The opposition included well-funded Western animal rights groups such as the Humane Society of the United States and similar UK groups who oppose hunting on ethical grounds, regardless of whether or not hunting is part of a sustainable use and resource management program that supports the broader goals of wildlife conservation and human development. The issue The African Elephant was added to Appendix I as endangered continent-wide in 1989. African elephant problems vary from one locale to another and therefore, continent-wide solutions to these unique problems simply do not exist. For example, in some range states, especially where political problems, military activity or tribalism destablize regional governments, poaching is a major factor endangering elephants. In other countries, human populations, agricultural land use and urbanization have pushed elephant herds off the land.
Elephants have no natural predators other than man.
Because the land has a finite carrying capacity, elephants in an expanding population literally devour and destroy their habitat, ruining it for themselves and for all other species that occupy it. Once those are gone, the land is reduced to desert. Without good conservation management to break the cycle through major culling initiatives, deforestation, desertification, starvation and death are nature's long-term answer to the problem. The animal rights approach bases wildlife protection on ethics rather than on science and in the rather convoluted equation that emerges from this approach, supports animal life over human life at the expense of both. This unhappy situation represents the status quo in many parts of Africa today.