Forest elephants
watercolour
©2023 Charlene Brown
Forest elephants, an endangered species, play a key role in the survival of the African rainforest. They help sequester carbon as they prefer to eat faster-growing, less carbon-dense types of trees, thus improving conditions for the slower-growing, long-lived species with deep, expansive root systems that sequester carbon most efficiently.
The elephants’ fondness for eating tree fruits, and subsequently dispersing fruit tree seeds, also contributes significantly to species diversification, another important factor in the viability and carbon sequestration capacity of a forest.
Rock art such as that on the right, depicting forest elephants and other jungle inhabitants, is found in abundance on the northern fringe of the Sahara. This reflects the habitat before climate conditions changed drastically ̶ possibly ‘tipped’ by pastoralists and their herds about 10,000 years ago.
Last year I wrote about the encouraging progress being made in a project, launched in 2007, to restore these conditions in the Sahara.
