Crowded out with nowhere to go: Why slowing human population growth is key to saving elephants

Elephants are fascinating, highly intelligent, and emotionally complex creatures — their disappearance would be a devastating tragedy. The gentle giants’ slide towards extinction must be halted, but we cannot save them without addressing the figurative elephant in the room: our growing human population.

If you’re an animal lover like me, chances are social media algorithms relentlessly spoon-feed you heart-wrenching animal rescue videos. One impressive organization that I’ve been following for many years is the Kenya-based Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (SWT). Established in 1977 by Dame Daphne Sheldrick, SWT runs a highly successful elephant rescue and rehabilitation program. SWT takes in orphaned babies, nurses them back to health, and reintegrates them into the wild when they are old enough. SWT also has mobile veterinary units that treat elephants and other wild animals with horrific injuries, usually inflicted by snares, spears, and arrows — evidence of human encroachment into elephant habitat and increasing human-wildlife conflict.

Watching these dramatic rescue videos, I cannot help but worry about the fact that no major conservation organization seems to be meaningfully addressing the root driver.

An emerging threat

Scientists estimate that African elephants numbered in the millions in the early 20^th century. There were approximately 1.3 million elephants remaining in Africa as late as 1979. Poaching for ivory decimated these numbers, however, down to just over 400,000 today. While poaching will remain a threat to elephants as long as there is a market for ivory, anti-poaching efforts have significantly reduced the number of elephants killed for their tusks. There is now an even more serious, rising threat to African elephants: habitat loss and human-elephant conflict, driven by rapid human population growth.

Africa has the highest fertility rates in the world — the continent’s human population has more than tripled since 1979, to around 1.5 billion today, and is projected to more than double again by 2070. This is bad news for elephants, very large-bodied mammals that require vast tracts of wilderness to sustain themselves.

SWT notes:

“As the population in Kenya continues to grow, human encroachment through settlement, farms and infrastructure on wildlife territories is a serious threat to animals that live and wander through these areas. In many places, the degradation of natural habitats can include corridors as well as buffer zones that previously keep human settlements apart from wildlife. For elephants especially, who can roam up to 80km a day, the impact of losing important forest cover and increased traffic in wildlife areas can be huge and animal casualties are on the rise.”

In 2021, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) announced that the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) was newly classified as Critically Endangered and the African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) as Endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened species. Previously, there had been only one recognized species of African elephant, which was classified as Vulnerable.

The new assessment came following new genetic data and evidence of steep population declines of both species. The number of African forest elephants fell by more than 86% over just three decades, while the number of African savanna elephants decreased by at least 60% over the last 50 years.

Traditional conservation measures won’t cut it

Anti-poaching efforts and reinforcing protected areas have played a key role in stabilizing and even increasing some elephant sub-populations, but eventually these safe havens reach their carrying capacity. In search of food, water, and less crowded habitat, the giant pachyderms wander into human settlements, causing crop damage and endangering human lives, leading to retaliatory attacks on elephants. Movement also happens the other way around, with humans increasingly settling in or near protected areas.

Growing human-elephant conflict is why some countries implement controversial elephant culling programs, which are hard to stomach for anyone who recognizes these animals’ incredible emotional intelligence and deep family bonds.

Climate change is exacerbating this issue via worsening droughts, which cause food shortages — Zimbabwe and Namibia made headlines last year by ordering the cull of hundreds of elephants to feed hunger-stricken residents.

It’s clear that traditional conservation measures won’t save elephants and other large-bodied threatened animals if we do nothing to address the underlying issue of unsustainable human population growth.

This problem is not restricted to Africa, of course. There are even fewer Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) remaining, for example, estimated at no more than 50,000. Just like for their African relatives, habitat destruction, fragmentation, and human-wildlife conflict are now the leading causes for the decline of Asian elephants.

India is home to more than half of remaining Asian elephants — it is now also the world’s most populous country, at over 1.4 billion people. There is a glimmer of hope for India’s wildlife, however, as the country recently reached replacement level fertility, and its human population is projected to stop growing by the 2060s.

The key, neglected solution

The notion of trying to slow human population growth as a conservation measure is sadly still not widely accepted due to fear of controversy and lack of awareness around voluntary, rights-based solutions. The most effective way to reduce fertility rates is by empowering women to choose what happens to their bodies and lives. It is no coincidence that a map of the countries with the highest fertility rates closely resembles a map of the countries with the worst gender equality scores — countries where child marriage and teen pregnancy are rampant.

Wherever women have the freedom and means to take charge of their fertility, pursue education, and participate in the workforce, fertility rates plummet.

This means that the best long-term way to save elephants, as well as other endangered species threatened by the relentless expansion of human populations and their damaging activities, is to invest in programs that advance women’s rights and opportunities.

There are conservation groups around the world that are championing this highly successful approach, broadly known as PHE (Population, Health, Environment). Two of Population Connection’s wonderful Global Partners, for example, Women for Conservation in Colombia and Conservation Through Public Health in Uganda, help protect endangered species in part by empowering women.

Aside from improving women’s lives and relieving pressure on nature, the best thing about the PHE approach is that it benefits entire communities and societies. When women are educated and can plan their families (which typically results in them having fewer children), they can invest more in each child and are better able to be economically active. This leads to higher educational achievement, reduced poverty, less criminal activity (including poaching), and improved economic growth at the collective level.

We need more environmental groups and funders to pursue women’s empowerment initiatives and help bend the population curve sooner rather than later. Large, well-funded conservation organizations have an important role to play in raising awareness of the need for empowering population solutions.

Olivia Nater, Communications Manager, onater@popconnect.org