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Climate change: how elephants help pump planet-warming carbon underground

Climate change: how elephants help pump planet-warming carbon underground

By Jeppe Aagaard Kristensen - The Conversation Imagine you’re in a hot air balloon flying over an African savanna in the late growing season. Below, herds of elephants, zebras, wildebeests and rhinos roam a mosaic landscape dotted with lonesome trees and daubs of woodland on a canvas of yellow-brown grass. The hungry and rowdy herbivores are eating and trampling the vegetation that stores carbon and keeps it from heating the atmosphere. You’d be forgiven for thinking that their voracious appetites and blundering steps might be disturbing and releasing the carbon stored in this ecosystem in...

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Namibia’s live elephant exports: Why the secrecy?

Namibia’s live elephant exports: Why the secrecy?

By Adam Cruise and Keith Lindsay The much-reported impending export of Namibia’s wild elephants has been declared by the Namibian Government to be correct and well within the bounds of international wildlife trade regulations. Yet the process, particularly as it relates to the export to destinations outside Africa, has been inexplicably shrouded in secrecy. Ever since the Namibian Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism (MEFT) announced the auction of 170 elephants a little under a year ago, there has been no official release of information on who bought the elephants and where they...

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African elephants are crucial to preventing climate change

African elephants are crucial to preventing climate change

By Rosie Awori, Keith Lindsay and Adam Cruise With a watered-down UN Climate Change CoP26 wrapping up last week, much has been said about reducing global emissions but equally important is protecting the Planet’s biodiversity. In Africa, elephants play a pivotal role in preserving the continent’s great natural spaces. Biologists often refer to African elephants (Loxodonta spp.) as ecosystem ‘architects’ and ‘gardeners’. They break branches off trees, sometimes the entire tree itself, creating clearings and larger open patches, most often near their vital water sources. Through their feeding...

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Congo Basin rainforest — invest US$150 million in science.

Congo Basin rainforest — invest US$150 million in science.

By Lee J. T. White , Eve Bazaiba Masudi , Jules Doret Ndongo , Rosalie Matondo , Arlette Soudan-Nonault , Alfred Ngomanda , Ifo Suspense Averti , Corneille E. N. Ewango , Bonaventure Sonké & Simon L. Lewis - Nature The world’s second-largest rainforest is key to limiting climate change — it needs urgent study and protection. Earth’s second-largest expanse of tropical forest lies in central Africa, in the Congo Basin. The region supports the livelihoods of 80 million people. The rainfall that the forest generates as far away as the Sahel and the Ethiopian highlands supports a further 300...

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