WWF African Elephant Programme
Working through WWF's field programmes in Central, Eastern, Southern and West Africa and with numerous partners, the programme supports projects that:
- improve elephant protection and management
- build capacity within range states
- mitigate human-elephant conflict
- reduce illegal trade.
1. Protection and management
To reduce the illegal killing of elephants through improved protection and management, WWF will support activities such as:
- equipping and training law enforcement teams so they can conduct regular and effective anti-poaching patrols
- establishing new protected areas within elephant ranges and improving management effectiveness within existing protected areas
- developing new community-based wildlife management schemes that contribute to elephant conservation whilst providing benefits to local people
- determining the population status of elephants in sites across Africa.
To increase capacity within range states to conserve and manage elephants, WWF will support activities such as:
- helping range state governments produce and adopt sub-regional elephant conservation strategies and national elephant conservation strategies
- developing capacity to survey, census and monitor elephant populations and to implement the CITES system for Monitoring the Illegal Killing of Elephants (MIKE)
- providing training in elephant conservation and management technique
- updating and enforcing range states’ legislation to protect elephants.
To increase public support for elephant conservation by reducing conflict, WWF will support activities such as:
- training wildlife managers and local communities to use modern methods and tools to mitigate human-elephant conflict
- analysing human-elephant conflict projects to draw lessons and refine methodologies.
To reduce the illegal trade in elephant products, WWF will support activities such as:
- monitoring and assessing trends in the illegal trade in elephant products (such as implementing the CITES Elephant Trade Information System)
- conducting surveys to provide information on domestic ivory markets.