African elephants face multiple simultaneous welfare threats from habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, drought, and ivory poaching that compress their range and increase stress.
African elephant welfare operates at multiple scales simultaneously. Individual elephants killed by poachers die from gunshot wounds inflicted from long distances, often non-fatally requiring elephants to flee before dying slowly. Orphaned calves after poaching events are highly distressed and without skilled care die from stress and dehydration. Human-wildlife conflict sees elephants killed by communities protecting crops, with complex welfare and justice implications for both humans and elephants. Drought kills individual elephants from dehydration and starvation, and families experience distress around dying members who show complex mourning behaviors. Community-based conservation programs that give local communities economic benefit from elephant conservation have significantly reduced poaching in some areas.