African Savanna Elephant
African savanna elephants are the largest terrestrial mammal on Earth. Though they once roamed throughout sub-Saharan Africa, their range has become increasingly small due to poaching and habitat loss. After rampant demand for their tusks, just 20 super tuskers remain.
Common Name:
African Savanna Elephant
Scientific Name:
Loxodonta africana
IUCN Red List Status:
Endangered
Weight:
3.6-6.35 metric tonnes (4-7 U.S. tons)
Size:
3-4m (10-13 feet) tall at the shoulder
Habitats:
Variable, including open savannas, woodlands, and even deserts. Absent in the dense tropical rainforests of Africa, where the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) lives.
Savanna Elephant Global Population Size Over Time by Year and Estimated Population:
1800 — 26 million*
1976 — 1.34 million*
1987 — 760k*
1989 — 608k*
2003 — 200k-430k
2021 — ~350k
*Some historical numbers are forest and savanna elephants combined, as they were not recognized as separate species until 2021
Current and historic ranges of the African savanna and forest elephants.
African savanna elephants are the largest terrestrial mammal on Earth. Though they once roamed throughout sub-Saharan Africa, their range has become increasingly small due to poaching and habitat loss.
They now occur in 23 African countries, with the largest populations in Southern and Eastern Africa.
African savanna elephants are highly intelligent, social animals that live in complex societies. The core of elephant society is the family unit, which comprises several adult cows, their daughters, and their sons before puberty, all led by a matriarch. Males leave the group around 10-19 years of age.
Elephants are hernivorous, primarily eating grasses and herbs but also bark, leaves, and shrubs. The presence of African elephants helps to maintain suitable habitats for many other species. In central African forests, up to 30 percent of tree species may require elephants to help with dispersal and germination. They play a pivotal role in shaping their habitat because of the enormous impact they have on factors ranging from fresh water to forest cover.
Did you know? Though elephant calves may be preyed upon by lions and hyenas, fully-grown elephants are very rarely killed by predators. The exception, of course, is humans, who are by far the greatest cause of death for elephants.
Threats
African savanna elephants are threatened primarily by habitat destruction and poaching for the illegal ivory trade. Poisonings and human-wildlife conflict that end in retaliatory killings are also major threats.
It has been estimated that in the early 1800s, up to 27 million African elephants may have been present throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Since then, that number has continuously decreased.
Until the 1970s, habitat destruction was the cause of this decline, but thereafter poaching for the ivory trade accelerated their decline.
In the 1970s and 80s the price for ivory rose, and poaching spun out of control. By 1976, only an estimated 1.34 million elephants remained. Between 1976 and 1980, the tusks of about 222,000 elephants was exported from Africa to Hong Kong and Japan.
By the end of the 1980s, the number of surviving elephants had halved, to just 608,000.
Though conservationists raised the alarm in the 1980s and the African elephant was listed in CITES Appendix 1, restricting the international trade of ivory, there are fewer than 430,000 African savanna elephants remaining today, just 1.5% of their historical numbers.
Of course, the elephants with the largest tusks were targeted by poachers. Consequently, very few elephants with large tusks remain. In fact, in parts of Africa, females have stopped growing tusks altogether, as the gene for tusklessness gives them an advantage.Hunted relentlessly across the continent since the late 1800s, it is estimated that fewer than 30 big tuskers remain in the whole of Africa. In China, 1kg of ivory sells for several thousand dollars and a ‘big tusker’ can have tusks that weigh over 50kg.
Did you know? Elephant tusks are actually enlarged incisor teeth which first appear when elephants are around 2 years old. Tusks continue growing throughout their lives. Tusks are incredibly important tools for elephants, and they use them to defend themselves, pry bark from trees, and dig for roots or water, among other things.
What is a Super Tusker?
A Super Tusker is a male bull elephant with tusks that weigh over 100lbs (45kgs) each. Tusks of that size are usually so long that they scrape along the ground when the elephant walks. Only bulls can be Super Tuskers, but there are female elephants with huge tusks that don’t quite reach 100lbs. We call these Iconic Cows.
Tuskers roam far and wide across the Mana Pools World Heritage Site and require constant protection due to poaching. Super Tusker conservation requires a coordinated aerial and ground team and a constantly updating and evolving map of sightings and tracks.
