Elephants Play an Important Role in the Creation of Forests and the Preservation of Forest Biodiversity in Africa

Saint Louis University researchers and colleagues report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that elephants play an important role in creating forests that store more atmospheric carbon and maintaining the biodiversity of African forests.

If elephants, which are already critically endangered, become extinct, the rainforests of Central and West Africa, the world's second-largest rainforest, would lose between six and nine percent of their ability to capture atmospheric carbon, exacerbating planetary warming.

Stephen Blake, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology at Saint Louis University and senior author of the paper, has spent much of his career studying elephants.

Blake, lead author Fabio Berzaghi from the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences (LSCE), France, and colleagues described how the ecology of megaherbivores has such a strong influence on carbon retention in African rainforests in the current paper.

Can Elephants Save The Planet?

(Photo : ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images)

Humans have been hunting elephants for millennia, according to Blake. African forest elephants are thus critically endangered, as per ScienceDaily.

The argument that everyone loves elephants has not garnered enough support to put a stop to the killing.

Shifting the conservation argument to the role forest elephants play in maintaining forest biodiversity, that losing elephants would mean losing forest biodiversity, hasn't worked either, as numbers continue to fall.

Researchers can now confidently conclude that if forest elephants are lost, we will be doing a global disservice to climate change mitigation.

Policymakers must recognize the importance of forest elephants in climate mitigation in order to generate the necessary support for elephant conservation.

The importance of forest elephants in our global environment cannot be overstated.

Some trees in the forest produce light wood (low carbon density trees), while others produce heavy wood (high carbon density trees).

Trees with low carbon density grow quickly, rising above other plants and trees to reach the sunlight.

Meanwhile, trees with a high carbon density grow slowly, require less sunlight, and can grow in shade.

Elephants and other megaherbivores influence tree abundance by feeding more heavily on low-carbon-density trees, which are more palatable and nutritious than high-carbon-density species.

This "thins" the forest, similar to what a forester would do to encourage the growth of their preferred species.

This thinning reduces competition among trees and increases light, space, and soil nutrients, allowing high-carbon trees to thrive.

Elephants are also excellent dispersers of high-carbon-density tree seeds. They eat the large nutritious fruits that these trees produce.

Those seeds pass through the elephants' guts unharmed, and when released through dung, they germinate and grow into some of the forest's largest trees.

Elephants are directly linked to influencing carbon levels in the atmosphere as a result of these preferences.

High-carbon-density trees store more carbon from the atmosphere in their wood than low-carbon-density trees, assisting in the fight against global warming.

With this vital information, the case for conserving Congo Basin and West African forest elephants has never been stronger.

Elephant populations have been eradicated from many areas of the forest, and in many cases, they are functionally extinct, which means that their numbers are so low that they have no significant impact on the forest's ecology.

Blake advocates for increased protection for forest elephants.

Also read: Understanding an Elephant's Playful Side

Save the elephants

The world's largest land mammal is in trouble right now. The IUCN Red List classifies all three types as threatened: Asian, African forest, and the African savannah, as per WCS.

WCS has put in place strategies and programs to assist them in reclaiming their former range.

Elephants are suffering as a result of illegal hunting and habitat loss. The Central African forest elephant population fell by 65% between 2002 and 2013, and its range shrank by 30%.

Some savannah elephant populations have also suffered significant losses: recent surveys in Tanzania and Mozambique show that their numbers have dropped by 60% and 40%, respectively, in the last five years.

Elephants play an important role as ecosystem engineers, preserving mineral-rich clearings in the forest on which many other species rely, and facilitating the spread of important soil nutrients on a continental scale.

As seed dispersers, they also contribute to the survival of the largest tree species, which are also the most important for carbon sequestration.

This monitoring is critical to conservation efforts because it informs us and our partners about whether our efforts to protect elephants and their habitat have been successful or should be modified.