On a late January afternoon in South Sudan’s dry season, the landscape is dotted with short acacia trees and hazy with smoke from grassland fires set to spur new growth. Even from the vantage of a single-engine ultralight aircraft, we are told it will be difficult to find the last elephant in Badingilo National Park, a protected area spanning nearly 9,000 square kilometers.
Technology offers a clue—the 20-year-old bull elephant wears a GPS collar that sends location data every hour. His behavior also helps; Badingilo’s lone elephant is so isolated that he travels with a herd of giraffes.
Fifty years ago, elephants in this part of Africa lived very differently. In the early 1970s, English ecologist Dr. Murray Watson flew over Sudan in a bush plane to survey wildlife. While his methods were less precise than today’s, he estimated around 133,500 elephants in what is now South Sudan.
Today, the country’s known elephant population has fallen to about 5% of what it was five decades ago, says Mike Fay, an American conservationist who has spent 45 years working to document and protect wildlife in the Sahel and central Africa.
Meanwhile, in southern Africa, the opposite issue exists. In parts of the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (Kaza)—a vast protected zone spanning Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and part of Angola—conservation and law enforcement have been so effective that local communities now contend with too many elephants, leading to increased human-wildlife conflict.
The problem is especially acute on Kaza’s eastern edge, where people and elephants are being squeezed into smaller areas without enough ecological resources to support them. Governments, communities, and conservationists are debating whether to cull elephants for food, allow hunting to generate income, build fences, or relocate the animals.
To explore this challenge across Africa, I joined photographer Tom Parker to trace the story in the north—in South Sudan, Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Gambella National Park in Ethiopia—and in the south: Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Zambia.
Too Few Elephants: South Sudan
In the African Parks office in Juba, South Sudan’s capital, Mike Fay studies a map of the protected area that includes Badingilo National Park, Boma National Park, and the Jonglei landscape. “It’s mind-boggling how big it is,” he says. Fay serves as African Parks’ landscape coordinator for the Great Nile Migration area. The organization has a 10-year agreement with the government to manage 150,000 square kilometers—a region roughly the size of Nepal.
“This is the greatest conservation opportunity on Earth, but also one of the greatest challenges any conservation group has ever taken on,” he says.
Hope for the area’s potential grew after the 2023 discovery that this ecosystem hosts the planet’s largest remaining land mammal migration, led by white-eared kob. This migration has persisted despite Africa’s longest civil war. But other wildlife, including the region’s elephants, have not been so fortunate.
A hunter in Maruwa village, within Boma, says he last saw an elephant four years ago. The last one he killed was two years before that.”I was hungry,” he says.
The hunter earned some money from the ivory—$50 (£37) per tusk, split among five men. Our conversation attracts bystanders: occasional gold miners, ex-soldiers, a teacher who hasn’t been paid in a year. “We don’t think the elephants are dead,” one of the men remarks, “but they’ve gone to faraway places.”
The hunter admits that if he came across an elephant again, he would kill it. “For food. We’re truly poor. We have nothing. No one here has a job. All we can do is survive.”
In another village in Badingilo, African Parks’ community officer, David Liwaya—a civil war refugee who returned to South Sudan from Kenya to work in conservation—frames the issue starkly: “It’s really difficult. Who cares about an elephant when you’re losing your brothers?” But giving up on the future, he says, is not an option.
Eleven months after our visit, at the end of 2025, news comes from the African Parks team: Badingilo’s last elephant has been killed by suspected poachers, along with one of its giraffe companions.
Too Many Elephants?: Zimbabwe
About 3,200 km (2,000 miles) away, outside Victoria Falls International Airport in Zimbabwe, a road sign warns of elephants on the move. The road passes through a township called Mkhosana, where stories of human-wildlife conflict are common—a situation made worse by climate change as elephants search for food and water during worsening droughts.
Fransica Sibanda was recently widowed when an elephant trampled her husband just yards from their home. “I now live in fear,” she says. “The park needs to put up a fence or chase the elephants out.” A neighbor, Ireene Nyathi, recalls watching a man being picked up by an elephant and crushed against her wall. “I think the elephant should be found and shot,” Nyathi says.
“Tourists don’t see this,” notes Miriam Esther, a local water development coordinator. “They just go to the hotels, see Victoria Falls, and photograph the animals.”