Elephants use their tusks in a variety of ways to assist in their daily routine. They offer protection against predators, help them dig, forage and strip bark from trees. Additionally, bull elephants use their tusks as a display feature to attract the interest of females. By protecting the ‘big tuskers’ and ensuring they live a happy and normal life, elephant conservationists ensure that their genes remain in the gene pool and the presence of ‘big tuskers’ in Tsavo and the rest of Africa can be continued.
A tuskless female elephant and her calf in Addo Elephant Reserve, South Africa.
Aside from poaching, elephants continue to face other threats. African elephants have less room to roam than ever before as expanding human populations convert land for agriculture, settlements and developments. The elephants’ range shrank from three million square miles in 1979 to just over one million square miles in 2007.
Commercial logging, plantations for biofuels and extractive industries like logging and mining not only destroy habitat but also open access to remote elephant forests for poachers. Poverty, armed conflict and the displacement of people by civil conflict also add to habitat loss and fragmentation. All of these push elephants into smaller islands of protected areas and hinder elephants’ freedom to roam.
As habitats contract and human populations expand, people and elephants are increasingly coming into contact with each other. Where farms border elephant habitat or cross elephant migration corridors, damage to crops and villages can become commonplace. This often leads to conflicts that elephants invariably lose. But loss of life can occur on both sides, as people may be trampled while trying to protect their livelihoods, and game guards often shoot "problem" elephants.
Conservation Action
With our support, the Bushlife Conservancy has been working tirelessly to curb elephant poaching in Mana Pools National Park and the surrounding Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe. Thanks to this hard work, they recently announced that Mana Pools National Park has been free of any elephant poaching incidents for two years.
These 2,500 square kilometers of river frontage, islands, sandbanks and pools, flanked by forests of mahogany, wild figs, ebonies and baobabs, is one of the least-developed national parks in Southern Africa. This is also the last national park in Africa where visitors can still walk unescorted among big game, encountering painted dogs on the hunt, elephants standing on their hind feet to access the tastiest leaves, and the occasional armored pangolin. However, the Zambezi Valley has historically been plagued by rampant elephant poaching. Twelve thousand elephants have been poached in this area over the past ten years, and by 2014, elephant numbers had decreased 40% from 18,000 to 11,500.
"In 2008 and 2009 it was really bad. Poachers would put cyanide in trees targeting elephants, but when that was too slow they'd poison the watering holes. On one occasion a pack of wild dogs, which are an endangered species, eight elephants and a number of other animals were killed at a poisoned watering hole. That really brought it home that we needed to up our game. It wasn't just a case of listening out for gun shots and tracking poachers down anymore, you've got to be proactive and be there to prevent them getting to the watering holes. Thankfully, with the hard effort we've put in with Zimbabwe national park rangers, we've curbed that."
- Nick Murray, director of the Bushlife Conservancy, as told to BBC.
Bushlife is run by conservationists Nick and Desiree Murray. The organization’s operations cover the Lower Zambezi Valley, an area of 10,000 square kilometers. Bushlife works in close coordination with Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife personnel to help patrol remote areas, identify, detain and arrest poachers, monitor prosecutions and sentencing, and recover and rehabilitate stolen wildlife.
Before Global Conservation and Bushlife Conservancy stepped in, a small team of poorly-paid and ill-equipped rangers was tasked with patrolling the entirety of this vast wilderness. In recent years, rangers have sometimes gone 3-6 months without a paycheck. Now, Global Conservation’s support has funded ranger patrol rations, fuel, and vehicle maintenance, enabling Bushlife to deploy rangers on anti-poaching activities in the Mana Pools, Sapi, Nykasanga, Rifa and Marongora areas. Global Conservation has also provided a Thuraya Satellite Network and Galaxy S8 smartphones to improve communications among ranger teams and for data collection while on patrol.
Regular patrolling and presence of rangers has been a big deterrent to poachers. There have been at least four cases where early warning by informants has kept poachers out of the Lower Zambezi Valley. Bushlife operates two vehicles with intelligence officers and funds covert operations with fuel, informant payments, and other operational costs. This year, a pangolin was recovered, rehabilitated, and returned to the bush. A pangolin trophy and python were also recovered. A total of ten arrests have been made so far this year, and two poachers were convicted for nine years each after being caught trafficking ivory. Two tusks were recovered. Another poacher was arrested for illegal possession of ivory, and one poacher was apprehended with snares.
