#pachyderms — Public Fediverse posts

Lighter coloured than other #pachyderms, Sumatran #Elephants deserve to live in freedom. They're 🐘💀 critically endangered in #Indonesia 🇮🇩 due to #palmoil #deforestation and #poaching. #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🪔🤮☠️⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect.bsky.social https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/sumatran-elephant-elephas-maximus-sumatranus/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=Palm+Oil+Detectives&utm_campaign=publer

@shelby.elizabeth.art shared:

#elephants #animals #herbivores #pachyderms

Large herbivores such as elephants contribute to tree diversity

A recent study using satellite data has highlighted the critical role that large herbivores play in promoting tree diversity in forest ecosystems. The research showed that areas with abundant large herbivores like elephants had more varied tree cover and more tree diversity. This finding underscores the importance of large herbivores in many ecosystems and that they should have primary importance in conservation strategies, particularly in the context of global efforts to combat climate change and extinction. Help big herbivores every time you shop and #Boycottpalmoil and #Boycott4Wildlife in the supermarket!

Recent #research finds that lots of large #herbivores like #elephants 🦏🐘help plant #biodiversity in rainforests! Help big plant eaters and #plants to survive! 🐘🩶#Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife 🧐🪔⛔️ @palmoildetect.bsky.social https://wp.me/pcFhgU-7dB

Soulful #elephants 🐘💗 are not only intelligent, they add more tree cover and #tree diversity, finds this landmark #study. All #elephant species are threatened by #palmoil #deforestation and #poaching for ivory. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife 🌴🔥⛔ @palmoildetect.bsky.social https://wp.me/pcFhgU-7dB

Cover image credit: A Sumatran elephant enjoys a playful river dip, by Craig Jones Wildlife Photography

Lanhui Wang, Joris P.G.M. Cromsigt, Robert Buitenwerf, Erick J. Lundgren, Wang Li, Elisabeth S. Bakker, Jens-Christian Svenning. Tree cover and its heterogeneity in natural ecosystems is linked to large herbivore biomass globally. One Earth, 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.oneear.2023.10.007 Media release from Lund University. “Large herbivores such as elephants, bison and moose contribute to tree diversity.” ScienceDaily, 3 November 2023.

Maintaining species-rich and resilient ecosystems is key to preserving biodiversity and mitigating climate change. Here, megafauna — the part of the animal population in an area that is made up of the largest animals — plays an important role. In a new study published in the scientific journal One Earth, an international research team, of which Lund University is a part, has investigated the intricate interplay between the number of voracious herbivores like elephants and the diversity of trees in the world’s protected areas.

“Our findings reveal a fascinating and complex story of how large herbivorous animals shape the world’s natural landscapes. The tree cover in these areas is sparser, but the diversity of the tree cover is much higher than in areas without large herbivores,” says Lanhui Wang, a researcher in physical geography and ecosystem science at Lund University.

“In our global analysis, we find a substantial association between the biomass of large herbivores and varied tree cover in protected areas, notably for browsers and mixed-feeders such as elephants, bison and moose and in non-extreme climates,” explains the study’s senior author, Jens-Christian Svenning, professor at Aarhus University.

Hereby, the study supports that large wild herbivores promote a diverse vegetation structure, creating a rich habitat for many other species. This is due to the animals’ consumption of vegetation as well as physical disturbances.

According to Lanhui Wang, these new research findings highlight the need to integrate large herbivores into restoration and conservation strategies. Not only for the sake of the animals themselves but also for the vital role they play in shaping landscapes and influencing biodiversity. The researchers argue that this aspect is not sufficiently considered within the framework of sustainable land management and ecosystem restoration.

“At a time when global initiatives are intensely focused on combating climate change and biodiversity loss, our findings highlight the need for a broader and more nuanced discussion about ecosystem management and conservation measures. It is of utmost importance to integrate understanding of the ecological impact of megafauna into this,” says Lanhui Wang.

The UN has declared the 2020s as the decade of ecosystem restoration. In total, 115 countries have agreed to restore up to 100,000 square kilometres of nature in total. To achieve this, more wild-living large herbivores are needed worldwide, says Lanhui Wang.

“I believe that we will need to protect and conserve large herbivores to achieve the UN goals. Megafauna are crucial for tree cover, which in turn promotes carbon sequestration and a diversity of habitats,” says Lanhui Wang.

Lanhui Wang, Joris P.G.M. Cromsigt, Robert Buitenwerf, Erick J. Lundgren, Wang Li, Elisabeth S. Bakker, Jens-Christian Svenning. Tree cover and its heterogeneity in natural ecosystems is linked to large herbivore biomass globally. One Earth, 2023; DOI: 10.1016/j.oneear.2023.10.007 Media release from Lund University. “Large herbivores such as elephants, bison and moose contribute to tree diversity.” ScienceDaily, 3 November 2023.

ENDS

Learn about other animals endangered by palm oil and other agriculture

Marsupials thought extinct for 6,000 years found in West Papua

Gursky’s Spectral Tarsier Tarsius spectrumgurskyae

Sunda Flying Lemur Galeopterus variegatus

Western Parotia Parotia sefilata

Capped Langur Trachypithecus pileatus

Mountain Tapir Tapirus pinchaque

Learn about “sustainable” palm oil greenwashing

Read more about RSPO greenwashing

A 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report into the palm oil industry and RSPO finds extensive greenwashing of palm oil deforestation and the murder of endangered animals (i.e. biodiversity loss)

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Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

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According to a new study, #elephants use unique names to call each other, which they create for their fellow #pachyderms. While dolphins and parrots mimic the sounds of others in their species to communicate, elephants are the first non-human animals observed using names that do not involve imitation, researchers suggest.
#amazingnature #nature #animals

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/10/elephant-names-study-ai

African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change

Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest #elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle giants roam through muddy, mineral-rich paradises called baïs, fostering the growth of carbon-absorbing trees that make our planet healthier. By tending to these unique landscapes, they are the unsung heroes in the fight against climate change. Want to ensure these ecological architects keep doing their vital work? Join the movement to protect their habitat—say no to palm oil and adopt a vegan lifestyle! 🐘🌳#BoycottPalmOil #BeVegan #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/s584AP-BYm0?si=Zrwc5CFFjAxAqmas

Take action by sharing this!

African forest #elephants 🐘 in #Congo 🇨🇩 are essential to fighting #climatechange 🌳💚 by capturing #carbon and dispersing seeds in the rainforest. Help them every time you shop, be #vegan #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/

Gentle giant pachyderms #African forest #elephants 🐘🐘 are the unsung heroes helping #climatechange. They capture #carbon in the #DRC’s 🇨🇩🌳rainforest! Help them survive with your supermarket choices #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/

This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.

The approach to the “village of elephants” in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic must be made in complete silence. Not even the faintest rustle of backpack on rain jacket should break the soundscape as visitors wade through the sometimes waist-deep swamp at the forest’s edge. The Indigenous Ba’aka guides must be able to listen for any signs of nearby elephants, so they can steer the visitors clear and avoid a close encounter with these giants. When a few pachyderms saunter out of the dense greenery, the Ba’aka shoo them away calmly.

The thick vegetation gives way suddenly to a baï. This is no mere watering hole. The sandy clearing stretches for half a kilometer, more than a quarter of a mile, in the otherwise unbroken canopy of the world’s second-largest tropical forest.

A handful of researchers camp out on a timber observation platform, overlooking a place that has drawn generations of elephants to its mineral- and salt-laden sand and muddy water. They document how the animals use their trunks or tusks to dig into the sand, eavesdrop on the animals’ conversations, and count the many other species that congregate here.

This is Dzanga baï, a meeting place for critically endangered African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas where these animals come together in huge numbers to dig for nutrients they can’t get from the otherwise abundant forests.

Baïs are unique to the Congo Basin’s forests, and new research is underway to understand the role these mineral-rich pockets play as a supplement to the elephants’ diet, how this sustains the animals’ population, and how they therefore contribute to the carbon-capture function of the forest.

Unlike the Amazon, the Congo Basin’s forests still have their original megafauna, elephants in particular. And they have these salt-rich clearings. Conservationists are beginning to understand the importance of elephants as forest gardeners here, and how their taste for certain trees and fruits has sculpted a forest that absorbs more carbon per hectare than the Amazon.

The Global Carbon Budget project estimated Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions for 2021 at 1.45 billion metric tons. Every year, the Congo Basin’s forests soak up 1.1 billion metric tons of atmospheric carbon, storing it in trees and soil; in 2020 carbon credit prices, this service would be worth $55 billion.

Forest elephants, smaller than their better-known savanna cousins or even Asian elephants, prefer certain lower-growing, tasty trees. This picky browsing pressure creates gaps in the canopy that allow other, less palatable but carbon-dense species to reach tremendous heights. Elephants’ appetite for the fruit of these bigger trees then means they spread their seeds far and wide.

A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.

This finding makes a case not only to stop deforestation in the Congo Basin, but to protect the elephants too, as a way to slow climate breakdown, the study authors wrote.

Salt licks for elephants, gardeners of the forest

Mouangi baï is only about 250 km (155 mi) from Dzanga baï as the crow flies, but it takes a day or two to travel by road and river to get from one to the other.

Researchers with the conservation organization African Parks and Harvard University’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology are zeroing in on Mouangi and other baïs in Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the ROC, to clarify the link between baïs, elephants and the forest’s tree species composition.

Nicknamed Capitale by the locals, Mouangi baï in Odzala draws hundreds, maybe even thousands, of elephants, according to Gwili Gibbon, research and monitoring head at African Parks, which manages the park along with the ROC government.

“Mouangi is one of our largest and most renowned baïs,” Gibbon says.

At the intersection of two rivers, Mouangi is more than 1 km (0.6 mi) across and spans 91 hectares (225 acres). It’s the largest of a dozen of Odzala’s baïs that the African Parks and Harvard research collaboration is focusing on.

Odzala-Kokoua National Park extends across 1.35 million hectares (3.34 million acres), and while it has a few thousand baïs, often occurring in clusters within the forest, this ecosystem makes up only about 0.2% of the park’s footprint. Nevertheless, these clearings may be integral to the shape of the forest itself, which is why Harvard assistant professor Andrew Davies and doctoral researcher Evan Hockridge are teaming up with African Parks to understand the importance of the salty watering holes in supporting elephant populations, which then shape the forest mosaic.

The baïs are clearly a hotspot that elephants seek out for their rare minerals in an ecosystem rooted in the nutrient-poor soils typical of the region.

“The elephants use their tusks to scrape topsoil off in specific areas, and eat the finer dust on the surface,” says Hockridge, a landscape ecologist. “They also dig large mining sites or wells, as much as a meter [3 feet] deep.”

The animals’ excavations go even deeper at times, down to where water carries the salt in a more accessible form. The need to ingest the mineral-rich dust, mud and water keeps the animals returning to these sites.

But how the baïs formed in the first place — they’re present in the Congo Basin, but not in the Amazon — and why they remain clear of forest encroachment are still a mystery.

Hockridge says no one has tried to establish if the now-extinct megafauna of the Amazon once made similar clearings there, or if baï size correlates to the size of the animals visiting them.

“One hypothesis is that megafauna effectively create large, nutrient-rich, lick-like clearings. But it hasn’t been quantified that baïs are manufactured or maintained by megafauna,” he says.

The researchers say they hope to answer this puzzle: Do large mammals like elephants maintain and stabilize the baïs?

Anecdotes from the DRC might give the first glimpse of an answer, according to Harvard’s Davies.

“Baïs may be closing in the DRC, and it could be because the elephants are in a war zone, so they don’t have the big bulldozer effect,” he says.

The hypothesis is that if fewer elephants visit and maintain these clearings, the baïs will be swallowed up by the forest.

Gibbon’s African Parks team has set up experimental plots in the Odzala, where they’ve buried salt in the sand at a similar depth to which elephants excavate. Researchers are monitoring these sites to see if more animals will congregate around the plots, whether this impacts the vegetation cover in and around the baïs, and whether there’s a shift in the carbon-capture potential of the surrounding forests.

