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🐘Range & people

African bush elephant · The atlas type is the bush elephant -- an ecosystem engineer whose ivory ban (1989) and split from forest elephants still structure African conservation.

At a glance
Score intensity

Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.

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Quick answers

Why bush elephant, not African elephant in general?

The taxonomy wiki is African bush elephant. Forest elephants (L. cyclotis) were widely recognised as a separate EN/CR story in the 2021 IUCN assessments.

What did the 1989 ivory ban do?

It collapsed legal international commercial trade. Domestic markets, stockpiles and later one-off sales (2008) kept the argument alive. Poaching did not end in 1989.

Who is Cynthia Moss in this file?

Amboseli Elephant Research Project since 1972 -- matrilines with names and decades of calves, the opposite of an anonymous ivory graph.

Are elephants the highest ecological-role score for a reason?

They open woodland, dig water, disperse seeds and rewrite fire. In this 24-type atlas that engineer role outranks even wolves and whales.

What is musth?

A periodic male state with urine dribble, temporal secretion and aggression. It is physiology, not a mood.

Did Kruger culling end?

Large-scale culling paused in the 1990s. Contraception, range expansion and later density debates replaced it without a final peace.

IUCN: Endangered (2021)

Money around the african bush elephant is regional even when the brand is global.

Figures are dated educational bands -- not live quotes and not a buying guide.

Encounter bands

Viewing / tourism (2010s band)

Ticketed

Safari, hide, cage-dive or parade tickets in the 2010s often sat in the tens to hundreds of USD per person -- a dated band, not a live quote.

Conflict / livestock loss

Local & episodic

Predation and crop-raid compensation schemes (US, Kenya, India) published per-head bands that changed with election cycles.

Fishery / take value

Commodity

Where the type is a catch (tuna, salmon, fugu), 2000s-2020s ex-vessel or auction bands were the political number -- not a supermarket tag.

Captive / zoo husbandry

Institutional

Annual keep for a large mammal or a specialist bird in AZA/EAZA reports ran to five or six figures USD in the 2010s.

Enforcement / reserve ops

Public

Ranger, observer and census costs are socialised; they do not appear on a viewing ticket.

Regions

North America

ESA listings, Parks Canada, Alaska runs and Churchill buggies are the English-language field the localLens keeps returning to.

United Kingdom and Ireland

RSPB, NatureScot, reintroductions and a dense NGO press shape how this atlas type is taught in British English.

European Union / wider Europe

Habitats Directive, IWC delegations and returning wolves sit beside UK practice without being identical.

Range-state core

The biological centre of the african bush elephant -- often not English-speaking -- still writes the Red List.

Australia and New Zealand

DOC, Phillip Island, Taiaroa Head and kakapo-style ICU projects are the southern English conservation dialect.

Global trade desks

CITES, ICCAT, IWC and auction houses price the animal whether or not a local language has a word for it.

Key range numbers

36Atlas speed
17Atlas resilience
79Atlas cultural impact
97Atlas ecological role

Field programmes

CITES parties

1989 ban and later sale fights.

Amboseli Trust / AERP

Named demography.

Save the Elephants

Collars and ivory research.

SANParks / KWS / TANAPA

Park-scale management.

Elephant Voices

Communication and welfare science.

IUCN African Elephant SG

2021 split assessments.

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