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Conserving Africa's Elephants

Introduction

The conservation and management of the African elephant is a complex undertaking, requiring skills and strategies that deal with its populations in both protected and unprotected areas throughout its range. The increase in proximity of human populations, and the expansion of their activities into the elephant's range, is increasingly calling wildlife authorities to consider not only the welfare of the species and its habitat, but also the problems that arise between neighbours competing for limited resour ces. Further to these rather "modern" issues is the age-old one of elephant poaching in order to meet the persistent demand for ivory, and its often disastrous effects on elephant populations. Over the past century, it is this issue more than any other th at has dominated the debate on elephant conservation.

Rather than giving an exhaustive account of elephant ecology, the reader will find that this document attempts to identify and examine the current issues and priorities relating to the conservation and the management of the African elephant at local, nati onal, continental, and international levels. This report will enable the conservation community to conduct a more informed and balanced debate on the issues. A list of some seventy recommendations for action at all levels is presented. Hopefully, this lis t will help individuals, communities, wildlife, agriculture and land-use planning departments, international agencies, and the governmental and non-governmental sectors, both in Africa and elsewhere, to increase their support for a broad programme of acti on in favour of the elephant.

Whilst the measures developed to conserve the elephant must have a robust, science-based foundation, the survival of the species will in the long term depend on identifying and implementing a mixture of solutions that recognizes not only biological aspect s but which also embraces, with sincerity, the cultural, social, economic, and political dimensions of Africa and its people. Disregard for the African context is unlikely to advance the opportunities for wildlife conservation and the sustainable use of n ature and natural resources, and may well lead to the demise of the very species that so many of us wish to see prosper -- the African elephant.

Elephant Photo

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Copyright 1997, The World Wide Fund For Nature