This study is centered in Odzala, although the researchers say they hope to expand the work into the Ndoki region of the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas.

Baïs have a busy social scene

It isn’t just elephants that congregate at the baïs. These watering holes have a bustling social scene.

Gibbon describes the flocks of African green pigeons (Treron calvus) that gather at Capitale at dawn and dusk; buffalo and several bird species that visit during daylight hours; and the hyenas that can be heard calling after dark as the elephants mine for salt.

Wildlife refuges like these in the Congo Basin are also home to the critically endangered western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), two unusual forest and swamp-dwelling antelope — the bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus) and sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii) — as well as central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes), bonobos (Pan pansicus), and the endangered gray parrot (Psittacus erithacus).

The forests of Gabon, southern Cameroon and southern Central African Republic also have a high number of baïs, and the findings from these studies could eventually be extrapolated to give an idea of the implications for the Congo Basin more widely.

“The area that baïs’ cover is tiny, but they sustain the elephant population,” Davies says. “If our hypothesis is correct, without the baïs you’d have no elephants; without elephants there’s be no big trees with high carbon density, so carbon storage would go down.”

If the forest loses the baïs, it could lose more than just the elephants or see a change in its carbon-capturing treescape. The baïs would no longer draw the many other animals that thrive in these mineral-dense watering holes, and the tourists and environmental researchers drawn to them too.

Citation:

Berzaghi, F., Longo, M., Ciais, P., Blake, S., Bretagnolle, F., Vieira, S., … Doughty, C. E. (2019). Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance. Nature Geoscience, 12(9), 725-729. doi:10.1038/s41561-019-0395-6

Banner image: Elephants dig for salt-rich mud in the Dzanga baï in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic. Image courtesy Jan Teede.

This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.

ENDS

Learn about other animals endangered by palm oil and other agriculture

Tucuxi Sotalia fluviatilis

Keep reading

Frill-Necked Lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii

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Grey Crowned Crane Balearica regulorum

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Ecuadorean Viscacha Lagidium ahuacaense

Keep reading

Southern Pudu Pudu puda

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Blue-streaked Lory Eos reticulata

Keep reading

Learn about “sustainable” palm oil greenwashing

Read more about RSPO greenwashing

A 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report into the palm oil industry and RSPO finds extensive greenwashing of palm oil deforestation and the murder of endangered animals (i.e. biodiversity loss)

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

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2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#african #africanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #amazingAnimals #animalBehaviour #animalCommunication #animalIntelligence #bantrophyhunting #bevegan #biodiversity #boycottPalmOil #boycott4wildlife #boycottpalmoil #carbon #climatechange #congo #deforestation #democracticRepublicOfCongo #drc #elephant #elephants #forgottenAnimals #mammal #pachyderm #pachyderms #palmOil #palmOilDeforestation #theDemocraticRepublicOfCongo #vegan

African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change

Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest #elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle giants roam through muddy, mineral-rich paradises called baïs, fostering the growth of carbon-absorbing trees that make our planet healthier. By tending to these unique landscapes, they are the unsung heroes in the fight against climate change. Want to ensure these ecological architects keep doing their vital work? Join the movement to protect their habitat—say no to palm oil and adopt a vegan lifestyle! 🐘🌳#BoycottPalmOil #BeVegan #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/s584AP-BYm0?si=Zrwc5CFFjAxAqmas

Take action by sharing this!

African forest #elephants 🐘 in #Congo 🇨🇩 are essential to fighting #climatechange 🌳💚 by capturing #carbon and dispersing seeds in the rainforest. Help them every time you shop, be #vegan #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/

Gentle giant pachyderms #African forest #elephants 🐘🐘 are the unsung heroes helping #climatechange. They capture #carbon in the #DRC’s 🇨🇩🌳rainforest! Help them survive with your supermarket choices #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/

This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.

The approach to the “village of elephants” in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic must be made in complete silence. Not even the faintest rustle of backpack on rain jacket should break the soundscape as visitors wade through the sometimes waist-deep swamp at the forest’s edge. The Indigenous Ba’aka guides must be able to listen for any signs of nearby elephants, so they can steer the visitors clear and avoid a close encounter with these giants. When a few pachyderms saunter out of the dense greenery, the Ba’aka shoo them away calmly.

The thick vegetation gives way suddenly to a baï. This is no mere watering hole. The sandy clearing stretches for half a kilometer, more than a quarter of a mile, in the otherwise unbroken canopy of the world’s second-largest tropical forest.

A handful of researchers camp out on a timber observation platform, overlooking a place that has drawn generations of elephants to its mineral- and salt-laden sand and muddy water. They document how the animals use their trunks or tusks to dig into the sand, eavesdrop on the animals’ conversations, and count the many other species that congregate here.

This is Dzanga baï, a meeting place for critically endangered African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas where these animals come together in huge numbers to dig for nutrients they can’t get from the otherwise abundant forests.

Baïs are unique to the Congo Basin’s forests, and new research is underway to understand the role these mineral-rich pockets play as a supplement to the elephants’ diet, how this sustains the animals’ population, and how they therefore contribute to the carbon-capture function of the forest.

Unlike the Amazon, the Congo Basin’s forests still have their original megafauna, elephants in particular. And they have these salt-rich clearings. Conservationists are beginning to understand the importance of elephants as forest gardeners here, and how their taste for certain trees and fruits has sculpted a forest that absorbs more carbon per hectare than the Amazon.

The Global Carbon Budget project estimated Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions for 2021 at 1.45 billion metric tons. Every year, the Congo Basin’s forests soak up 1.1 billion metric tons of atmospheric carbon, storing it in trees and soil; in 2020 carbon credit prices, this service would be worth $55 billion.

Forest elephants, smaller than their better-known savanna cousins or even Asian elephants, prefer certain lower-growing, tasty trees. This picky browsing pressure creates gaps in the canopy that allow other, less palatable but carbon-dense species to reach tremendous heights. Elephants’ appetite for the fruit of these bigger trees then means they spread their seeds far and wide.

A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.

This finding makes a case not only to stop deforestation in the Congo Basin, but to protect the elephants too, as a way to slow climate breakdown, the study authors wrote.

Salt licks for elephants, gardeners of the forest

Mouangi baï is only about 250 km (155 mi) from Dzanga baï as the crow flies, but it takes a day or two to travel by road and river to get from one to the other.

Researchers with the conservation organization African Parks and Harvard University’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology are zeroing in on Mouangi and other baïs in Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the ROC, to clarify the link between baïs, elephants and the forest’s tree species composition.

Nicknamed Capitale by the locals, Mouangi baï in Odzala draws hundreds, maybe even thousands, of elephants, according to Gwili Gibbon, research and monitoring head at African Parks, which manages the park along with the ROC government.

“Mouangi is one of our largest and most renowned baïs,” Gibbon says.

At the intersection of two rivers, Mouangi is more than 1 km (0.6 mi) across and spans 91 hectares (225 acres). It’s the largest of a dozen of Odzala’s baïs that the African Parks and Harvard research collaboration is focusing on.

Odzala-Kokoua National Park extends across 1.35 million hectares (3.34 million acres), and while it has a few thousand baïs, often occurring in clusters within the forest, this ecosystem makes up only about 0.2% of the park’s footprint. Nevertheless, these clearings may be integral to the shape of the forest itself, which is why Harvard assistant professor Andrew Davies and doctoral researcher Evan Hockridge are teaming up with African Parks to understand the importance of the salty watering holes in supporting elephant populations, which then shape the forest mosaic.

The baïs are clearly a hotspot that elephants seek out for their rare minerals in an ecosystem rooted in the nutrient-poor soils typical of the region.

“The elephants use their tusks to scrape topsoil off in specific areas, and eat the finer dust on the surface,” says Hockridge, a landscape ecologist. “They also dig large mining sites or wells, as much as a meter [3 feet] deep.”

The animals’ excavations go even deeper at times, down to where water carries the salt in a more accessible form. The need to ingest the mineral-rich dust, mud and water keeps the animals returning to these sites.

But how the baïs formed in the first place — they’re present in the Congo Basin, but not in the Amazon — and why they remain clear of forest encroachment are still a mystery.

Hockridge says no one has tried to establish if the now-extinct megafauna of the Amazon once made similar clearings there, or if baï size correlates to the size of the animals visiting them.

“One hypothesis is that megafauna effectively create large, nutrient-rich, lick-like clearings. But it hasn’t been quantified that baïs are manufactured or maintained by megafauna,” he says.

The researchers say they hope to answer this puzzle: Do large mammals like elephants maintain and stabilize the baïs?

Anecdotes from the DRC might give the first glimpse of an answer, according to Harvard’s Davies.

“Baïs may be closing in the DRC, and it could be because the elephants are in a war zone, so they don’t have the big bulldozer effect,” he says.

The hypothesis is that if fewer elephants visit and maintain these clearings, the baïs will be swallowed up by the forest.

Gibbon’s African Parks team has set up experimental plots in the Odzala, where they’ve buried salt in the sand at a similar depth to which elephants excavate. Researchers are monitoring these sites to see if more animals will congregate around the plots, whether this impacts the vegetation cover in and around the baïs, and whether there’s a shift in the carbon-capture potential of the surrounding forests.

This study is centered in Odzala, although the researchers say they hope to expand the work into the Ndoki region of the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas.

Baïs have a busy social scene

It isn’t just elephants that congregate at the baïs. These watering holes have a bustling social scene.

Gibbon describes the flocks of African green pigeons (Treron calvus) that gather at Capitale at dawn and dusk; buffalo and several bird species that visit during daylight hours; and the hyenas that can be heard calling after dark as the elephants mine for salt.

Wildlife refuges like these in the Congo Basin are also home to the critically endangered western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), two unusual forest and swamp-dwelling antelope — the bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus) and sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii) — as well as central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes), bonobos (Pan pansicus), and the endangered gray parrot (Psittacus erithacus).

The forests of Gabon, southern Cameroon and southern Central African Republic also have a high number of baïs, and the findings from these studies could eventually be extrapolated to give an idea of the implications for the Congo Basin more widely.

“The area that baïs’ cover is tiny, but they sustain the elephant population,” Davies says. “If our hypothesis is correct, without the baïs you’d have no elephants; without elephants there’s be no big trees with high carbon density, so carbon storage would go down.”

If the forest loses the baïs, it could lose more than just the elephants or see a change in its carbon-capturing treescape. The baïs would no longer draw the many other animals that thrive in these mineral-dense watering holes, and the tourists and environmental researchers drawn to them too.

Citation:

Berzaghi, F., Longo, M., Ciais, P., Blake, S., Bretagnolle, F., Vieira, S., … Doughty, C. E. (2019). Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance. Nature Geoscience, 12(9), 725-729. doi:10.1038/s41561-019-0395-6

Banner image: Elephants dig for salt-rich mud in the Dzanga baï in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic. Image courtesy Jan Teede.

This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.

ENDS

Learn about other animals endangered by palm oil and other agriculture

Tucuxi Sotalia fluviatilis

Keep reading

Frill-Necked Lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii

Keep reading

Grey Crowned Crane Balearica regulorum

Keep reading

Ecuadorean Viscacha Lagidium ahuacaense

Keep reading

Southern Pudu Pudu puda

Keep reading

Blue-streaked Lory Eos reticulata

Keep reading

Learn about “sustainable” palm oil greenwashing

Read more about RSPO greenwashing

A 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report into the palm oil industry and RSPO finds extensive greenwashing of palm oil deforestation and the murder of endangered animals (i.e. biodiversity loss)

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Mail
• Mastodon

Enter your email address

Sign Up

2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#african #africanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #amazingAnimals #animalBehaviour #animalCommunication #animalIntelligence #bantrophyhunting #bevegan #biodiversity #boycottPalmOil #boycott4wildlife #boycottpalmoil #carbon #climatechange #congo #deforestation #democracticRepublicOfCongo #drc #elephant #elephants #forgottenAnimals #mammal #pachyderm #pachyderms #palmOil #palmOilDeforestation #theDemocraticRepublicOfCongo #vegan

African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change

Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest #elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle giants roam through muddy, mineral-rich paradises called baïs, fostering the growth of carbon-absorbing trees that make our planet healthier. By tending to these unique landscapes, they are the unsung heroes in the fight against climate change. Want to ensure these ecological architects keep doing their vital work? Join the movement to protect their habitat—say no to palm oil and adopt a vegan lifestyle! 🐘🌳#BoycottPalmOil #BeVegan #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/s584AP-BYm0?si=Zrwc5CFFjAxAqmas

Take action by sharing this!

