header: African Elephant
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line Loxodonta africana (Blumenbach, 1797)

DISTRIBUTION

The African Elephant once occurred throughout continental Africa, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Cape of Good Hope and was absent only in parts of the Sahara and other desert regions.11 The elephant is still relatively widely distributed south of the Sahara, but populations are now fragmented, especially in West and East Africa.

Elephants occupy a variety of habitats including savanna, rainforests, swamps, seashores and mountains.2 Of the two subspecies, the smaller, darker, Forest Elephant L.a. cyclotis is found in the tropical rainforest zone of West and Central Africa, while the larger, paler, Savannah Elephant L.a. africana, occurs in the remainder of the range.2,11 Habitat destruction and hunting over the last century has severely fragmented many of the formerly large populations.2 Significant elephant populations are now confined to well protected areas such as Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe.

Range States: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe.


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