The African forest elephant lives in dense tropical forests of western and central Africa.
Its ears are oval, and its relatively straight tusks point downward.
African forest elephant parents and young spend many years together. Even after young elephants begin leaving their natal family, they may associate with their mother again. Independence develops over an extended period.
At Dzanga Bai in the Central African Republic, observers identified elephants individually as they visited a forest clearing during 1990–2010. Among 212 females for which successive births were observed, the median interval between births was 59 months—roughly five years. That long interval also varied with the mother’s age.
Females younger than 25 and those aged 40 or older had longer birth intervals than females aged 25–39. The estimated median age of natal independence was 15 years. After initially separating, young elephants could continue associating with their mothers for months or years.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
GPS tracking of 17 forest elephants in Gabon’s Wonga Wongué Reserve during 2015–2017 found use of areas near villages, particularly in the dry season. Villagers reported a collared elephant raiding crops, and a collared male was poached about five kilometres from a village in February 2017. The authors identified populated reserve margins as a conservation priority and recommended monitoring elephants’ distances from villages to target conflict-mitigation efforts.