San Diego Zoo's Global Action Team: Saving Africa’s Elephant Population

<p>Project Spotlight:<br />
Saving Africa’s Elephant Population
</p>

The San Diego Zoo is working to protect nearly half of Africa’s elephants. In the early 1970s, as many as 1.3 million elephants roamed the continent but numbers have dropped to less than 500,000 animals! Habitat loss and poaching are major threats to the species’ survival! With elephant populations continuing to shrink, it is crucial that we do all we can to save them!

The San Diego Zoo has teamed with Elephants Without Borders (EWB) to study and save over 220,000 elephants that live southern Africa. Leading the effort is Dr. Mike Chase, one of the world’s top elephant ecologists, founder of EWB, and one of our conservation researchers. Home base for the project is Botswana, but the 50,000-square-mile conservation area extends well beyond its borders into Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Angola.

Of course elephants don’t understand political boundaries—but they innately remember the historical migration routes to find food and water that span the borders of many countries. Human settlements, fences, roads, farms, civil wars, and poaching are now blocking the travels of these elephant herds. Since 2001, Dr. Chase and his team have tracked elephants to protect their migration routes and find solutions to human-elephant conflicts that will ultimately save elephant herds.

Your support towards our elephant conservation efforts in Africa will help us:

Map and locate suitable habitats that might provide additional food and water sources for elephant herds.
Teach local communities why protecting elephants should be important to them.
Help reduce elephant and human conflicts by determining ways the local people can live harmoniously with elephant herds that trek through their region.
Work with governments to create long-term wildlife conservation plans, which will include connecting fragmented habitats through wildlife corridors. The corridors and conservation efforts will benefit elephants as well as other rare and endangered animal species in Africa.

WANT TO JOIN THE GLOBAL ACTION TEAM’S EFFORTS TO SAVE AFRICA’S ELEPHANTS?