African bush elephants (also called savanna elephants) were officially listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List in March 2021. Their population, estimated at roughly 350,000 individuals across more than 30 range countries, has declined sharply due to poaching, habitat loss, human conflict, and the slow pace at which elephants reproduce. Until 2021, all African elephants were treated as a single species classified as Vulnerable. Splitting them into two distinct species, the savanna elephant and the smaller forest elephant, revealed that each faces more serious threats than the combined numbers suggested.
A New Classification Changed the Picture
For decades, conservationists managed all African elephants as one species. New genetic evidence showed that the bush elephant and the forest elephant are as genetically distinct from each other as Asian elephants are from woolly mammoths. When the IUCN assessed them separately for the first time in 2021, the bush elephant qualified as Endangered while the forest elephant was classified as Critically Endangered. The old single-species designation had masked how badly each population was doing on its own. As researchers at the University of York noted, the forest and savanna elephants now need to be treated as two completely different conservation units, each with its own priorities and challenges.
Poaching and the Ivory Trade
Illegal killing for ivory remains the most direct and devastating threat. At least 20,000 African elephants are poached every year for their tusks, according to the World Wildlife Fund. That number represents a significant chunk of a population that can’t replace itself quickly. The demand for carved ivory, particularly in East Asian markets, has fueled organized criminal networks that operate across borders. Poaching doesn’t just remove individual animals. It disrupts family groups, strips herds of their oldest and most experienced members, and leaves orphaned calves with lower survival odds.
International trade protections exist but are uneven. Under CITES, most African elephant populations are listed under the strictest trade restrictions (Appendix I), which bans commercial international trade in ivory. However, elephant populations in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe fall under less restrictive rules (Appendix II), and those countries can export certain specimens under specific conditions. China banned imports of elephant tusks and ivory products, and multiple countries have moved to close their domestic ivory markets. Still, as of 2025, 24 countries have declared a combined 890 tonnes of ivory stockpiles, a reminder of how much ivory remains in circulation and how difficult enforcement can be.
Shrinking and Fragmented Habitat
By 1979, the African elephant’s range had already contracted dramatically. Between then and 2007, it fell from roughly three million square miles to just one million, spread across 37 countries. That loss hasn’t stopped. The primary driver is land conversion for agriculture, which carves up the large, connected landscapes elephants need to find food, water, and mates. Deforestation, expanding settlements, and new infrastructure like roads and fences break migration corridors into isolated pockets.
Bush elephants are not small, sedentary animals. A single elephant can eat over 300 pounds of vegetation a day and may travel dozens of miles between water sources. When farmland replaces woodland and savanna, elephants have nowhere to go. Research published in a 2024 analysis found that deforestation and reduced water availability over the past 30 years have been the most significant factors driving elephants into closer contact with people, setting the stage for conflict.
Human-Elephant Conflict
When elephants and farming communities compete for the same land and water, both sides lose. Elephants raid crops, sometimes destroying an entire season’s harvest in a single night. Farmers, whose livelihoods depend on those crops, may retaliate by poisoning, spearing, or shooting elephants. The intensity of crop damage increases with how palatable the crops are and how much forest has been cleared in the surrounding area. In other words, the more habitat is converted to farmland, the worse the conflict becomes.
These conflicts also cost human lives, which in turn reduces local tolerance for elephants. In parts of Africa and Asia, elephants kill hundreds of people each year. Communities that bear the cost of living alongside dangerous wildlife often have little economic incentive to protect the animals. Without compensation programs, alternative livelihoods, or effective barriers like beehive fences and chili-pepper deterrents, local support for conservation erodes. Retaliatory killings add to the toll from poaching, compounding the population decline.
Slow Reproduction Makes Recovery Difficult
Even if every threat disappeared tomorrow, elephant populations would take generations to bounce back. African bush elephants have the longest pregnancy of any mammal, averaging around 640 to 673 days, or roughly 22 months. Females typically give birth to a single calf and don’t breed again for several years. This means a healthy female might produce only four to six calves in her entire lifetime. Compare that to a species like wild boar, which can have a dozen offspring per year, and the math becomes clear: every elephant lost to poaching or conflict represents years of reproductive potential that can’t easily be replaced.
This slow reproductive rate also means that population crashes are far easier to cause than to reverse. A poaching surge that lasts just a few years can create a demographic hole that takes decades to fill.
Drought and Climate Change
Climate change adds another layer of pressure, particularly through more frequent and severe droughts. In semi-arid ecosystems where many bush elephants live, drought directly kills calves. A study of an elephant population in Tanzania’s Tarangire National Park found that during a severe drought in 1993, 20 percent of monitored calves died within nine months. In non-drought years, annual calf mortality in the same population averaged just 2 percent. That tenfold increase shows how a single bad year can devastate a generation of young elephants.
The calves most likely to die were those born to younger, less experienced mothers and those belonging to family groups that stayed in the park rather than migrating to find water and food elsewhere. Young males were also more vulnerable than young females. As droughts become more common across eastern and southern Africa, these die-offs will likely happen more frequently, chipping away at the next generation before it has a chance to mature and breed.
Range Loss Compounds Every Other Threat
What makes the bush elephant’s situation especially precarious is that none of these threats exist in isolation. Habitat loss forces elephants into smaller areas, which increases contact with people, which leads to conflict and retaliatory killings. Smaller, more fragmented populations are easier targets for poachers and more genetically vulnerable over time. Drought hits harder when elephants can’t migrate freely because farms and fences block their traditional routes. Each pressure amplifies the others.
The elephants that do survive are increasingly concentrated in a handful of strongholds, particularly in Botswana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Kenya. Protecting these core populations while rebuilding connectivity between them is the central challenge. Without large, connected landscapes and reduced poaching pressure, the species’ Endangered status is unlikely to improve.