African forest #elephants 🐘 in #Congo 🇨🇩 are essential to fighting #climatechange 🌳💚 by capturing #carbon and dispersing seeds in the rainforest. Help them every time you shop, be #vegan #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/

Gentle giant pachyderms #African forest #elephants 🐘🐘 are the unsung heroes helping #climatechange. They capture #carbon in the #DRC’s 🇨🇩🌳rainforest! Help them survive with your supermarket choices #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/

This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.

The approach to the “village of elephants” in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic must be made in complete silence. Not even the faintest rustle of backpack on rain jacket should break the soundscape as visitors wade through the sometimes waist-deep swamp at the forest’s edge. The Indigenous Ba’aka guides must be able to listen for any signs of nearby elephants, so they can steer the visitors clear and avoid a close encounter with these giants. When a few pachyderms saunter out of the dense greenery, the Ba’aka shoo them away calmly.

The thick vegetation gives way suddenly to a baï. This is no mere watering hole. The sandy clearing stretches for half a kilometer, more than a quarter of a mile, in the otherwise unbroken canopy of the world’s second-largest tropical forest.

A handful of researchers camp out on a timber observation platform, overlooking a place that has drawn generations of elephants to its mineral- and salt-laden sand and muddy water. They document how the animals use their trunks or tusks to dig into the sand, eavesdrop on the animals’ conversations, and count the many other species that congregate here.

This is Dzanga baï, a meeting place for critically endangered African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas where these animals come together in huge numbers to dig for nutrients they can’t get from the otherwise abundant forests.

Baïs are unique to the Congo Basin’s forests, and new research is underway to understand the role these mineral-rich pockets play as a supplement to the elephants’ diet, how this sustains the animals’ population, and how they therefore contribute to the carbon-capture function of the forest.

Unlike the Amazon, the Congo Basin’s forests still have their original megafauna, elephants in particular. And they have these salt-rich clearings. Conservationists are beginning to understand the importance of elephants as forest gardeners here, and how their taste for certain trees and fruits has sculpted a forest that absorbs more carbon per hectare than the Amazon.

The Global Carbon Budget project estimated Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions for 2021 at 1.45 billion metric tons. Every year, the Congo Basin’s forests soak up 1.1 billion metric tons of atmospheric carbon, storing it in trees and soil; in 2020 carbon credit prices, this service would be worth $55 billion.

Forest elephants, smaller than their better-known savanna cousins or even Asian elephants, prefer certain lower-growing, tasty trees. This picky browsing pressure creates gaps in the canopy that allow other, less palatable but carbon-dense species to reach tremendous heights. Elephants’ appetite for the fruit of these bigger trees then means they spread their seeds far and wide.

A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.

This finding makes a case not only to stop deforestation in the Congo Basin, but to protect the elephants too, as a way to slow climate breakdown, the study authors wrote.

Salt licks for elephants, gardeners of the forest

Mouangi baï is only about 250 km (155 mi) from Dzanga baï as the crow flies, but it takes a day or two to travel by road and river to get from one to the other.

Researchers with the conservation organization African Parks and Harvard University’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology are zeroing in on Mouangi and other baïs in Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the ROC, to clarify the link between baïs, elephants and the forest’s tree species composition.

Nicknamed Capitale by the locals, Mouangi baï in Odzala draws hundreds, maybe even thousands, of elephants, according to Gwili Gibbon, research and monitoring head at African Parks, which manages the park along with the ROC government.

“Mouangi is one of our largest and most renowned baïs,” Gibbon says.

At the intersection of two rivers, Mouangi is more than 1 km (0.6 mi) across and spans 91 hectares (225 acres). It’s the largest of a dozen of Odzala’s baïs that the African Parks and Harvard research collaboration is focusing on.

Odzala-Kokoua National Park extends across 1.35 million hectares (3.34 million acres), and while it has a few thousand baïs, often occurring in clusters within the forest, this ecosystem makes up only about 0.2% of the park’s footprint. Nevertheless, these clearings may be integral to the shape of the forest itself, which is why Harvard assistant professor Andrew Davies and doctoral researcher Evan Hockridge are teaming up with African Parks to understand the importance of the salty watering holes in supporting elephant populations, which then shape the forest mosaic.

The baïs are clearly a hotspot that elephants seek out for their rare minerals in an ecosystem rooted in the nutrient-poor soils typical of the region.

“The elephants use their tusks to scrape topsoil off in specific areas, and eat the finer dust on the surface,” says Hockridge, a landscape ecologist. “They also dig large mining sites or wells, as much as a meter [3 feet] deep.”

The animals’ excavations go even deeper at times, down to where water carries the salt in a more accessible form. The need to ingest the mineral-rich dust, mud and water keeps the animals returning to these sites.

But how the baïs formed in the first place — they’re present in the Congo Basin, but not in the Amazon — and why they remain clear of forest encroachment are still a mystery.

Hockridge says no one has tried to establish if the now-extinct megafauna of the Amazon once made similar clearings there, or if baï size correlates to the size of the animals visiting them.

“One hypothesis is that megafauna effectively create large, nutrient-rich, lick-like clearings. But it hasn’t been quantified that baïs are manufactured or maintained by megafauna,” he says.

The researchers say they hope to answer this puzzle: Do large mammals like elephants maintain and stabilize the baïs?

Anecdotes from the DRC might give the first glimpse of an answer, according to Harvard’s Davies.

“Baïs may be closing in the DRC, and it could be because the elephants are in a war zone, so they don’t have the big bulldozer effect,” he says.

The hypothesis is that if fewer elephants visit and maintain these clearings, the baïs will be swallowed up by the forest.

Gibbon’s African Parks team has set up experimental plots in the Odzala, where they’ve buried salt in the sand at a similar depth to which elephants excavate. Researchers are monitoring these sites to see if more animals will congregate around the plots, whether this impacts the vegetation cover in and around the baïs, and whether there’s a shift in the carbon-capture potential of the surrounding forests.

This study is centered in Odzala, although the researchers say they hope to expand the work into the Ndoki region of the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas.

Baïs have a busy social scene

It isn’t just elephants that congregate at the baïs. These watering holes have a bustling social scene.

Gibbon describes the flocks of African green pigeons (Treron calvus) that gather at Capitale at dawn and dusk; buffalo and several bird species that visit during daylight hours; and the hyenas that can be heard calling after dark as the elephants mine for salt.

Wildlife refuges like these in the Congo Basin are also home to the critically endangered western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), two unusual forest and swamp-dwelling antelope — the bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus) and sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii) — as well as central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes), bonobos (Pan pansicus), and the endangered gray parrot (Psittacus erithacus).

The forests of Gabon, southern Cameroon and southern Central African Republic also have a high number of baïs, and the findings from these studies could eventually be extrapolated to give an idea of the implications for the Congo Basin more widely.

“The area that baïs’ cover is tiny, but they sustain the elephant population,” Davies says. “If our hypothesis is correct, without the baïs you’d have no elephants; without elephants there’s be no big trees with high carbon density, so carbon storage would go down.”

If the forest loses the baïs, it could lose more than just the elephants or see a change in its carbon-capturing treescape. The baïs would no longer draw the many other animals that thrive in these mineral-dense watering holes, and the tourists and environmental researchers drawn to them too.

Citation:

Berzaghi, F., Longo, M., Ciais, P., Blake, S., Bretagnolle, F., Vieira, S., … Doughty, C. E. (2019). Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance. Nature Geoscience, 12(9), 725-729. doi:10.1038/s41561-019-0395-6

Banner image: Elephants dig for salt-rich mud in the Dzanga baï in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic. Image courtesy Jan Teede.

This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.

ENDS

Learn about other animals endangered by palm oil and other agriculture

Tucuxi Sotalia fluviatilis

Keep reading

Frill-Necked Lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii

Keep reading

Grey Crowned Crane Balearica regulorum

Keep reading

Ecuadorean Viscacha Lagidium ahuacaense

Keep reading

Southern Pudu Pudu puda

Keep reading

Blue-streaked Lory Eos reticulata

Keep reading

Learn about “sustainable” palm oil greenwashing

Read more about RSPO greenwashing

A 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report into the palm oil industry and RSPO finds extensive greenwashing of palm oil deforestation and the murder of endangered animals (i.e. biodiversity loss)

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Mail
• Mastodon

Enter your email address

Sign Up

2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#african #africanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #amazingAnimals #animalBehaviour #animalCommunication #animalIntelligence #bantrophyhunting #bevegan #biodiversity #boycottPalmOil #boycott4wildlife #boycottpalmoil #carbon #climatechange #congo #deforestation #democracticRepublicOfCongo #drc #elephant #elephants #forgottenAnimals #mammal #pachyderm #pachyderms #palmOil #palmOilDeforestation #theDemocraticRepublicOfCongo #vegan

African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change

Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest #elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle giants roam through muddy, mineral-rich paradises called baïs, fostering the growth of carbon-absorbing trees that make our planet healthier. By tending to these unique landscapes, they are the unsung heroes in the fight against climate change. Want to ensure these ecological architects keep doing their vital work? Join the movement to protect their habitat—say no to palm oil and adopt a vegan lifestyle! 🐘🌳#BoycottPalmOil #BeVegan #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/s584AP-BYm0?si=Zrwc5CFFjAxAqmas

Take action by sharing this!

African forest #elephants 🐘 in #Congo 🇨🇩 are essential to fighting #climatechange 🌳💚 by capturing #carbon and dispersing seeds in the rainforest. Help them every time you shop, be #vegan #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/

Gentle giant pachyderms #African forest #elephants 🐘🐘 are the unsung heroes helping #climatechange. They capture #carbon in the #DRC’s 🇨🇩🌳rainforest! Help them survive with your supermarket choices #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/

This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.

The approach to the “village of elephants” in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic must be made in complete silence. Not even the faintest rustle of backpack on rain jacket should break the soundscape as visitors wade through the sometimes waist-deep swamp at the forest’s edge. The Indigenous Ba’aka guides must be able to listen for any signs of nearby elephants, so they can steer the visitors clear and avoid a close encounter with these giants. When a few pachyderms saunter out of the dense greenery, the Ba’aka shoo them away calmly.

The thick vegetation gives way suddenly to a baï. This is no mere watering hole. The sandy clearing stretches for half a kilometer, more than a quarter of a mile, in the otherwise unbroken canopy of the world’s second-largest tropical forest.

A handful of researchers camp out on a timber observation platform, overlooking a place that has drawn generations of elephants to its mineral- and salt-laden sand and muddy water. They document how the animals use their trunks or tusks to dig into the sand, eavesdrop on the animals’ conversations, and count the many other species that congregate here.

This is Dzanga baï, a meeting place for critically endangered African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas where these animals come together in huge numbers to dig for nutrients they can’t get from the otherwise abundant forests.

Baïs are unique to the Congo Basin’s forests, and new research is underway to understand the role these mineral-rich pockets play as a supplement to the elephants’ diet, how this sustains the animals’ population, and how they therefore contribute to the carbon-capture function of the forest.

Unlike the Amazon, the Congo Basin’s forests still have their original megafauna, elephants in particular. And they have these salt-rich clearings. Conservationists are beginning to understand the importance of elephants as forest gardeners here, and how their taste for certain trees and fruits has sculpted a forest that absorbs more carbon per hectare than the Amazon.

