Preserving populations of critically endangered forest elephants is crucial not just for the animals themselves, but to protect the carbon-sucking capacities of the environments they live in, a new study demonstrates.
"Elephants eat lots of leaves from lots of trees, and they do a lot of damage when they eat,""They'll strip leaves from trees, rip off a whole branch or uproot a sapling when eating, and our data shows most of this damage occurs to low carbon density trees.
"If there are a lot of high carbon density trees around, that's one less competitor, eliminated by the elephants."less than 500,000 African elephants in the wild now, down from 3-5 million during the last century. Ivory hunting accounts for this drastic reduction, with 80 percent of herds lost in some areas. Habitat loss and human-elephant conflict are reducing population numbers even further.
This new study emphasizes the importance of protecting these African elephants, the largest animals walking on Earth. They are one of 9 species of megaherbivores – terrestrial plant eaters with a body mass greater than 1,000 kilograms or 2,200 pounds. There are now far fewer megaherbivores than there used to be, and tropical forests are suffering as a result, the researchers say. Future studies are now planned looking at other regions and other species, to see how other large herbivores such as the Asian elephant and primates could affect rainforest health."They plant the forest with high carbon density trees and they get rid of the weeds which are the low carbon density trees.
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