What or who poses threats to elephants?
African elephants once lived throughout Africa. They now inhabit no more than one-third of the continent and are gone from the Sahara. Over the past 150 years, ivory hunters have hunted them for their tusks. Between 1979 and 1989, Africa’s elephant population plummeted from 1,300,000 animals to 750,000, due mostly to ivory hunting. Since the 1980s, an international ban on trade in ivory has helped many populations hold steady or rebound. However, African elephants have lost much of their habitat to ranches, farms, and desertification. The forest elephant is also under threat from logging and market hunting for its meat.