Did you know? Elephants need up to 150kg of food per day. They eat so much that they can spend up to three-quarters of their day eating.
Bushlife’s work is complemented by the work of our other partner, the International Anti-Poaching Foundation (IAPF), to whom we provided a $20,000 grant for anti-poaching ranger training last year. IAPF also oversees the Akashinga Rangers, an all-female team that aims to protect a network of 20 former hunting reserves in the Zambezi Valley by 2025. Earlier this year, an Akashinga team conducted a sting operation that netted approximately 225 pounds of confiscated ivory. One person was arrested for illegal ivory possession. They also intercepted an ivory deal in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare, which resulted in the recovery of two large tusks and an arrest for trafficking ivory.
Elephant Poaching – Lower Zambezi: 2016-2019
Thanks to the efforts of our rangers and investigation teams, elephant poaching in the Lower Zambezi has declined every year for the past 3 years.
2016: 70+ (5.8 per month)
2017: 28 (60% decrease from 2016)
2018: 18 (36% decrease from 2017 and 76% from 2016)
2019: 7 (Down 90% from 2016)
Good relationships with and investment into local communities widens the intelligence network and operational footprint across the region. Between Akashinga and our work on special investigations, there have been over 200 arrests made since 2017, helping to drive an 80% reduction in elephant poaching across the entire Lower Zambezi ecosystem, home to one of the largest remaining elephant populations on Earth.
Despite fears that poaching would increase due to the Coronavirus pandemic, our partners have been able to maintain their zero-poaching streak in Mana Pools National Park. Fewer tourists can lead to increased poaching, as more poachers are able to enter parks undetected. Usually, 7,000 tourists visit this area each year, generating over $2 million in revenues, but those visitation numbers have dropped dramatically during the last 6 months.
Global Conservation has five primary goals in supporting Global Park Defense in Mana Pools and adjacent areas:
Deployment of Global Park Defense systems and communications for all park rangers.
Achieving ‘No Cut, No Kill’ within the park by increasing arrests and jail sentences.
Increasing the size of Mana Pools National Park to protect adjacent high biodiversity areas by 30-50%.
Doubling core wildlife populations for endangered indicator species in five years.
Training of park rangers on Global Park Defense technologies and systems for rapid response and targeted patrolling.
Bushlife's Work in Mana Pools to Protect Tuskers
Monitoring and Tracking
Bushlife Conservancy undertakes constant monitoring of the herds and iconic elephants in the area to track and protect the elephants. One of our latest initiatives is the collaring of the iconic bulls in Mana Pools.
With Zimparks permission, four iconic elephants were collared in 2018 and five more elephants were collared in 2019.
Using the satellite tracking, we work with Zimparks to track and research elephant behavior. Collaring iconic bull elephants offers extra protection when they leave the Park and enter the adjacent hunting areas.
In 2020, we collared five elephants. By tracking their whereabouts we can help avoid conflicts with adjacent communities. The movements of trophy bulls will also be surveilled and compared to the activities of cows and younger bulls.
Collaring Boswell in 2020
The Bushlife team searched for Boswell for 5 days, with two vehicles driving up to 60km in a small area to try and locate him. On day 5, the team were in a thickly wooded mopane area when Boswell appeared out of the bush and walked straight up to the car as if to say, “Looking for me?!”
Once the team was ready to go, Nick Murray darted Boswell with a tranquillizer when he was in a clearing. The tranquillizer takes a few minutes to work, so Nick and the team started to cautiously walk up to Boswell carrying the collar. Nick carefully observed how the elephant was reacting to the tranquillizer, and once Boswell started to sit down, Nick and the team quickly moved forward with the collar to put it on before Boswell laid on the ground.
Once the collar was secured, another drug was administered to bring Boswell out of his slumber. It only took 25 minutes from the time of darting to Boswell standing up after the collar was fitted.
Infrastructure Development
The key to protecting Zimbabwe's elephants is to establish an ongoing ranger presence in vulnerable areas; this requires resources, equipment infrastructure such as roads built in remote regions, along with boats, vehicles and more.
Community Outreach
Bushlife Conservancy provides funding to support local community health and welfare needs, such as medical equipment and supplies for a local clinic, which will be the first of its kind in the area, and a school bus for local kids. The goal is to educate and provide resources to the community so that its members will in turn support wildlife conservation efforts in the area.