The Global Carbon Budget project estimated Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions for 2021 at 1.45 billion metric tons. Every year, the Congo Basin’s forests soak up 1.1 billion metric tons of atmospheric carbon, storing it in trees and soil; in 2020 carbon credit prices, this service would be worth $55 billion.

Forest elephants, smaller than their better-known savanna cousins or even Asian elephants, prefer certain lower-growing, tasty trees. This picky browsing pressure creates gaps in the canopy that allow other, less palatable but carbon-dense species to reach tremendous heights. Elephants’ appetite for the fruit of these bigger trees then means they spread their seeds far and wide.

A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.

This finding makes a case not only to stop deforestation in the Congo Basin, but to protect the elephants too, as a way to slow climate breakdown, the study authors wrote.

Salt licks for elephants, gardeners of the forest

Mouangi baï is only about 250 km (155 mi) from Dzanga baï as the crow flies, but it takes a day or two to travel by road and river to get from one to the other.

Researchers with the conservation organization African Parks and Harvard University’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology are zeroing in on Mouangi and other baïs in Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the ROC, to clarify the link between baïs, elephants and the forest’s tree species composition.

Nicknamed Capitale by the locals, Mouangi baï in Odzala draws hundreds, maybe even thousands, of elephants, according to Gwili Gibbon, research and monitoring head at African Parks, which manages the park along with the ROC government.

“Mouangi is one of our largest and most renowned baïs,” Gibbon says.

At the intersection of two rivers, Mouangi is more than 1 km (0.6 mi) across and spans 91 hectares (225 acres). It’s the largest of a dozen of Odzala’s baïs that the African Parks and Harvard research collaboration is focusing on.

Odzala-Kokoua National Park extends across 1.35 million hectares (3.34 million acres), and while it has a few thousand baïs, often occurring in clusters within the forest, this ecosystem makes up only about 0.2% of the park’s footprint. Nevertheless, these clearings may be integral to the shape of the forest itself, which is why Harvard assistant professor Andrew Davies and doctoral researcher Evan Hockridge are teaming up with African Parks to understand the importance of the salty watering holes in supporting elephant populations, which then shape the forest mosaic.

The baïs are clearly a hotspot that elephants seek out for their rare minerals in an ecosystem rooted in the nutrient-poor soils typical of the region.

“The elephants use their tusks to scrape topsoil off in specific areas, and eat the finer dust on the surface,” says Hockridge, a landscape ecologist. “They also dig large mining sites or wells, as much as a meter [3 feet] deep.”

The animals’ excavations go even deeper at times, down to where water carries the salt in a more accessible form. The need to ingest the mineral-rich dust, mud and water keeps the animals returning to these sites.

But how the baïs formed in the first place — they’re present in the Congo Basin, but not in the Amazon — and why they remain clear of forest encroachment are still a mystery.

Hockridge says no one has tried to establish if the now-extinct megafauna of the Amazon once made similar clearings there, or if baï size correlates to the size of the animals visiting them.

“One hypothesis is that megafauna effectively create large, nutrient-rich, lick-like clearings. But it hasn’t been quantified that baïs are manufactured or maintained by megafauna,” he says.

The researchers say they hope to answer this puzzle: Do large mammals like elephants maintain and stabilize the baïs?

Anecdotes from the DRC might give the first glimpse of an answer, according to Harvard’s Davies.

“Baïs may be closing in the DRC, and it could be because the elephants are in a war zone, so they don’t have the big bulldozer effect,” he says.

The hypothesis is that if fewer elephants visit and maintain these clearings, the baïs will be swallowed up by the forest.

Gibbon’s African Parks team has set up experimental plots in the Odzala, where they’ve buried salt in the sand at a similar depth to which elephants excavate. Researchers are monitoring these sites to see if more animals will congregate around the plots, whether this impacts the vegetation cover in and around the baïs, and whether there’s a shift in the carbon-capture potential of the surrounding forests.

This study is centered in Odzala, although the researchers say they hope to expand the work into the Ndoki region of the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas.

Baïs have a busy social scene

It isn’t just elephants that congregate at the baïs. These watering holes have a bustling social scene.

Gibbon describes the flocks of African green pigeons (Treron calvus) that gather at Capitale at dawn and dusk; buffalo and several bird species that visit during daylight hours; and the hyenas that can be heard calling after dark as the elephants mine for salt.

Wildlife refuges like these in the Congo Basin are also home to the critically endangered western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), two unusual forest and swamp-dwelling antelope — the bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus) and sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii) — as well as central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes), bonobos (Pan pansicus), and the endangered gray parrot (Psittacus erithacus).

The forests of Gabon, southern Cameroon and southern Central African Republic also have a high number of baïs, and the findings from these studies could eventually be extrapolated to give an idea of the implications for the Congo Basin more widely.

“The area that baïs’ cover is tiny, but they sustain the elephant population,” Davies says. “If our hypothesis is correct, without the baïs you’d have no elephants; without elephants there’s be no big trees with high carbon density, so carbon storage would go down.”

If the forest loses the baïs, it could lose more than just the elephants or see a change in its carbon-capturing treescape. The baïs would no longer draw the many other animals that thrive in these mineral-dense watering holes, and the tourists and environmental researchers drawn to them too.

Citation:

Berzaghi, F., Longo, M., Ciais, P., Blake, S., Bretagnolle, F., Vieira, S., … Doughty, C. E. (2019). Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance. Nature Geoscience, 12(9), 725-729. doi:10.1038/s41561-019-0395-6

Banner image: Elephants dig for salt-rich mud in the Dzanga baï in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic. Image courtesy Jan Teede.

This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.

ENDS

Learn about other animals endangered by palm oil and other agriculture

Tucuxi Sotalia fluviatilis

Keep reading

Frill-Necked Lizard Chlamydosaurus kingii

Keep reading

Grey Crowned Crane Balearica regulorum

Keep reading

Ecuadorean Viscacha Lagidium ahuacaense

Keep reading

Southern Pudu Pudu puda

Keep reading

Blue-streaked Lory Eos reticulata

Keep reading

Learn about “sustainable” palm oil greenwashing

Read more about RSPO greenwashing

A 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report into the palm oil industry and RSPO finds extensive greenwashing of palm oil deforestation and the murder of endangered animals (i.e. biodiversity loss)

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Mail
• Mastodon

Enter your email address

Sign Up

2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

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African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change

Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest #elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle giants roam through muddy, mineral-rich paradises called baïs, fostering the growth of carbon-absorbing trees that make our planet healthier. By tending to these unique landscapes, they are the unsung heroes in the fight against climate change. Want to ensure these ecological architects keep doing their vital work? Join the movement to protect their habitat—say no to palm oil and adopt a vegan lifestyle! 🐘🌳#BoycottPalmOil #BeVegan #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/s584AP-BYm0?si=Zrwc5CFFjAxAqmas

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African forest #elephants 🐘 in #Congo 🇨🇩 are essential to fighting #climatechange 🌳💚 by capturing #carbon and dispersing seeds in the rainforest. Help them every time you shop, be #vegan #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/

Gentle giant pachyderms #African forest #elephants 🐘🐘 are the unsung heroes helping #climatechange. They capture #carbon in the #DRC’s 🇨🇩🌳rainforest! Help them survive with your supermarket choices #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2024/04/28/african-forest-elephants-unsung-heroes-helping-congo-fight-climate-change/

This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.

The approach to the “village of elephants” in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic must be made in complete silence. Not even the faintest rustle of backpack on rain jacket should break the soundscape as visitors wade through the sometimes waist-deep swamp at the forest’s edge. The Indigenous Ba’aka guides must be able to listen for any signs of nearby elephants, so they can steer the visitors clear and avoid a close encounter with these giants. When a few pachyderms saunter out of the dense greenery, the Ba’aka shoo them away calmly.

The thick vegetation gives way suddenly to a baï. This is no mere watering hole. The sandy clearing stretches for half a kilometer, more than a quarter of a mile, in the otherwise unbroken canopy of the world’s second-largest tropical forest.

A handful of researchers camp out on a timber observation platform, overlooking a place that has drawn generations of elephants to its mineral- and salt-laden sand and muddy water. They document how the animals use their trunks or tusks to dig into the sand, eavesdrop on the animals’ conversations, and count the many other species that congregate here.

This is Dzanga baï, a meeting place for critically endangered African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) in the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas where these animals come together in huge numbers to dig for nutrients they can’t get from the otherwise abundant forests.

Baïs are unique to the Congo Basin’s forests, and new research is underway to understand the role these mineral-rich pockets play as a supplement to the elephants’ diet, how this sustains the animals’ population, and how they therefore contribute to the carbon-capture function of the forest.

Unlike the Amazon, the Congo Basin’s forests still have their original megafauna, elephants in particular. And they have these salt-rich clearings. Conservationists are beginning to understand the importance of elephants as forest gardeners here, and how their taste for certain trees and fruits has sculpted a forest that absorbs more carbon per hectare than the Amazon.

The Global Carbon Budget project estimated Africa’s total greenhouse gas emissions for 2021 at 1.45 billion metric tons. Every year, the Congo Basin’s forests soak up 1.1 billion metric tons of atmospheric carbon, storing it in trees and soil; in 2020 carbon credit prices, this service would be worth $55 billion.

Forest elephants, smaller than their better-known savanna cousins or even Asian elephants, prefer certain lower-growing, tasty trees. This picky browsing pressure creates gaps in the canopy that allow other, less palatable but carbon-dense species to reach tremendous heights. Elephants’ appetite for the fruit of these bigger trees then means they spread their seeds far and wide.

A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.

This finding makes a case not only to stop deforestation in the Congo Basin, but to protect the elephants too, as a way to slow climate breakdown, the study authors wrote.

Salt licks for elephants, gardeners of the forest

Mouangi baï is only about 250 km (155 mi) from Dzanga baï as the crow flies, but it takes a day or two to travel by road and river to get from one to the other.

Researchers with the conservation organization African Parks and Harvard University’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology are zeroing in on Mouangi and other baïs in Odzala-Kokoua National Park in the ROC, to clarify the link between baïs, elephants and the forest’s tree species composition.

Nicknamed Capitale by the locals, Mouangi baï in Odzala draws hundreds, maybe even thousands, of elephants, according to Gwili Gibbon, research and monitoring head at African Parks, which manages the park along with the ROC government.

“Mouangi is one of our largest and most renowned baïs,” Gibbon says.

At the intersection of two rivers, Mouangi is more than 1 km (0.6 mi) across and spans 91 hectares (225 acres). It’s the largest of a dozen of Odzala’s baïs that the African Parks and Harvard research collaboration is focusing on.

Odzala-Kokoua National Park extends across 1.35 million hectares (3.34 million acres), and while it has a few thousand baïs, often occurring in clusters within the forest, this ecosystem makes up only about 0.2% of the park’s footprint. Nevertheless, these clearings may be integral to the shape of the forest itself, which is why Harvard assistant professor Andrew Davies and doctoral researcher Evan Hockridge are teaming up with African Parks to understand the importance of the salty watering holes in supporting elephant populations, which then shape the forest mosaic.

The baïs are clearly a hotspot that elephants seek out for their rare minerals in an ecosystem rooted in the nutrient-poor soils typical of the region.

“The elephants use their tusks to scrape topsoil off in specific areas, and eat the finer dust on the surface,” says Hockridge, a landscape ecologist. “They also dig large mining sites or wells, as much as a meter [3 feet] deep.”

The animals’ excavations go even deeper at times, down to where water carries the salt in a more accessible form. The need to ingest the mineral-rich dust, mud and water keeps the animals returning to these sites.

But how the baïs formed in the first place — they’re present in the Congo Basin, but not in the Amazon — and why they remain clear of forest encroachment are still a mystery.

Hockridge says no one has tried to establish if the now-extinct megafauna of the Amazon once made similar clearings there, or if baï size correlates to the size of the animals visiting them.

