Just saw noted zoologist Jack Hanna interviewed on TV about African elephants. He claimed that when he was doing research in the 70's there were about 1.4 million in Africa. He says that now there are fewer than 400K. I thought that elephants had made a comeback and that in some places their numbers where greater than anytime before.

What say you guys in Africa? Anyone know what the most accurate figures may be? Hanna is in the business of telling the world everything is dying off. I am skeptical of his numbers.

The DVD "Boddington on Elephant" estimated 1.3 Million elephants.

1.2 million is the number I use currently for talks. It is definantly an estimate but...I think a good one.

Maybe Ivan Carter will jump in...I think he tries to stay current with these numbers as well.

As much as I think Jack Hanna means well...you still have to take things he says with a grain-of-salt!

WWF list the African Elephant population in the wild as approximately 690,000. I believe this to be conservative. There are most certainly areas in Botswana,Zimbabwe and Zambia where Elephant populations have grown past sustainable levels.

Interestingly enough, WWF lists loss of habitat ,rather than poaching as the single largest threat to Ele populations. I would be interested to hear from someone with knowledge of Kenya as to what the Ele populations have done there over the last 30 years

zimFrosty,
Kenya elephant population numbers ask three so called experts in Kenya about that and you will get four answers. one year i asked and was told the population was on the rise two years later I ask and was told it was on the decline. I hope someone else here can give us some honest figures!

To the best of my knowledge, no-one has ever done anything approaching an accurate continent wide game count of African elephants. Probably the closest thing to one would be that done by Ian Douglas Hamilton back in about the 70s or so and I wouldn't put much faith in that when it was done, let alone now.

There's also the issue of does a count actually tell us anything? - I personally don't think it does. As I see it, a more accurate gauge would be how many elephants in relation to how much elephant inhabitable area and therefore what percentage of overpopulation/underpopulation in various areas.

Article #10 here: Elephant culling in the KNP by Rom Thomson

is by Ron Thomson and about the elephant populations/overpopulations of the KNP is well worth a read....... and interestingly proves that the long held beliefs of the people in charge of the KNP for years was inaccurate to say the least.

As for the Kenya populations, take a look at 'The End of the Game' by Peter Beard which tells the story of the Govts failure to cull during the drought of the 19whatevers and the pics in that will bring tears to your eyes.

quote:

As for the Kenya populations, take a look at 'The End of the Game' by Peter Beard which tells the story of the Govts failure to cull during the drought of the 19whatevers and the pics in that will bring tears to your eyes.

You're not kidding, that book had some pretty powerful photographs in it.

The IUCN probably has the best numbers. They published their African Elephant Status Report in 2007, nothing since. Link: HERE.

According to it, as of 2006: 472,269 definite, 82,704 probable, 84,334 possible, and 50,364 speculative; for a grand total of 689,671 - up 4.46% from 2002.

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men ,
if you look on my website on the hunting side and click the link that says elephant report there is a very comprehensive IUCN report from 2007 ,

or heres the link - be patient it takes a while to download !!

http://www.ivancarter.com/imag...0status%20report.pdf

oops steve , appologies i didnt realise you already posted that report -

one thing of note as you read the report is that many of the numbers of particularly forrest animals are estimates - they do go into detail on sampling methods though -

Hey Ivan, what do you have me on ignore?

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You beat me by 2 minutes.