Farther south, near Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, a herd of twelve elephants comes to drink in front of the swimming pool at the lodge where we’re staying. To the right, another herd heads toward the setting sun—a perfect image for safari tourism. But this is a romanticized version of reality. On an evening game drive, we come across a juvenile elephant’s corpse, its gray skin lying in the dust like a discarded winter coat. Then, the bodies of two more adult elephants, their bellies pulsing with maggots.
Hwange’s dense elephant population is the result of decades of conservation success, but also an ecosystem out of balance. About 60,000 of Zimbabwe’s 100,000 elephants pass through Hwange in the dry season—roughly twice the area’s carrying capacity, says Zimbabwe-based safari guide and conservationist Rob Janisch.
When Hwange was first established as a game reserve in 1928, colonial officials installed artificially pumped water holes in this naturally arid area. Because of this intervention, along with expanding human settlements, the herds aren’t migrating enough for the ecosystem to recover.”At the time, it was seen as a conservation necessity, but hindsight would prove otherwise,” says Janisch.
In late 2024, authorities in Zimbabwe and Namibia announced significant new elephant culls, often involving big-game hunters who bring much-needed revenue. Botswana also considered reintroducing this strategy, sparking global outcry. Many local people who do not earn their income from wildlife tourism say outsiders don’t understand the pressures. Godwill Ruona, a taxidermist in Victoria Falls, calls elephants “the heartbeat of the bush,” but says there are too many. “You can’t sit in Paris and tell us what is happening in Zimbabwe.”
Some solutions are having an effect. Deterrents include whips that sound like gunfire, bonfires, and “chilli fences”—where pungent chemicals irritate elephants’ sense of smell. Communities like Ngamo are investing in high-voltage rhino fencing to separate the park from villages.
While this helps locally, it doesn’t change the fact that elephants still need space to roam. In some cases, relocation is possible. In 2016, African Parks moved 500 elephants hundreds of miles between two parks in Malawi—the largest in-country elephant translocation ever undertaken. However, with conservation NGO budgets being cut across the continent, doing this on a large scale is challenging.
Ancient elephant migration routes are being blocked off. Can anything stop the rising death toll?
None of this diminishes the pockets of well-managed landscapes that have seen remarkable success, or the work of heroic grassroots conservationists steadily advancing human-wildlife coexistence.
Each of these victories matters. And while there is no single solution for Africa’s elephants, the vast differences between Kaza and South Sudan also share common ground: in an age of mass extinction, failure is not an option.
Travel for this reporting was supported by Michael Lorentz, Rob Janisch, and the Safarious Fund.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about Africas elephant population divide designed to be clear and conversational
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What does Africas elephant divide mean
It means that elephant populations are booming in some southern African countries but are critically low or declining in many others especially in Central and West Africa Its a continentwide imbalance
2 Which countries have too many elephants
Countries like Botswana Zimbabwe and parts of South Africa and Namibia have large dense elephant populations that can sometimes cause conflict with farmers and damage local ecosystems
3 Which countries are losing their elephants
Countries like Kenya Tanzania Gabon and many in Central and West Africa face serious threats from poaching and habitat loss leading to shrinking herds
4 Why are elephants overpopulated in some places
Mainly due to successful conservation efforts wellmanaged parks and lower poaching pressure These safe havens allow populations to grow beyond what the immediate habitat can sometimes support
5 Why are elephants disappearing in other places
Primarily due to illegal poaching for ivory and habitat loss from human settlement agriculture and logging Weak law enforcement and political instability also play a big role
6 Isnt having more elephants a good thing
Its a sign of conservation success but too many elephants in one area can strip vegetation damage trees and conflict with people by trampling crops or causing danger creating a complex challenge
Advanced Practical Questions
7 Whats the main reason for this divide Is it just poaching
Poaching is the biggest driver of decline in vulnerable areas However the divide is also due to differences in governance economic stability conservation funding and landuse planning between nations
8 Cant elephants just move from crowded areas to emptier ones
Not easily Their movement is blocked by human settlements fences and borders Elephant herds have traditional ranges and translocating them is extremely expensive complex and stressful for the animals
9 What are countries with too many elephants doing about it
They use strategies like
Contraception To humanely slow population growth
Translocation Moving elephants to other reserves
Managed culling A controversial last resort in some countries
