A new study highlights how African forest elephants enhance carbon storage in tropical forests, underscoring their value in the global fight against the climate crisis.
Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study suggests that elephants contribute to the abundance of huge, carbon-dense trees within tropical forests. They prefer fruits from large trees, whose seeds they then disperse through their nutrient-rich dung.
They also support the growth of large trees to thrive by eating competing trees and shrubs with low carbon density whose leaves they find more palatable and digestible.
“These results demonstrate the importance of megaherbivores for maintaining diverse, high-carbon tropical forests. Successful elephant conservation will contribute to climate mitigation at a globally-relevant scale,” concludes the study.
“Protection of forest elephants, including in logging concessions and other exploited forests, is a critically important wildlife-driven mitigation response to climate change,” It adds.
The study analyzed elephant browsing habits at the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, and seven other sites in Africa.
The study’s numerical modeling suggests that the forest carbon increase is higher at intermediate elephant densities (0.5 to 4 elephants/km2). At higher densities, elephants might become less selective or deplete their preferred food and consume carbon-dense species. At lower densities, elephants might not be able to control less carbon-dense but fast-growing species. More experimental work will be needed to confirm this hypothesis.
A 2019 study in Nature Geoscience found that the elephant’s trampling and disturbance of vegetation as it forages for food in Central Africa’s tropical forests helps to boost carbon storage.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) indicates that the number of African forest elephants fell by more than 86% over the last three decades. This is due to poaching and loss of habitat. It lists the species as Critically Endangered, or only one step away from extinction
The study authors recommend that the contribution of forest elephants in climate change mitigation must be included in policy, and leveraged to promote and finance nature-based solutions in tropical Africa