“One hypothesis is that megafauna effectively create large, nutrient-rich, lick-like clearings. But it hasn’t been quantified that baïs are manufactured or maintained by megafauna,” he says.

The researchers say they hope to answer this puzzle: Do large mammals like elephants maintain and stabilize the baïs?

Anecdotes from the DRC might give the first glimpse of an answer, according to Harvard’s Davies.

“Baïs may be closing in the DRC, and it could be because the elephants are in a war zone, so they don’t have the big bulldozer effect,” he says.

The hypothesis is that if fewer elephants visit and maintain these clearings, the baïs will be swallowed up by the forest.

Gibbon’s African Parks team has set up experimental plots in the Odzala, where they’ve buried salt in the sand at a similar depth to which elephants excavate. Researchers are monitoring these sites to see if more animals will congregate around the plots, whether this impacts the vegetation cover in and around the baïs, and whether there’s a shift in the carbon-capture potential of the surrounding forests.

This study is centered in Odzala, although the researchers say they hope to expand the work into the Ndoki region of the Dzanga-Sangha Complex of Protected Areas.

Baïs have a busy social scene

It isn’t just elephants that congregate at the baïs. These watering holes have a bustling social scene.

Gibbon describes the flocks of African green pigeons (Treron calvus) that gather at Capitale at dawn and dusk; buffalo and several bird species that visit during daylight hours; and the hyenas that can be heard calling after dark as the elephants mine for salt.

Wildlife refuges like these in the Congo Basin are also home to the critically endangered western lowland gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), two unusual forest and swamp-dwelling antelope — the bongo (Tragelaphus eurycerus) and sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii) — as well as central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes), bonobos (Pan pansicus), and the endangered gray parrot (Psittacus erithacus).

The forests of Gabon, southern Cameroon and southern Central African Republic also have a high number of baïs, and the findings from these studies could eventually be extrapolated to give an idea of the implications for the Congo Basin more widely.

“The area that baïs’ cover is tiny, but they sustain the elephant population,” Davies says. “If our hypothesis is correct, without the baïs you’d have no elephants; without elephants there’s be no big trees with high carbon density, so carbon storage would go down.”

If the forest loses the baïs, it could lose more than just the elephants or see a change in its carbon-capturing treescape. The baïs would no longer draw the many other animals that thrive in these mineral-dense watering holes, and the tourists and environmental researchers drawn to them too.

Citation:

Berzaghi, F., Longo, M., Ciais, P., Blake, S., Bretagnolle, F., Vieira, S., … Doughty, C. E. (2019). Carbon stocks in central African forests enhanced by elephant disturbance. Nature Geoscience, 12(9), 725-729. doi:10.1038/s41561-019-0395-6

Banner image: Elephants dig for salt-rich mud in the Dzanga baï in the Sangha Rainforest in the Central African Republic. Image courtesy Jan Teede.

This story was written by Leonie Joubert and originally published by Mongabay on August 15, 2023 and was republished under a Creative Commons licence.

ENDS

Learn about other animals endangered by palm oil and other agriculture

Tucuxi Sotalia fluviatilis

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Learn about “sustainable” palm oil greenwashing

Read more about RSPO greenwashing

A 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report into the palm oil industry and RSPO finds extensive greenwashing of palm oil deforestation and the murder of endangered animals (i.e. biodiversity loss)

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#african #africanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #amazingAnimals #animalBehaviour #animalCommunication #animalIntelligence #bantrophyhunting #bevegan #biodiversity #boycottPalmOil #boycott4wildlife #boycottpalmoil #carbon #climatechange #congo #deforestation #democracticRepublicOfCongo #drc #elephant #elephants #forgottenAnimals #mammal #pachyderm #pachyderms #palmOil #palmOilDeforestation #theDemocraticRepublicOfCongo #vegan

How high can #elephants jump? What #animals are these massive herbivores’ closest relatives? How do they communicate, even across long distances? And what kind of tools do they use? Check out this fact-filled #video from the American #Museum of Natural #History. 🐘🐘🐘

👉 Learn more: https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/six-facts-secret-world-elephants-amnh

#amnh #biology #evolution #nature #science #pachyderms

Ars Technica: Elephants must adapt to a rapidly changing world in Secrets of the Elephants https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933362 #Tech #arstechnica #IT #Technology #SecretsoftheElephants #NationalGeographic #Gaming&Culture #conservation #documentary #disneyplus #pachyderms #television #EarthDay #wildlife #Science #animals #Biology #science

Ars Technica: Elephants must adapt to a rapidly changing world in Secrets of the Elephants https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933362 #Tech #arstechnica #IT #Technology #SecretsoftheElephants #NationalGeographic #Gaming&Culture #conservation #documentary #disneyplus #pachyderms #television #EarthDay #wildlife #Science #animals #Biology #science

Ars Technica: Elephants must adapt to a rapidly changing world in Secrets of the Elephants https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933362 #Tech #arstechnica #IT #Technology #SecretsoftheElephants #NationalGeographic #Gaming&Culture #conservation #documentary #disneyplus #pachyderms #television #EarthDay #wildlife #Science #animals #Biology #science

Ars Technica: Elephants must adapt to a rapidly changing world in Secrets of the Elephants https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933362 #Tech #arstechnica #IT #Technology #SecretsoftheElephants #NationalGeographic #Gaming&Culture #conservation #documentary #disneyplus #pachyderms #television #EarthDay #wildlife #Science #animals #Biology #science

Elephants must adapt to a rapidly changing world in Secrets of the Elephants - Enlarge / An African Savannah elephant roams through Kimana Sanctuary i... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933362 #secretsoftheelephants #nationalgeographic #gaming&culture #conservation #documentary #disneyplus #pachyderms #television #earthday #wildlife #science #animals #biology

Elephants must adapt to a rapidly changing world in Secrets of the Elephants - Enlarge / An African Savannah elephant roams through Kimana Sanctuary i... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933362 #secretsoftheelephants #nationalgeographic #gaming&culture #conservation #documentary #disneyplus #pachyderms #television #earthday #wildlife #science #animals #biology

Elephants must adapt to a rapidly changing world in Secrets of the Elephants - Enlarge / An African Savannah elephant roams through Kimana Sanctuary i... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933362 #secretsoftheelephants #nationalgeographic #gaming&culture #conservation #documentary #disneyplus #pachyderms #television #earthday #wildlife #science #animals #biology

Elephants must adapt to a rapidly changing world in Secrets of the Elephants - Enlarge / An African Savannah elephant roams through Kimana Sanctuary i... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933362 #secretsoftheelephants #nationalgeographic #gaming&culture #conservation #documentary #disneyplus #pachyderms #television #earthday #wildlife #science #animals #biology

Elephants must adapt to a rapidly changing world in Secrets of the Elephants - Enlarge / An African Savannah elephant roams through Kimana Sanctuary i... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1933362 #secretsoftheelephants #nationalgeographic #gaming&culture #conservation #documentary #disneyplus #pachyderms #television #earthday #wildlife #science #animals #biology

Ahoy fellow #Pachyderms Dismal Manor Gang says hey as a nice mid-spring day begins. Missy and Rocky are doing important #GreyhoundsOfMastodon stuff to clear the grounds of traces of the undead menace and escort Dismal Acres shuffle-wraiths to the bus 🚃

Photo is of our neighbor’s rose garden with our Tempest weather gadget in the foreground. WeatherFlow uses our ground truth to interpret NWS model run results and to contribute model initial conditions data.

Good morning #Pachyderms of #fediverse.

This morning's picture for #KangaroosOfMastodon is the beautiful Bindi. She is a blue flyer doe at the time the photo was taken she was 7 months old.

Recently we are seeing more blue flyers than ever before. A blue flyer is a red kangaroo who is holding her juvenile colour which is often this beautiful silver blue colour, hence their name.

Bindi is a first Nations word meaning "girl".

We are currently running a #gofundme campaign to raise money to build a new pair of shelters and help with feed costs until travel into the outback starts again in April.
https://gofund.me/b3f006c4
Any assistance very much appreciated.

@marwellaspaceart with no description I could look at for clarification.. the most #important #tool in the #chest of #Pachyderms is the ability to leave no one #behind, including #blind and #vision impaired people.

Sumatran elephants: Surrounded by palm oil and nobody knows how many are left alive!

Sumatran elephants in Indonesia’s North Aceh district are being increasingly encircled by shrinking patches of forest. Their home is being destroyed primarily for oil palm plantations.

Ongoing attempts of scientists to take a measure of their population have been hampered and oppressed by the Indonesian government, which has also attempted to prevent media coverage of the issue. Help these irreplacable beings every time you shop, #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/S5olrnYKT4Q

Just 924-1360 individual Sumatran elephants 🐘🐘🐘 😿 hang on for survival in Sumatra surrounded by #palmoil #deforestation 🤬🔥 “Sustainable” palm oil is a lie! Fight for them and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🪔🩸☠️🔥⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2023/02/01/sumatran-elephants-surrounded-by-palm-oil-and-nobody-knows-how-many-are-left-alive/

Sumatran #elephants 🐘🩶 in #Indonesia’s 🇮🇩North Aceh are encircled by dead lands 🔥🌴🩸🔥 rainforests now gone for #palmoil plantations. Help them each time you shop! #Boycottpalmoil 🌴💀🤢🔫🙊⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2023/02/01/sumatran-elephants-surrounded-by-palm-oil-and-nobody-knows-how-many-are-left-alive/

Originally written by Dyna Rochmyaningsi on 10 August 2022 for Mongabay. Read the original article.

Saleh Kadri, a young farmer from Leubok Pusaka village in North Aceh district, was on his way to his plantation when he spotted eight elephants on the riverbank. From his canoe, he recorded a video with his phone. The animals looked stunned. One seemed to be staring at Saleh’s moving canoe, while the others turned to flee. “Elephants! Elephants!” Saleh and his friends shouted until all the animals were gone behind the trees.

“They were trapped. They couldn’t cross the river and they couldn’t return to the forest due to land-clearing activities in the opposite direction, in the neighbouring village of Cot Girek.

Nurdin, a conservation official in North Aceh, a district near the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island told Mongabay.

Indonesian authorities slammed for not disclosing Sumatran elephant population estimate

A few days later, the herd finally managed to escape during a downpour. But the story didn’t end there. When they reached Cot Girek, the elephants found food in the villagers’ farms and destroyed four houses. The villagers were not happy.

In the past few years, there’s been massive land clearing in North Aceh, which lies along Sumatra’s eastern coast in the province of Aceh. Despite the district’s enforcement of a moratorium on issuing new permits for corporate oil palm plantations, conservationists report ongoing deforestation on the ground.

The North Aceh government has granted permissions for land clearing for smallholder oil palm farms, some of which are said to be controlled by powerful people in the region. This land-use change, conservationists say, has further fragmented the habitat of Sumatran elephants. “If we don’t take this problem seriously, I believe the animals will soon go extinct,” Nurdin said.

In Aceh alone, there are four to five instances of human-elephant conflict almost every day, he said, creating victims among elephants and people alike. Elephants continue being snared, hunted and poisoned, while farmers suffer economic, and sometimes physical, losses. “Our ship is sinking,” Azmi said, emphasizing the problem’s urgency.

According to the latest population assessment by the Indonesian Elephant Conservation Forum, known by its Indonesian acronym FKGI, Aceh is home to 42 per cent of the Sumatran elephants (Elephas maximus sumatranus) thought to remain in the country.

More than 85% of Sumatran elephants live outside conservation areas. We need to conserve the species which is already critically endangered. Our ship is sinking.

Wahdi Azmi, elephant conservationist, Conservation Response Unit Aceh

Between 924-1360 individual Sumatran elephants hang on for survival in Sumatra

 Scientists concluded that only 924-1,359 Sumatran elephants remain in 22 patches across the island of Sumatra. Nearly half live in Aceh province, where Cot Girek is located.A quarter are in the two national parks, while the rest struggle to survive within large blocks of land controlled by oil palm and pulpwood plantation companies on Sumatra’s eastern coast. The unreleased document explains the decline: “Habitat loss is the main problem … so the mortality rate of the Sumatran elephant surpasses its birth rate.”

