We estimate across Africa. Southern Africa is home to 59+, while East Africa hosts 27+ tuskers. This count excludes Central African forest elephant populations, where tusk measurements are rarely estimated.
Botswana, a popular luxury photographic safari destination, hosts the largest fluctuating elephant population in the world, with many of these animals migrating seasonally across much of southern Africa, particularly in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), where Botswana and Zimbabwe are the largest fluctuating populations. These elephant migrations are increasingly obstructed by human settlements, farms, mining, major roads, fences and other man-made obstacles, forcing free-roaming elephants into reduced areas. ‘Fear zones’, where elephants are persecuted by poachers, farmers and/or trophy hunters, also dictate elephant movements and stress levels.
Human-elephant conflict occurs in areas where humans and elephants compete for land and water – and many rural human lives and livelihoods are lost in the process. This is a major concern and focus area for African governments, and the Botswana government is no exception. Ecosystems, where elephants congregate in increasing numbers near water during the dry winter months because of the above pressures, are also suffering as elephants denude these areas of large tree cover.
Comment from our CEO, Simon Espley:
“The killing of Africa’s remaining large-tusked elephants by trophy hunters will not solve any human-elephant conflict or habitat issues. The volume of elephants hunted is not sufficient to reduce elephant populations. Instead, the likely result of selecting large-tusked elephants as trophies will be to hasten the disappearance of these genetically gifted icons from the African landscape. This probability in my lifetime will be a sad indictment of an archaic industry that promotes killing for fun and ego and that refuses to evolve to modern realities where the ‘resource’ is no longer abundant and inexhaustible.“
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