Nobody knows for sure, but there are at least 600,000 wild elephants in Africa. Some say that there are as many as 700,000, but it is difficult to estimate the population of wild animals, especially when they occur on an entire continent, and is constantly in motion.
Trophy hunting is regularly highlighted as one of the African elephants major threats, but it hardly to accept as true. Analyses that are just a few years old and published in 2009 by Professor Samuel Wesser, University of Washington shows that poachers each year kills 38,000 elephants in Africa. It is also a widely recognized fact that increasing agricultural production and the increasing African population is a threat to the entire continent's wildlife, and especially for the largest migratory species such as elephants.
The figure shows how CITES quotas on African elephants Laxodonta africana has evolved over the last three years.
In this light, the 2011 quota of 1520 trophy elephants is a very small drop in a big sea of unruly buccaneers and natural criminals who mainly have free reign in countries where there is no elephant hunting.
The 1520 elephants CITES this year allow to the export out of Africa, Zimbabwe again this year have permission to export 500 pair of tusks, Botswana 400 pairs, Tanzania 200 and South Africa 150 pairs.
Last Year the quota’s for whole Africa was 1540 elephants, and compared to then Cameroon has lost its quota of 80 elephants, while Zambia has risen from 20 to 80 animals.
In 2009 the elephant quota was 1500 animals from eight countries.