Critically Endangered
African forest elephant
Loxodonta cyclotis
The African forest elephant lives in highly sociable family groups of up to 20 individuals comprising adult cows, their daughters and sons.
Appearance
The African forest elephant has grey skin, that looks yellow to reddish after wallowing.
With an average shoulder height of 2.16 m (7 ft 1 in), it is the smallest of the three extant elephant species.
A 2000 study suggested that bulls of the species reach a shoulder height of 2.4–3 m (7.9–9.8 ft), and weighed 4–7 t (4.4–7.7 short tons), while cows were about 1.8–2.4 m (5.9–7.9 ft) tall at the shoulder and 2–4 t (2.2–4.4 short tons).
It was first described in 1900.
Range and habitat
Populations of the African forest elephant in Central Africa range in large contiguous rainforest tracts from Cameroon to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with the largest stable population in Gabon, where suitable habitat covers 90% of the country. A group of about 10-25 African forest elephants has been sighted on the escarpment to the east of Luanda in the Kambondo forest in 2015. Nonetheless, it was estimated that the population of African forest elephants in Central Africa had declined by around 86% (in the 31 years preceding 2021) due to poaching and loss of habitat.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet and breeding
The African forest elephant is a herbivore. On average, they begin breeding at the age of 23 and give birth every 5–6 years.
As a result, the birth rate is lower than the bush species, that starts breeding at age 12 and has a calf every 3–4 years. Almost immediately, they can stand up and move around, allowing the mother to roam around and forage, that is also essential to reduce predation.
In crisis
The African forest elephant lives in highly sociable family groups of up to 20 individuals comprising adult cows, their daughters and sons. During the 20th century, overhunting caused a sharp decline of the African forest elephant population, and by 2013 it was estimated that fewer than 30,000 individuals remained. It is threatened by habitat loss, fragmentation, and poaching.
The conservation status of populations varies across range countries. Since 2021, it has been listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List.
African forest elephant is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on African forest elephant, Wikidata item Q189514. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
