Forest Elephants, Carbon Gardeners
By thinning small trees, forest elephants help central Africa's rainforests store more carbon: 26 to 60 more tonnes of biomass per hectare (Nature Geoscience).
Image: NASA (ISS007-E-06305, June 6, 2003).
Last reviewed: 2 sources cited
Explain Like I'm 10
- Forest elephants live in the rainforests of central and West Africa.
- As they walk and eat, they push over and munch small trees.
- That leaves room for big, heavy trees that store more carbon.
The Five W's of Forest Elephants
Who
The African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis), classified as Critically Endangered since 2021 (WCS).
Source: WCS Congo, Forest Elephant
What
By reducing the number of stems, elephants favour fewer, larger trees with denser wood (Nature Geoscience).
When
A 2019 study modelled the effect and confirmed it with forest inventory data.
Where
Tropical rainforests of West Africa and the Congo Basin (WCS).
Source: WCS Congo, Forest Elephant
Why
The main threat to elephants is poaching for ivory: some 100,000 elephants were poached across Africa between 2007 and 2016 (WCS).
Source: WCS Congo, Forest Elephant
Impact Statement
Natural solution · active
At 0.5 to 1 elephant per square km, elephant disturbance raises aboveground The total amount of living material, like the wood and leaves in a forest. Measuring it shows how much carbon plants store. Glossary by 26 to 60 tonnes per hectare (Nature Geoscience, 2019).
Source: Berzaghi et al., Nature Geoscience (2019)
For Further Information: Berzaghi et al., Nature Geoscience (2019)
The extinction of forest elephants would cut aboveground biomass in central African rainforests by 7% (Nature Geoscience).
How This Saves People & the Planet
For People
Forests that store more carbon help slow climate change for everyone (Nature Geoscience).
Source: Berzaghi et al., Nature Geoscience (2019)
For Nature
Elephants are engineers of the forest: they create trails, spread seeds of high carbon-density trees and dig for minerals other species need (WCS).
Source: WCS Congo, Forest Elephant
Learn More About Forest Elephants
Want to go deeper? WCS Congo explains its forest elephant work.
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