African FOREST ELEPHANT

CRITICALLY Endangered

POPULATION

An estimated 100,000 remain; down from several hundred thousand. They have lost over 86% of their natural habitat.

THE THREAT

Smaller and more elusive than their savanna cousins, African forest elephants live deep in the Congo Basin and West African rainforests. They were only formally recognised as a separate species in 2010, and classified as critically endangered in 2021.

They are the architects of their forests, their movements create pathways, their dung disperses seeds, their feeding opens the forest canopy. When they disappear, the forest changes with them.

Poaching during the Ivory trade of the 2000s was catastrophic. Recovery is agonisingly slow; forest elephants reproduce at one of the lowest rates of any land mammal.

ABOUT THIS PAINTING

"The title is a nod to what has nearly destroyed these animals, a trade that has nearly decimated their population. But it is also about what they hold up; a forest canopy, and entire ecosystem, something irreplaceable. I wanted both things to sit in the same painting”

THE HOPE

Strengthened ivory bans, protected forest reserves, and international pressure on trafficking networks have slowed some of the worst impacts. But with such a slow reproductive rate, even small losses compound over generations.