Title
African Elephant Status Report 2016: An Update from the African Elephant Database
Author(s)
C. R. Thouless; H. T. Dublin; J. J. Blanc; D. P. Skinner; T. E. Daniel; R. D. Taylor; F. Maisels; H. L. Frederick; P. Bouché
Published
2016
Abstract
This is the fifth printed African Elephant Status Report (AESR) produced by the African Elephant Specialist Group (AfESG) of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC). Like its predecessors, the AESR 2016 is based on data from the African Elephant Database (AED), the most comprehensive database on the status of any species of mammal in the wild. This is the first comparison of continental populations between 2006 and 2015 across the 37 range states of the African elephant. Importantly this report not only provides information on changes in elephant numbers but also, because it is spatial, shows where these changes have taken place.
The AESR 2016 is the most authoritative and up-to-date compilation of information on the numbers and distribution of the African elephant at national, regional and continental levels across all range states in sub-Saharan Africa. The last year of data collected for this report is 2015. The title follows the convention of using the year of publication rather than the last year of data collection. We hope this report contributes to a wider discussion about the value of monitoring to conservation and to addressing the needs of the African Elephant Action Plan (AEAP), ensuring that policy decisions and the assessment of conservation activities and their performance are evidence-based, and that new conservation initiatives budget for support to monitoring programmes including the AED.
Status reports are intended to help address contemporary elephant management and conservation needs and, therefore, a key question is how the estimates and guesses in the AESR 2016 relate to the true number of elephants in Africa at the end of 2015. When populations are declining, any time difference between the date of surveys and the cut-off date for the report will lead to the true number being lower than the recorded figure. This is more of an issue with the guesses than with estimates, since the largest savanna populations have all been surveyed within the last two years. There are also reasons why the AED may under-record the true number of elephants: aerial counts, which make up the majority of the estimates, tend to undercount the true number of elephants; many of the guesses come from areas which are known to contain substantial elephant populations but have just not been surveyed to the standard required for an estimate; and there are areas of elephant range for which there are no estimates or guesses. On balance the true number of elephants are likely greater than the estimates based on surveys alone, though not necessarily greater than the combined estimates and guesses.
The AESR 2016 provides sound scientific evidence, a deep understanding of the context and a strong technical base to support the management and conservation of Africa’s elephants across their range.
Keywords
elephant; species conservation; Africa
Access Full Text
![]()
Back
DMX4304000000