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SYDNEY, Jan. 7 (Dialogue) The number of African elephants has fallen from about 26 million in the 1800s to 415,000 today. While this is largely due to European colonization, poaching and habitat loss, these majestic animals now face another serious challenge.
Climate change is causing longer and more severe droughts across much of Africa. This destroys the elephants’ habitat and deprives them of the water they need. Due to their unique physiology, African elephants require hundreds of liters of water per day to survive.
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African savannah elephants are listed as endangered. If things don’t change, Africa — indeed, the world — could lose one of its most iconic animal species.
miserable situation
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The importance of elephants goes beyond their ecological, cultural and economic value. They’re also keystone species—that is, they help hold ecosystems together. That means their decline has far-reaching consequences.
Many African ecosystems revolve around the life of elephants. Elephants’ feeding habits, such as knocking down trees and stripping bark, can turn woody vegetation into grass. This gives smaller species room to move. They dig water in dry river beds, creating puddles that other animals can use. When they migrate, elephants help disperse seeds in their droppings.
A long and severe drought in southern and eastern Africa is escalating under the influence of climate change. Some have lasted more than 20 years.
The situation has left many elephants in desperate need of water. Research as far back as 2003 showed that elephants in Zimbabwe were dying during droughts. When an El Niño weather pattern hit southern Africa in 2016, there were reports of more elephant deaths, prompting local conservation groups to drill holes to provide relief.
Drought can also reduce food availability, causing elephants to starve to death. It could also mean that young elephants die or fail to develop properly because their desiccated mothers produce less milk.
unique physiology
So why are elephants struggling with drought and heat?
When an elephant’s internal temperature is too high, it can damage the function of cells, tissues and organs such as the liver, causing them to get sick and die.
Humans and other animals also experience heat stress. But elephants are especially vulnerable because they cannot excrete them through sweat.
The diagram below shows how heat builds up and dissipates inside an elephant.
Heat is accumulated through the elephant’s natural metabolism and physical activity, and absorbed from the environment.
But it doesn’t always dissipate effectively. Elephants’ thick skin slows heat loss — which is exacerbated by their lack of sweat glands.
What’s more, elephants are the largest of all land mammals, weighing up to eight tons. They also have large bodies – which generate heat – but relatively little surface area (their skin) to dissipate heat.
Water is crucial for elephants to cope with high temperatures. They swim and spray their skin with mud and water; the ensuing evaporation mimics sweating and cools them down.
Elephants cool themselves by drinking hundreds of liters of water every day.
Let the elephants roam free
Creating artificial water sources is a common management intervention when elephants need water. This includes using pipes, drilling and pumps.
But this measure can be problematic. Sometimes the water comes from the supplies needed by the local people. Large numbers of elephants congregating near water can cause permanent damage to local environments and reduce food supplies for other animals.
Historically, elephants have migrated to water during times of drought. But the introduction of fenced areas into the landscape disrupts this movement.
Fences were built to mark colony land titles, separate people from large animals and deter poachers.
But as climate change worsens in Africa, elephants and other wildlife must be able to move freely between connected habitats.
Wildlife corridors may provide the answer. These are protected passages of vegetation that enable animals to move between fragmented habitats. Wildlife corridors work very well for megafauna in India and the United States, and will likely increase the mobility of much of Africa’s wildlife.
The introduction of additional wildlife corridors, especially in southern and eastern Africa, requires the removal of fences. This change has consequences.
Nearby communities — which have not coexisted with elephants since colonization — will have to adapt to the change. Removing fences could also lead to increased poaching. Allowing elephants to roam the land could make it harder for tourists to access them, which could reduce tourism revenue.
But communities have coexisted with elephants in the past. Community-based programs have been shown to reduce human-wildlife conflict. In some cases, they have also reduced poaching rates and improved the quality of life in communities.
Community management projects, such as Kgalagadi in northern Botswana, demonstrate how local expertise – drawn from thousands of years of experience and knowledge – can guide wildlife management. Research has shown successful outcomes, both socially and ecologically, where elephants share the landscape with humans.
Protect key species
Ensuring African elephants survive drought will increasingly require new conservation strategies, including community-based management. Otherwise, already declining elephant populations will continue to decline.
This is bad news for the health and stability of Africa’s natural ecosystems — and a blow for its people. (dialogue)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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