New data on African elephant populations released 01 March 2013
| News story The fifth update on the status of the African
elephant released today covers 37 range States and includes new
or updated information for 194 sites, including 39 new survey
areas, mainly in Eastern and Central Africa. The report tracks
the reasons for change between this report and the last, noting
where repeated surveys have been conducted, or where different
survey methodologies have been used and different areas have
been covered. It also notes where data has been degraded if it
is more than 10 years old. While data quality in Central Africa
has improved, data quality and coverage in some of the range
States in Eastern and Southern Africa with large elephant
populations has declined significantly. Produced by the IUCN SSC
African Elephant Specialist Group (IUCN SSC AfESG), the current
2013 provisional update includes data received up until the end
of 2012. Reports from a number of important survey areas covered
in 2012 were not ava