Plant species depend on elephants to disperse their seeds in their excrement – big animals travel widely, eat a lot, and produce vast amounts of dung. They are smaller than the elephants that roam the open savannah of Africa and their tusks are straighter and point downwards rather than curve outwards.
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The first comprehensive research into forest elephant demographics found that even if poaching was curbed, it will take almost 100 years for the species just to recover the losses suffered in the past decade.
The researchers say it means it could take decades for this species to recover from recent dramatic declines.
The study managed to look into the setup of 1000 such elephants in the Dzanga Forest in the Central African Republic.
Andrea Turkalo, from the World Conservation Society, monitored the comings and goings of more than 1,000 elephants who visited a clearing in the forest.
Scientists have found that the animals start to breed at a later age and with longer intervals between calves than other elephant species.
African forest elephants tend to have very slow birth rates.
Named the Great Elephant Census (GEC), the three-year programme began in December 2013 and involved 81 aeroplanes and 286 crew flying 463,000 kilometres over 18 countries, said James Deutsch, of Allen’s Vulcan Inc investment company.
The research found that not only does it take more than 20 years for female forest elephants to begin reproducing, but they also give birth only once every five to six years. This, the authors of the study say, is primarily due to their slow birth rates. “In addition, vegetation in tropical systems are laden with compounds to defend their leaves from herbivores, including elephants”, co-author Peter Wrege, a behavioral ecologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said in the statement. “This means accessing resources is challenging for terrestrial fauna”.
“I am really anxious about the future of this species”, said George Wittemyer, a Colorado State University biologist and a co-author of the paper. “Trade in ivory in one nation can influence the pressures on elephants in other nations”. A measure to be debated at the IUCN congress in Hawaii this week would ban the domestic trade in ivory, but many elephant conservationists believe far more will need to be done to safeguard the species in the long term.
The authors also highlight the importance of the results for interpreting carcass data collected through the Monitoring of Illegal Killing of Elephants program, which has shown high levels of poaching across central Africa.
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Much more is at stake than the fate one animal’s population: forest elephants are regarded by biologists as a “keystone species” playing a crucial role in the robustness of central Africa’s wooded ecosytems, the study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, said. Continued decline in forest elephant numbers and range is likely to drive severe changes to these ecosystems, making their conservation status a significant global issue.