The rest of the estimated population of 924–1,359 is struggling to survive in oil palm and pulpwood concessions in Riau and Jambi provinces, while a few are in national parks in Lampung province.

“Aceh is our [best] hope,” said Wahdi Azmi, a conservationist who leads CRU Aceh, a local conservation group. Across the province, 392–456 elephants still remain, according to the latest assessment, doing their best to survive in the fast-changing environment.

“More than 85 per cent of Sumatran elephants live outside conservation areas,” Azmi said. In Aceh, there are four to five human-elephant conflicts reported every day, he added. In June, conflict intensity escalated in North Aceh, where much of the land has been cleared for oil palm.

Living on the front lines

In Cot Girek, a loud bang from a PVC air cannon woke Junaidi at 2 a.m. The 41-year-old farmer heads the village’s elephant patrol team. Hearing the sound, he knew it was a sign that wild elephants were moving in.

“Shoot the canon five times if you find wild elephants around your house” – that’s how the villagers have been told to communicate with others who might live kilometres away with poor cellular service. Junaidi only heard one shot that night, but as patrol leader he had to get up and investigate despite the rain. In the darkness, he walked some 10 kilometres (6 miles) along muddy roads around the village to check the situation.

Since early June, Junaidi and other villagers in Cot Girek and Leubok Pusaka have been staying awake at night. In the space of a month, four wooden huts were reportedly destroyed by elephants.

Asnawi, a smallholder oil palm farmer who lives 3 km (nearly 2 mi) from Junaidi’s hut, was shocked to see 400 oil palm shoots in his plantation chewed up by elephants. Looking at the damage, “we couldn’t sleep well,” said Ida, Asnawi’s sister, who didn’t want her crops to meet the same fate.

Husna, an environmental activist from a local NGO called People’s Conscience, or SAHARA by its Indonesian acronym, said the increasing cases of human-elephant conflict are caused by habitat loss. Cleared land can be seen from Junaidi’s hut, showing the forested hills from afar. Deforestation has eliminated the transition zone between the hills and the village. No lowland forest is visible in between.

“Elephants are coming from that hill,” Junaidi said, pointing to a forested area over the horizon.

According to Lukmanul Hakim, the geographical information system manager at Forest, Nature, and Environment Aceh (HAkA), a conservation group focused on Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, North Aceh has long had one of the highest deforestation rates in Aceh province. His analysis of satellite data generated by Planetscope, which he called the most accurate satellite image provider, shows the district lost 7,508 hectares (18,553 acres) of forest from 2017–2020.

Satellite data generated from forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas show significant deforestation in Leubok Pusaka and Cot Girek, in the northern part of Leuser, over the past two years.

Nurdin, the conservation agency official, said data he had collected from GPS collars tagged to elephants in North Aceh from 2016–19 showed that rainforest had been cleared within the elephants’ migration routes.

Lilis Indriyani, the head of the North Aceh Plantation, Livestock and Animal Disease Agency, acknowledged land-clearing activities in Cot Girek.

“But these lands are classified as non-forest,” she said. Lilis also said most of this clearing was done by local people rather than corporate actors. In general, she said, the district is pro-environment. Since 2016, the district has actively applied a freeze on new oil palm permits. “We no longer give permit for companies to open up new oil palm plantations,” she said. “Nor do we give oil palm seeds to smallholder farmers.”

But on the ground, people are looking at different facts. Junaidi said the cleared land around his hut is owned by powerful government officials. There’s also more of a chance of new deforestation under a central government policy granting 8,000 hectares (19,800 acres) of land to ex-combatants of the Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, a now-disbanded armed insurgent group. Partai Aceh, the governor’s political party, is the political extension of the movement.

It has always been poor villagers and elephants who suffer from conflict. In Aleu Buloh, Junaidi’s hut sits between the forest and oil palm plantations owned by state-owned PT Perkebunan Nusantara I. Junaidi said the company relies on the villagers’ patrol team to mitigate elephant conflicts, but don’t give them any compensation. “We are guarding their gate … all information about wild elephant movement comes from us,” he said. (PTPN I did not respond to an interview request.)

People like Junaidi and Saleh Kadri have to rely on their own resources to herd the elephants away from their village. “We have reported about elephant conflicts in our village so many times but there has been no response from the government,” Saleh said. “Conflict, always conflict. We are tired of this … We hope the government can help farmers like us.”

A week after they strayed into Cot Girek, the elephants managed to leave the village, Nurdin said. They were last seen heading to Paya Bakung, a subdistrict of North Aceh where a huge infrastructure project is being constructed.

To mitigate the annual flooding in Lhoksukon, the capital of North Aceh, authorities are building the Kreung Keureto reservoir in Paya Bakung, which would end the herd’s movements. “It’s a dead end. They will have to come back to … Cot Girek and finally Langkahan, where they can’t cross the river and start their journey all over again,” Nurdin said.

“Poor elephants … they are chased from every side,” he added.

“They don’t know where else to go.”

Photo: Sumatran Elephant, Spotlight on Sumatran Elephants by Craig Jones Wildlife Photography

Originally written by Dyna Rochmyaningsi on 10 August 2022 for Mongabay. Read the original article.

ENDS

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Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#animalExtinction #animalRights #animalrights #animals #Bantrophyhunting #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #elephants #extinction #Indonesia #Pachyderm #pachyderms #PalmOil #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #SouthEastAsia #SumatranElephantElephasMaximusSumatranus #tropicalRainforest

Good morning #Pachyderms of the #fediverse

This morning I would like to introduce #Uluru who I now know is a little girl, since mum Ghirawen allowed me to pick her up and give her a bit of a #cuddle and check her stats.

She is just on 1kg, fully furred, and has 3 legs 2 arms and a delightful smiling face.

Her care and support from now on will cost around $18 AUD per week so long as she doesn't require drugs at any stage if she is injured.

I know many of you loves seeing or #KangaroosOfMastodon and if you are so inclined done help would be greatly appreciated via our #GoFundMe details of which are

https://gofund.me/b3f006c4

Ahoy fellow #Pachyderms ! Saturday’s sunset was beautiful. Missy and Me Rocky are pooped after standing sentry while our meal ticket was tinkering with things on the house. No. Zombies came near the garden while we were on combat ground patrol! #ZSHQ #PalsPorch #sunset

Another tip for new #pachyderms I’ve found useful for navigating Mastodon.

I’m on an iOS mobile device and haven’t found an app that works well for me, so I login to my instance using a web browser.

In my settings I activated the radio button for “Enable Advanced Web Interface” (this gives the icons to the right of my screen) and “Slow Mode” which gives me a stopping point of sorts on my screen of new posts.

Hope this helps.

#TwitterMigration
#WeAreTheAlgorithm

So! Time for an #Introduction. My name is Anna, though you might know me as Boots from the other place. I'm interested in #Poetry, #Plants and #Pachyderms. As it's early days for me here, i'll mostly be sharing things about Mastodon's etiquette while i get settled in. Please say hi!

#Kenya #KBC #Heffalumps!!

Full marks to Reporter & #Pachyderms!!

https://twitter.com/StandardKenya/status/1591789498215825409?s=09

African Forest Elephants’s Movements Depend on Their Personalities

African forest #elephants roam the dense rainforests of West and Central Africa where they subsist largely on a diet of fruit. They shape forests by dispersing fruit and seeds, browsing, and creating an extensive trail network.

But because it’s difficult to track animals in thick forest, little is known about the movements of the African forest #elephant. This is troubling as #poaching of forest elephants for their #ivory as well as habitat fragmentation have decimated their populations over the past two decades. Their numbers have reduced from 700,000 to fewer than 150,000. Help them to survive #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

African forest #elephants 🩶🐘🐘🩶 are critically endangered in #Gabon 🇬🇦 from #poaching #palmoil #deforestation and #climatechange. Tracking their movements can help better protect them #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🪔☠️🔥🧐🚫 #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/01/23/how-forest-elephants-move-depends-on-water-humans-and-also-their-personality/

On top of this, climate change might be reducing the availability of fruit in the forest, potentially leading to elephant famine.

Knowing how they move can help us to better protect them. Gabon, holds 50% of Africa’s remaining forest elephants. In 2017, the Gabon Parks Agency initiated an elephant GPS collaring programme to improve the understanding of forest elephant movements and guide their management.

We supported the Gabon Parks Agency’s collaring programme, providing scientific advice on study design, analysing data, and reporting on elephant movements.

Over six missions in four years, Dr Pete Morkel and his field team from the Gabon Parks Agency darted and affixed satellite collars on over 96 forest elephants. This happened in and around seven national parks.

We used this dataset of forest elephant movements – the largest ever assembled – to assess the factors influencing elephant movement behaviour.

Specifically, we asked the questions: to what extent do characteristics – like sex, habitat quality and human activity – determine the distance they move, their home range size, their exploratory behaviour, and their daily activity.

We found that all of these characteristics affected elephant behaviour. We also found that individual elephants consistently moved in different ways from each other. This told us that they have personalities.

These insights can provide clues into how elephants can be better managed to conserve their populations and to reduce conflict with humans, particularly crop raiding by elephants.

Drivers of elephant movement

We found that, on average, elephants moved nearly 2500 km a year.

In terms of intrinsic characteristics, sex was a key driver of elephant movement behaviour.

Male African Forest Elephants generally had larger home ranges and were slightly more active at night than females. They also spent less time in exploratory movements, these are long, persistent movements to new locations.

Food availability didn’t seem to affect movement behaviour. It might be that the rainforest habitat provided ample forage for elephants. However, we suspected that our measure of vegetation density was too coarse and didn’t capture availability of important diet items, like fruit and bark.

Water was key to elephant movements. Forest elephants, like savanna elephants, can lose up to 10% of the water in their bodies in a single hot day. We saw that forest elephants didn’t stray too far from water sources, such as rivers. During high rainfall, elephants moved longer distances and made more directed, exploratory movements.

Elephants also altered their movement behaviour in response to human activity. In areas of higher human disturbance, elephants moved less, had smaller home ranges, were less active during the day, and exhibited fewer exploratory movements. Like animals worldwide, elephants shortened their movements to avoid human-modified landscapes.

While environmental and human drivers explained some of the variation in elephant movements, much of the variation was explained by the individual identity of the elephant.

Exploring further, we found elephant personalities to vary between “idlers” to “explorers”. We identified individual differences in the relationships between movement behaviours, consistent with the concept of “behavioural syndromes”. In other words, an elephant that moved farther in a month also tended to have a larger home range and exhibited more exploratory behaviour.

Some forest elephants liked to explore, and others liked to stay put a bit more. And within these, there was enormous individual variation.

Forest elephant conservation

Our study offers some answers for elephant management, but also highlights complicating challenges.

For instance, the design of protected areas and habitat corridors must recognise that elephants may be reluctant to use habitat too far from perennial water sources or do so only in the wet season.

Unsurprisingly, elephant habitat should be protected from human disturbance, although further investigation into the types of human activities that most affect elephants is still necessary.

Variation in individual elephant behaviour – their personality – might complicate the development of general strategies for conservation if elephants respond in different ways to management.

Then again, it also accentuates the importance of conserving such a wide-ranging, intelligent and socially-complex species.

John Poulsen, Associate Professor of Tropical Ecology, Duke University and Christopher Beirne, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of British Columbia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Here are some other ways you can help by using your wallet as a weapon and joining the #Boycott4Wildlife

What is greenwashing?

Read more

Why join the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Read more

Greenwashing Tactic #4: Fake Labels

Read more

The Counterpunch: Consumer Solutions To Fight Extinction

Read more

Contribute to my Ko-Fi

Did you enjoy visiting this website?

