Endangered African and Asian elephants

For the past decades the African and Asian elephant populations have been going down at a dangerous rate. For a while now people have been hunting these elephants mainly for their tusks to make jewelry or use it as ivory carving for the global ivory market. The main thing that is making these elephants become endangered is habitat loss and fragmentation.

According to an article by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature,The number of African forest elephants fell by more than 86% over a period of 31 years, while the population of African savanna elephants decreased by at least 60% over the last 50 years, according to the assessments.” This is really bad because the population for both African forest and savanna elephants have decreased by more than half throughout the decades. The same goes for the Asian elephants because they also have been having threats of extinction because of their habitat loss and negative human interactions. 

You might be thinking: Why is this a problem? And what’s the significance of these elephants? Well according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), “A future for Asian elephants ensures a future for other species and wild spaces. By protecting elephants, we also protect other animals that live in their habitat.” This is an important quote because it’s saying that these Asian elephants help other species survive so if these elephants go extinct other animals will find it difficult to survive. Another way that these species show significance is that the Asian and African elephant bodies help make a pathway for the other animals in the same habitat so they can easily walk and travel instead of  being completely lost.

What people are doing to help prevent the extinction of the elephants is, through organizations like the WWF, supporting and helping manage any problems with human interactions, reducing impacts on elephant populations, helping to not make the elephants lose any habitat, and lowering the hate against any elephants. What you can do to help is you can spread awareness of this problem so more people will know that this is a problem that is happening that needs to be stopped and hopefully it will make a positive change.