Poaching, habitat loss endanger Africa's elephants

Increasing threats of poaching and loss of habitat have made Africa's elephant populations more endangered, according to a report released Thursday by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The African forest elephant is critically endangered, and the African savanna elephant is endangered. The two species had previously been grouped together as a single species and were classified as vulnerable by the IUCN.

"The matter is very serious" said Rudi van Aarde of the University of Pretoria's zoology department who welcomed the decision of classifying the elephants in two different species, to better understand how each one is affected.

"These species are facing extinction within a reasonable time" that could be as little as 10 years according to some experts, van Aarde said.

The number of African forest elephants has fallen by more than 86% over a 31-year period, while the population of savanna elephants dropped by more than 60% over a 50-year period, according to the IUCN, which rates the global extinction risks to the world's animals.

Africa currently has 415,000 elephants, counting the forest and savanna elephants together, according to the IUCN.

The savanna elephants prefer more open plains and are found in various habitats across sub-Saharan Africa, with Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe having high concentrations.

The African forest elephants — smaller in size — mostly occupy the tropical forests of West and Central Africa, with the largest remaining populations found in Gabon and Republic of Congo.

Criminal networks working with corrupt officials are a significant problem in central and western Africa, van Aarde said.

"The solution is not in catching the poachers, but the solution lies in this entangling syndicate criminal networks that are responsible for taking the ivory out of Africa into the rest of the world"  he said.

Sub-Saharan Africa's elephants suffered a huge knock with a spike in poaching between 2008 and 2012.

A worrying trend is that a substantial amount of that poaching occurred in East and Southern Africa where an estimated 100,000 savanna elephants were killed in northern Mozambique and southern Tanzania, during that period, he said.

Experts alerted that Africa's elephants play key roles in ecosystems and economies, and their extinction would bring consequences in the future of the planet.

"The degradation of the landscapes as a consequence of the loss of elephants will also make life better for some species" said van Aarde, species that are carriers of serious zoonotic diseases like COVID, according to him.

Some researchers are working on projects in different countires studying viruses present in wild animals - including bats-  which many scientists believe were linked to the outbreak of COVID-19