Occasional Paper No. 29 - African Elephant Status Report 2002

Introduction

The African Elephant Status Report 2002 provides the world's most authoritative and comprehensive source of knowledge on the distribution and abundance of the African elephant at the national, regional and continental levels. It is the most recent in a series of reports that began in 1979 with the African Elephant Action Plan (Douglas-Hamilton 1979b). Like its predecessors, it was derived from data contained in the African Elephant Database (AED), a repository of information on the African elephant. Managed by the African Elephant Specialist Group (AfESG) of the IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC), the AED is the most detailed and comprehensive single-species database of its kind.

The AfESG is constantly seeking ways to enhance and upgrade the African Elephant Database, as well as the products derived from it. In addition to a vast array of information provided by a growing network of experts and organizations from across the continent, this report introduces a number of innovations with respect to its most recent predecessors (Barnes et al. 1999; Said et al. 1995). The change that is most likely to be noticed first by the reader is the new title. The previous title (African Elephant Database) has been replaced by African Elephant Status Report to better reflect the distinction between the AED as a living repository of raw information on elephant populations , and its periodic, synthesized snapshot reports. Other improvements include the categorization of distribution data, the display of point range information, the inclusion of data quality tables, a more detailed treatment at the regional and continental levels and new historical sections. To make the report more accessible and user-friendly, cartographic quality and document layout have been considerably enhanced. All these new features are described in the sections that follow.

The African Elephant Status Report 2002 is rich in data and information on numbers, distribution and current issues, which should aid the reader in understanding some of the more challenging questions surrounding the conservation of the world's largest land mammal.

Reprinted from African Elephant Status Report 2002.

The publication is available in full on the web, and hard copies can be ordered from: IUCN/SSC AfESG Secretariat c/o WWF-EARPO PO Box 62440 Nairobi, Kenya. Email: afesg@wwfeafrica.org
ISBN: 2-8317-0707-2