Africa’s wildlife population plunges by 80 percent in five decades, WWF warns

A savanna elephant in Kruger National Park, South Africa. While the animals remain endangered, scientists have seen some elephant populations in southern Africa rebound following dedicated conservation efforts. © AP - Jerome Delay

Wildlife populations monitored across Africa have declined by an average of 80 percent over the past five decades, according to a major new assessment by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which warns that changes to energy, food and financial systems are essential to reversing biodiversity loss.

The conservation organisation’s Living Planet Report 2026 found that the average size of monitored populations of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish in Africa fell sharply between 1970 and 2022.