remain alarmingly high in Africa despite efforts to ban ivory trade in many countries, an updated assessment by a United Nations Environment Programme-administered treaty confirmed.
African elephant populations have fallen from an estimated 12 million a century ago, to just 400,000, according to the most recent estimations contained in the 2016 African Elephant Status Report.
The Secretary-General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) attributed this decline of elephants to poaching.
“Illegal killing of African elephants for ivory remains a significant threat to elephant populations in most of the range States,” he said.
“At the same time, the human population of Africa has grown tenfold, from 125 million to 1,225 million, creating competition for land with elephants”.
Many African elephant populations are small and fragmented and not well-protected, making them even more vulnerable to poaching.
