The African Forest Elephant and African Savanna Elephant have both experienced severe declines in recent years due to ivory poaching and habitat loss. Because of this, the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has change the elephants’ statuses to Critically Endangered and Endangered, respectively.
The critical state of both specie and the importance of their protection necessitate monitoring to view the efficacy of certain conservation practices as well as to alert the public as to the crashing decline of species populations.
To achieve this feat, this IUCN-US funded project works to update the African Elephants Reports and Databases using current information from IUCN expert groups as well as advanced technologies that can increase the cost and labor efficiencies of these resources.
The project takes 3 Phases to update IUCN’s African Elephant Database. Phase I focused on modernization, including upgrading the African Elephant Database’s application to make it easier to maintain and enhance it long-term. Updates reduce overall cost and resources to maintain the database through advanced technologies. Phase I is now complete, and Phase II and III are currently in progress.
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This grant would not be possible without the support of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.