Palm Oil Detectives is 100% self-funded

Palm Oil Detectives is completely self-funded by its creator. All hosting and website fees and investigations into brands are self-funded by the creator of this online movement. If you like what I am doing, you and would like me to help meet costs, please send Palm Oil Detectives a thanks on Ko-Fi.

#AfricanElephant #AfricanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #AfricanNews #animalBehaviour #AnimalBiodiversityNews #animalIntelligence #animals #Bantrophyhunting #BorneanPygmyElephantElephasMaximusBorneensis #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #climatechange #conservation #deforestation #elephant #elephants #EndangeredSpecies #Gabon #ivory #Mammal #News #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmoil #poaching #research #SeedDispersers

African Forest Elephants’s Movements Depend on Their Personalities

African forest #elephants roam the dense rainforests of West and Central Africa where they subsist largely on a diet of fruit. They shape forests by dispersing fruit and seeds, browsing, and creating an extensive trail network.

But because it’s difficult to track animals in thick forest, little is known about the movements of the African forest #elephant. This is troubling as #poaching of forest elephants for their #ivory as well as habitat fragmentation have decimated their populations over the past two decades. Their numbers have reduced from 700,000 to fewer than 150,000. Help them to survive #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

African forest #elephants 🩶🐘🐘🩶 are critically endangered in #Gabon 🇬🇦 from #poaching #palmoil #deforestation and #climatechange. Tracking their movements can help better protect them #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🪔☠️🔥🧐🚫 #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/01/23/how-forest-elephants-move-depends-on-water-humans-and-also-their-personality/

On top of this, climate change might be reducing the availability of fruit in the forest, potentially leading to elephant famine.

Knowing how they move can help us to better protect them. Gabon, holds 50% of Africa’s remaining forest elephants. In 2017, the Gabon Parks Agency initiated an elephant GPS collaring programme to improve the understanding of forest elephant movements and guide their management.

We supported the Gabon Parks Agency’s collaring programme, providing scientific advice on study design, analysing data, and reporting on elephant movements.

Over six missions in four years, Dr Pete Morkel and his field team from the Gabon Parks Agency darted and affixed satellite collars on over 96 forest elephants. This happened in and around seven national parks.

We used this dataset of forest elephant movements – the largest ever assembled – to assess the factors influencing elephant movement behaviour.

Specifically, we asked the questions: to what extent do characteristics – like sex, habitat quality and human activity – determine the distance they move, their home range size, their exploratory behaviour, and their daily activity.

We found that all of these characteristics affected elephant behaviour. We also found that individual elephants consistently moved in different ways from each other. This told us that they have personalities.

These insights can provide clues into how elephants can be better managed to conserve their populations and to reduce conflict with humans, particularly crop raiding by elephants.

Drivers of elephant movement

We found that, on average, elephants moved nearly 2500 km a year.

In terms of intrinsic characteristics, sex was a key driver of elephant movement behaviour.

Male African Forest Elephants generally had larger home ranges and were slightly more active at night than females. They also spent less time in exploratory movements, these are long, persistent movements to new locations.

Food availability didn’t seem to affect movement behaviour. It might be that the rainforest habitat provided ample forage for elephants. However, we suspected that our measure of vegetation density was too coarse and didn’t capture availability of important diet items, like fruit and bark.

Water was key to elephant movements. Forest elephants, like savanna elephants, can lose up to 10% of the water in their bodies in a single hot day. We saw that forest elephants didn’t stray too far from water sources, such as rivers. During high rainfall, elephants moved longer distances and made more directed, exploratory movements.

Elephants also altered their movement behaviour in response to human activity. In areas of higher human disturbance, elephants moved less, had smaller home ranges, were less active during the day, and exhibited fewer exploratory movements. Like animals worldwide, elephants shortened their movements to avoid human-modified landscapes.

While environmental and human drivers explained some of the variation in elephant movements, much of the variation was explained by the individual identity of the elephant.

Exploring further, we found elephant personalities to vary between “idlers” to “explorers”. We identified individual differences in the relationships between movement behaviours, consistent with the concept of “behavioural syndromes”. In other words, an elephant that moved farther in a month also tended to have a larger home range and exhibited more exploratory behaviour.

Some forest elephants liked to explore, and others liked to stay put a bit more. And within these, there was enormous individual variation.

Forest elephant conservation

Our study offers some answers for elephant management, but also highlights complicating challenges.

For instance, the design of protected areas and habitat corridors must recognise that elephants may be reluctant to use habitat too far from perennial water sources or do so only in the wet season.

Unsurprisingly, elephant habitat should be protected from human disturbance, although further investigation into the types of human activities that most affect elephants is still necessary.

Variation in individual elephant behaviour – their personality – might complicate the development of general strategies for conservation if elephants respond in different ways to management.

Then again, it also accentuates the importance of conserving such a wide-ranging, intelligent and socially-complex species.

John Poulsen, Associate Professor of Tropical Ecology, Duke University and Christopher Beirne, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of British Columbia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Here are some other ways you can help by using your wallet as a weapon and joining the #Boycott4Wildlife

What is greenwashing?

Read more

Why join the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Read more

Greenwashing Tactic #4: Fake Labels

Read more

The Counterpunch: Consumer Solutions To Fight Extinction

Read more

Contribute to my Ko-Fi

Did you enjoy visiting this website?

Palm Oil Detectives is 100% self-funded

Palm Oil Detectives is completely self-funded by its creator. All hosting and website fees and investigations into brands are self-funded by the creator of this online movement. If you like what I am doing, you and would like me to help meet costs, please send Palm Oil Detectives a thanks on Ko-Fi.

#AfricanElephant #AfricanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #AfricanNews #animalBehaviour #AnimalBiodiversityNews #animalIntelligence #animals #Bantrophyhunting #BorneanPygmyElephantElephasMaximusBorneensis #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #climatechange #conservation #deforestation #elephant #elephants #EndangeredSpecies #Gabon #ivory #Mammal #News #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmoil #poaching #research #SeedDispersers

African Forest Elephants’s Movements Depend on Their Personalities

African forest #elephants roam the dense rainforests of West and Central Africa where they subsist largely on a diet of fruit. They shape forests by dispersing fruit and seeds, browsing, and creating an extensive trail network.

But because it’s difficult to track animals in thick forest, little is known about the movements of the African forest #elephant. This is troubling as #poaching of forest elephants for their #ivory as well as habitat fragmentation have decimated their populations over the past two decades. Their numbers have reduced from 700,000 to fewer than 150,000. Help them to survive #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife

African forest #elephants 🩶🐘🐘🩶 are critically endangered in #Gabon 🇬🇦 from #poaching #palmoil #deforestation and #climatechange. Tracking their movements can help better protect them #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🪔☠️🔥🧐🚫 #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2022/01/23/how-forest-elephants-move-depends-on-water-humans-and-also-their-personality/

On top of this, climate change might be reducing the availability of fruit in the forest, potentially leading to elephant famine.

Knowing how they move can help us to better protect them. Gabon, holds 50% of Africa’s remaining forest elephants. In 2017, the Gabon Parks Agency initiated an elephant GPS collaring programme to improve the understanding of forest elephant movements and guide their management.

We supported the Gabon Parks Agency’s collaring programme, providing scientific advice on study design, analysing data, and reporting on elephant movements.

Over six missions in four years, Dr Pete Morkel and his field team from the Gabon Parks Agency darted and affixed satellite collars on over 96 forest elephants. This happened in and around seven national parks.

We used this dataset of forest elephant movements – the largest ever assembled – to assess the factors influencing elephant movement behaviour.

Specifically, we asked the questions: to what extent do characteristics – like sex, habitat quality and human activity – determine the distance they move, their home range size, their exploratory behaviour, and their daily activity.

We found that all of these characteristics affected elephant behaviour. We also found that individual elephants consistently moved in different ways from each other. This told us that they have personalities.

These insights can provide clues into how elephants can be better managed to conserve their populations and to reduce conflict with humans, particularly crop raiding by elephants.

Drivers of elephant movement

We found that, on average, elephants moved nearly 2500 km a year.

In terms of intrinsic characteristics, sex was a key driver of elephant movement behaviour.

Male African Forest Elephants generally had larger home ranges and were slightly more active at night than females. They also spent less time in exploratory movements, these are long, persistent movements to new locations.

Food availability didn’t seem to affect movement behaviour. It might be that the rainforest habitat provided ample forage for elephants. However, we suspected that our measure of vegetation density was too coarse and didn’t capture availability of important diet items, like fruit and bark.

Water was key to elephant movements. Forest elephants, like savanna elephants, can lose up to 10% of the water in their bodies in a single hot day. We saw that forest elephants didn’t stray too far from water sources, such as rivers. During high rainfall, elephants moved longer distances and made more directed, exploratory movements.

Elephants also altered their movement behaviour in response to human activity. In areas of higher human disturbance, elephants moved less, had smaller home ranges, were less active during the day, and exhibited fewer exploratory movements. Like animals worldwide, elephants shortened their movements to avoid human-modified landscapes.

While environmental and human drivers explained some of the variation in elephant movements, much of the variation was explained by the individual identity of the elephant.

Exploring further, we found elephant personalities to vary between “idlers” to “explorers”. We identified individual differences in the relationships between movement behaviours, consistent with the concept of “behavioural syndromes”. In other words, an elephant that moved farther in a month also tended to have a larger home range and exhibited more exploratory behaviour.

Some forest elephants liked to explore, and others liked to stay put a bit more. And within these, there was enormous individual variation.

Forest elephant conservation

Our study offers some answers for elephant management, but also highlights complicating challenges.

For instance, the design of protected areas and habitat corridors must recognise that elephants may be reluctant to use habitat too far from perennial water sources or do so only in the wet season.

Unsurprisingly, elephant habitat should be protected from human disturbance, although further investigation into the types of human activities that most affect elephants is still necessary.

Variation in individual elephant behaviour – their personality – might complicate the development of general strategies for conservation if elephants respond in different ways to management.

Then again, it also accentuates the importance of conserving such a wide-ranging, intelligent and socially-complex species.

John Poulsen, Associate Professor of Tropical Ecology, Duke University and Christopher Beirne, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of British Columbia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Here are some other ways you can help by using your wallet as a weapon and joining the #Boycott4Wildlife

What is greenwashing?

Read more

Why join the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Read more

Greenwashing Tactic #4: Fake Labels

Read more

The Counterpunch: Consumer Solutions To Fight Extinction

Read more

Contribute to my Ko-Fi

Did you enjoy visiting this website?

Palm Oil Detectives is 100% self-funded

Palm Oil Detectives is completely self-funded by its creator. All hosting and website fees and investigations into brands are self-funded by the creator of this online movement. If you like what I am doing, you and would like me to help meet costs, please send Palm Oil Detectives a thanks on Ko-Fi.

#AfricanElephant #AfricanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #AfricanNews #animalBehaviour #AnimalBiodiversityNews #animalIntelligence #animals #Bantrophyhunting #BorneanPygmyElephantElephasMaximusBorneensis #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #climatechange #conservation #deforestation #elephant #elephants #EndangeredSpecies #Gabon #ivory #Mammal #News #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmoil #poaching #research #SeedDispersers

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

Location: Central and West Africa – Guineo-Congolian tropical forests, including Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and surrounding regions.

