Thursday 29 September 2016

Goodbye Jumbo?

Forest elephants could be nearly extinct in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - the country that once held the largest population of this subspecies. A major study published in 2013 found that:
  • Between 2002 and 2011 the number of forest elephants in the DRC fell by 62% and the area occupied by the elephants shrank by about 30%.
  • Forest elephants have "likely declined to extremely low density over 75% of their potential
    range."
  • About 95% of DRC’s forests are likely to be almost empty of elephants."
  • [This] indicates a decline of more than 80% in less than 25 years which more than meets the Red Book criteria for listing a species as Critically Endangered.
  • Large losses also occurred in Gabon - the country where the majority of forest elephants now live.
These declines are due, above all, to poaching - itself encouraged by the absence of law
enforcement and poor governance (including corruption). But the increasing human population and physical infrastructure, such as roads, are also significant.

A simple extrapolation would have made the species extinct in the DRC by 2015! Of course, that didn't happen  - or not yet - though poachers have continued to kill elephants.

The most effective remedial action is to end the trade in poached ivory. But a more recent study has shown that even if poaching stopped tomorrow, the forest elephants would not recover their numbers for many decades. Indeed, given the other factors it's highly unlikely that they ever will.

2 comments:

  1. That is disastrous, government should take serious steps here, if we kept loosing forest elephant in such pace, they will be no more in the face of the world

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is disastrous, government should take serious steps here, if we kept loosing forest elephant in such pace, they will be no more in the face of the world

    ReplyDelete