There Is An Elephant In The Room

“By a sweet tongue and kindness, you can drag an elephant with a hair.” - Persian Proverb

There is a popular saying; there is an elephant in the room. Elephants are huge and strong mammals; many of us have never seen an elephant except for those we see on the television or on some other media source.  It is safe to say that we all have a soft place in our hearts for elephants. In recent months some very disturbing news has been emerging from Botswana, home to over 150,000 African elephants.  
Botswana, a landlocked Southern African country has the world’s highest population of elephants with more than 156,000 counted in a 2013 aerial survey in the country’s north. Former wildlife minister Tshekedi Khama, has blamed poaching in the Okavango Delta on President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s decision to disarm the wildlife department’s anti-poaching unit in 2018. Soon after that decision, conservation group Elephants Without Borders reported 87 elephants found stripped of their tusks in the area. The tusks of elephants are used for obtaining ivory, a hard white substance that is only found in the teeth and tusks of certain animals. The ivory is used to manufacture a variety of items which typically are associated with affluence, power and importance. Poachers are paid handsomely to kill and retrieve the tusks of elephants. The illegal ivory trade is worth millions of dollars. New York Times reporter, Jeffrey Gentlemen states, illegally ivory seized worldwide amounts to 38.8 tons which is equivalent to more than 4000 dead elephants. According to Gettlemen, as much as 70 percent of the illegal ivory heads to China, where a pound can fetch as much as $1,000. He adds "the demand for ivory has surged to the point that the tusks of a single adult elephant can be worth more than 10 times the average annual income in many African countries."  According to CNN, more than 360 elephants have died in mysterious circumstances in Botswana in the past three months, according to local conservationists. Some carcasses were found clustered around waterholes, while others appeared to have died "falling flat on their faces," according to Niall McCann, director of conservation at United Kingdom charity National Park Rescue. Live elephants seen nearby appeared physically weak, and one was walking in circles, unable to change direction, observers said. Other species in the area did not appear to have been affected by whatever struck down the elephants. The Botswana government is testing samples from the dead elephants, but is yet to determine a cause of death. Many of us, myself included envision travelling to Africa in the future to connect, some will argue to reconnect with our ancestors and retrace the steps they took as they were forced from their homes and transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean and elsewhere. Some of us also would love to see the African Safari and see these magnificent animals in the wild. However, at the appalling rate at which elephants in Botswana have been dying we must be concerned at the plight of these animals.  Last year, Botswana scrapped an elephant hunting ban it had in place in 2014, sparking international outcry. McCann said poaching could not be ruled out this time, although the tusks were still on the elephants. "800 of them are lying around as a magnet for criminals," he added. McCann said there were a number of possibilities for what could have caused the deaths, including an elephant-specific parasite or even Covid-19. Whatever the cause, McCann said it was important to get to the bottom of it as already the loss of elephant life was "significant globally," he said. The African elephant is classified as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List. The first Great Elephant Census, a pan-African survey conducted in 2016, revealed that in just seven years between 2007 and 2014 elephant numbers plummeted by at least 30%, or 144,000.  Officials in Botswana have announced that samples have been collected and have been sent to specialized laboratories in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Canada for testing.

In an article by Jenna Govier, “Elephant numbers are in decline because these animals are poached for their ivory, come into conflict with humans and are experiencing ongoing habitat loss and degradation. To slow the decline of the elephant population many conservation organisations have made these tusked creatures the focus of their conservation efforts – like the projects set up by the Save the Elephants organisation and the WWF African Elephant Programme.

But there’s a lot more to be done, and elephant conservation is more important now than it has ever been before.  Why? Well, African and Asian elephants are keystone species, meaning that the environments that they live in would be greatly affected if they weren’t around.”

Importance of Elephants to the Environment

Elephants are seeds transporters.  The African elephant is the largest herbivore in the world, and even though the Asian elephant is smaller in stature, it is still considered one of the herbivorous heavyweights of the animal kingdom. So it’s no surprise that these animals eat a good amount of plant material every day. After munching on vegetation that also consists of seeds elephants transport plant material around in their guts, and then drop them off in mounds of dung. In this way, plant material can be dropped off thousands of metres away from where the plants were initially eaten. In fact, some studies have suggested that elephants can disperse seeds over distances of more than 50 kilometres. 

Elephants Provide Food. Elephant dung is an important and plentiful  and a source of food for a host of different types of dung beetles. After animals drop off a dung pat, dung beetles can be seen streaming towards it, hoping to grab their share of the nutritious solids and fluids it contains. But elephant dung can serve up so many more portions for dung beetles to dine on. Besides feeding on dung, dung beetles also bury the dung below the ground where their larvae can feed and grow. By doing this, dung beetles loosen tightly-packed soil and get the nutritious elephant fertilizer to where it’s needed most in the layers of the soil where plants begin to grow.  Elephants have the ability to dig water holes. Elephants dig wells to access water underground. They use their feet, trunks and tusks to create holes deep enough to tap into underground water sources. These elephant-made watering holes are then available for other animals to drink from. Elephants modify their environment. Due to their size, there’s not much that can get in an elephant’s way. In forests, elephants create clearings by trampling vegetation. These clearings allow more light to reach the forest floor, giving lower-lying plants a better chance to grow.  Additionally,  because different types of animals rely on different types of plants, this can promote species biodiversity, providing new niches for organisms to inhabit. Elephants also modify Savannah habitats by pulling down trees and breaking up thorny bushes.

Elephants are important to our ecosystems and as such we need to do all within our powers to protect them.  

Wayne Campbell is an educator and social commentator with an interest in development policies as they affect culture and or gender issues.

waykam@yahoo.com

@WayneCamo

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