Threatened or endangered

The Endangered Species Act is, as its name states, an attempt to protect endangered species. Currently, African elephants are considered as “threatened.” The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) wants the act amended so that elephants would be considered “endangered.” 

Such a change would make the protection stronger. If African elephants are considered endangered, it would prevent the animals’ parts from being sold in, imported to or exported from the United States. And we are the second biggest market for ivory. It would also prevent our government from sanctioning or paying for actions that hurt the animals; it can also provide funds for research and public education.

CBD's rationale for changing the categorization of African elephants comes from the recent discovery that African elephants are really two distinct genetic species: “forest” elephants and “savanna” elephants. "Forest elephants are much smaller, weighing half what savanna elephants weigh, and evolved in Central and West Africa’s rain forests; they have rounder ears than their cousins and straighter tusks. Savanna elephants, whose ears are more triangular and whose tusks are thick and curved, roam throughout the open, bushy terrain of other parts of the vast continent, from East Africa down to the south, where they’re most abundant. The two species are about as distinct from each other, in genetic terms, as lions are from tigers."

Considering the elephants as a single threatened species means that we have a species of about half a million individuals remaining, we’re likely looking at a maximum of 100,000 (and possibly as few as 50,000) forest elephants surviving in the world and an estimated 400,000 savanna elephants. So, each species is endangered.