IUCN Status: Critically Endangered

The African Forest #Elephant is a Critically Endangered species found in the dense #rainforests of Central and #WestAfrica. They are smaller than their savanna relatives, with straighter tusks and rounder ears, uniquely adapted to their forested habitat. As ecosystem engineers, these elephants play a crucial role in maintaining Afrotropical forests by dispersing seeds and mitigating against climate change by shaping forest composition. However, relentless #poaching for ivory, habitat destruction due to #palmoil, #cocoa and #tobacco agriculture, and human-elephant conflict have decimated their population. Recent studies have shown that African Forest Elephants’ movement patterns vary significantly between individuals, with some elephants exploring vast distances while others remain in small home ranges. This variation poses unique challenges for conservation efforts. Resist and fight for their survival each time you shop, be #vegan and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife.

https://youtu.be/cldLHm2-pnQ

African Forest #Elephants are ecosystem engineers fighting #ClimateChange in #WestAfrica. Yet #poaching and #palmoil #deforestation have rendered them critically endangered 😿🐘 Help them and be #vegan #BoycottPalmOil 🌴⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/09/11/african-forest-elephant-loxodonta-cyclotis/

Supremely intelligent and sensitive African Forest #Elephants 🐘🩶 face several grave threats, incl. #PalmOil #Deforestation and #poaching in #Gabon 🇬🇦 #Congo 🇨🇩 #WestAfrica. Fight for them when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🔥🧐⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/09/11/african-forest-elephant-loxodonta-cyclotis/

Rapid land use change, including palm oil plantations across their range is driving the direct loss and fragmentation of habitat, is an increasing threat to African elephants across their range.

IUCN red list

Appearance and Behaviour

African Forest Elephants are smaller than their savanna counterparts, with a shoulder height of 2 to 3 metres. They have a more compact build, rounded ears, and long, narrow tusks that point downward, (Gobush et al., 2021). Their grey skin is often darker due to the humid rainforest environment. They live in small, matriarchal family groups and display remarkable individual variation in movement behaviours. Some elephants, known as “explorers,” travel vast distances, while others, the “idlers,” remain within confined home ranges. These behavioural differences complicate conservation efforts, as strategies must account for their diverse space-use needs.

These elephants are highly intelligent and social, living in small, matriarchal family groups that navigate the rainforest together. Their deep infrasonic rumbles travel through the ground, allowing communication over vast distances, even in the thickest jungle. Recent research has revealed that their vocalisations have a structure akin to human syntax—complex combinations of calls used to convey intricate meanings (Hedwig & Kohlberg, 2024).

Other research has found that the foraging, seed dispersal and exploration of African Forest Elephants helps to mitigate African forests against climate change. A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.

Diet

Forest Elephants are frugivorous and play an irreplaceable role as seed dispersers, particularly for large fruiting trees. They are responsible for spreading the seeds of over 41 timber species, including Bobgunnia fistuloides (pao rosa), a tree prized for its high-value wood (Blake et al., 2009; Campos-Arceiz & Blake, 2011). Without these elephants, the rainforest’s ability to regenerate and store carbon would be drastically diminished.

Reproduction and Mating

With a gestation period of 22 months—the longest of any land mammal—female African Forest elephants give birth only once every four to six years (Gobush et al., 2021). Due to their slow reproductive rate, population recovery is incredibly difficult, making conservation efforts even more urgent. Calves remain under their mother’s care for over a decade, learning crucial survival skills in the rainforest.

Geographic Range

African Forest Elephants roam vast home ranges, some spanning over 2,000 km² (Beirne et al., 2021). Their movements are largely dictated by fruiting cycles, water availability, and human encroachment. A recent study found that they exhibit remarkable individual variation in movement patterns—some acting as ‘explorers,’ roaming far and wide, while others remain within familiar territories (Beirne et al., 2021). Roads and logging concessions disrupt these traditional routes, forcing elephants into human settlements and escalating conflict.

Threats

• Illegal Wildlife Trade and Poaching: The illegal and criminal trade in elephant ivory continues to drive rampant poaching. Despite international bans, demand remains high in black markets (Wittemyer et al., 2014; Maisels et al., 2013).
• Palm Oil Agriculture Expansion: Forests are being obliterated for palm oil, cocoa, tobacco and rubber plantations, erasing habitat at an alarming rate (Scalbert et al., 2022).
• Logging, Mining, and Infrastructure Expansion: The development of roads and infrastructure for timber and mining grants poachers greater access to once-inaccessible forest areas (Beirne et al., 2021).
• Human-Elephant Conflict: Shrinking forests push elephants into farmland, leading to fatal clashes with farmers trying to protect their crops (Ngama et al., 2016).
• Climate Change: Disruptions in rainfall patterns and fruiting cycles impact the food supply of African Forest Elephants, forcing them into riskier migration routes where they can come into contact with poachers or conflict with farmers.
• Slow Reproduction Rate: African Forest Elephants have a long gestation periods and high calf mortality, their populations cannot recover quickly from losses.

Elephants and Language: Call Combinations and Syntax

Groundbreaking research has revealed that African Forest Elephants use complex call combinations, akin to human syntax, to communicate in high-stakes situations (Hedwig & Kohlberg, 2024). Their vocal repertoire includes:

• Low-frequency rumbles: Used to coordinate movements and social interactions. These deep sounds can travel several kilometres through dense rainforest.
• Broadband roars: Express distress, urgency, or aggression, particularly in response to predators or conflict.
• Combined calls: When rumbles and roars are merged, they create new meanings. These combinations are more frequently used in competitive situations, suggesting that elephants alter their vocal signals to convey specific messages in dangerous or high-emotion contexts.

The ability to combine calls strategically may help elephants navigate social disputes, secure access to resources, or reunite with separated family members. This discovery sheds light on the cognitive abilities of these animals and their sophisticated social lives.

Large herbivores such as elephants contribute to tree diversity

A recent study using satellite data has highlighted the critical role that large herbivores play in promoting tree diversity in forest ecosystems. The…

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Echoes of the Ancients: The Wisdom and Power of Elephants

World Elephant Day, celebrated on August 12th, honours the gentle and nurturing giants of Asia and Africa, who are revered for their deep…

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African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change

Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle…

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African Forest Elephants and Timber Concessions

Timber and palm oil concessions now cover vast portions of forest elephant habitat, with little understanding of how these logging operations impact elephant populations (Scalbert et al., 2022). While elephants can persist in selectively logged forests, they require large, undisturbed areas to sustain viable populations. Key findings include:

• African Forest Elephants regenerate forests: By dispersing seeds of high-carbon tree species, they facilitate the regrowth of timber species, making their role essential for maintaining the economic value of these forests.
• Logging alters movement patterns: While some elephants adapt to fragmented landscapes, others are displaced, forced into human-dominated areas where they are at greater risk of poaching and conflict.
• Forest loss drives ecological collapse: Without elephants maintaining seed dispersal, many commercially valuable trees may struggle to regenerate, ultimately degrading the timber industry’s long-term viability.

You can support this beautiful animal

Sheldrick Wildlife

Virunga National Park

Africa Conservation Foundation

Traffic

Further Information

Beirne, C., Houslay, T. M., Morkel, P., Clark, C. J., Fay, M., Okouyi, J., White, L. J. T., & Poulsen, J. R. (2021). African forest elephant movements depend on time scale and individual behavior. Scientific Reports, 11, 12634. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91627-z

Gobush, K.S., Edwards, C.T.T, Maisels, F., Wittemyer, G., Balfour, D. & Taylor, R.D. 2021. Loxodonta cyclotis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2021: e.T181007989A181019888. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2021-1.RLTS.T181007989A181019888.en. Downloaded on 08 June 2021.

Hedwig, D., & Kohlberg, A. (2024). Call combination in African forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299656

Scalbert, M., Vermeulen, C., Breuer, T., & Doucet, J. L. (2022). The challenging coexistence of forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis and timber concessions in central Africa. Mammal Review, 52(3), 501–518. https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12305

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

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Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#Africa #African #AfricanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #Angola #Bantrophyhunting #Benin #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #BurkinaFaso #Cameroon #CentralAfricanRepublic #climatechange #cocoa #Congo #CriticallyEndangeredSpecies #deforestation #DemocracticRepublicOfCongo #elephant #elephants #Forest #Gabon #Guinea #ivory #Mammal #Nigeria #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmoil #poaching #pollination #pollinator #rainforests #SeedDispersers #SierraLeone #timber #tobacco #vegan #WestAfrica

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

Location: Central and West Africa – Guineo-Congolian tropical forests, including Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and surrounding regions.

IUCN Status: Critically Endangered

The African Forest #Elephant is a Critically Endangered species found in the dense #rainforests of Central and #WestAfrica. They are smaller than their savanna relatives, with straighter tusks and rounder ears, uniquely adapted to their forested habitat. As ecosystem engineers, these elephants play a crucial role in maintaining Afrotropical forests by dispersing seeds and mitigating against climate change by shaping forest composition. However, relentless #poaching for ivory, habitat destruction due to #palmoil, #cocoa and #tobacco agriculture, and human-elephant conflict have decimated their population. Recent studies have shown that African Forest Elephants’ movement patterns vary significantly between individuals, with some elephants exploring vast distances while others remain in small home ranges. This variation poses unique challenges for conservation efforts. Resist and fight for their survival each time you shop, be #vegan and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife.

https://youtu.be/cldLHm2-pnQ

African Forest #Elephants are ecosystem engineers fighting #ClimateChange in #WestAfrica. Yet #poaching and #palmoil #deforestation have rendered them critically endangered 😿🐘 Help them and be #vegan #BoycottPalmOil 🌴⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/09/11/african-forest-elephant-loxodonta-cyclotis/

Supremely intelligent and sensitive African Forest #Elephants 🐘🩶 face several grave threats, incl. #PalmOil #Deforestation and #poaching in #Gabon 🇬🇦 #Congo 🇨🇩 #WestAfrica. Fight for them when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🔥🧐⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/09/11/african-forest-elephant-loxodonta-cyclotis/

Rapid land use change, including palm oil plantations across their range is driving the direct loss and fragmentation of habitat, is an increasing threat to African elephants across their range.

IUCN red list

Appearance and Behaviour

African Forest Elephants are smaller than their savanna counterparts, with a shoulder height of 2 to 3 metres. They have a more compact build, rounded ears, and long, narrow tusks that point downward, (Gobush et al., 2021). Their grey skin is often darker due to the humid rainforest environment. They live in small, matriarchal family groups and display remarkable individual variation in movement behaviours. Some elephants, known as “explorers,” travel vast distances, while others, the “idlers,” remain within confined home ranges. These behavioural differences complicate conservation efforts, as strategies must account for their diverse space-use needs.

These elephants are highly intelligent and social, living in small, matriarchal family groups that navigate the rainforest together. Their deep infrasonic rumbles travel through the ground, allowing communication over vast distances, even in the thickest jungle. Recent research has revealed that their vocalisations have a structure akin to human syntax—complex combinations of calls used to convey intricate meanings (Hedwig & Kohlberg, 2024).

Other research has found that the foraging, seed dispersal and exploration of African Forest Elephants helps to mitigate African forests against climate change. A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.

Diet

Forest Elephants are frugivorous and play an irreplaceable role as seed dispersers, particularly for large fruiting trees. They are responsible for spreading the seeds of over 41 timber species, including Bobgunnia fistuloides (pao rosa), a tree prized for its high-value wood (Blake et al., 2009; Campos-Arceiz & Blake, 2011). Without these elephants, the rainforest’s ability to regenerate and store carbon would be drastically diminished.

Reproduction and Mating

With a gestation period of 22 months—the longest of any land mammal—female African Forest elephants give birth only once every four to six years (Gobush et al., 2021). Due to their slow reproductive rate, population recovery is incredibly difficult, making conservation efforts even more urgent. Calves remain under their mother’s care for over a decade, learning crucial survival skills in the rainforest.

Geographic Range

African Forest Elephants roam vast home ranges, some spanning over 2,000 km² (Beirne et al., 2021). Their movements are largely dictated by fruiting cycles, water availability, and human encroachment. A recent study found that they exhibit remarkable individual variation in movement patterns—some acting as ‘explorers,’ roaming far and wide, while others remain within familiar territories (Beirne et al., 2021). Roads and logging concessions disrupt these traditional routes, forcing elephants into human settlements and escalating conflict.

Threats

• Illegal Wildlife Trade and Poaching: The illegal and criminal trade in elephant ivory continues to drive rampant poaching. Despite international bans, demand remains high in black markets (Wittemyer et al., 2014; Maisels et al., 2013).
• Palm Oil Agriculture Expansion: Forests are being obliterated for palm oil, cocoa, tobacco and rubber plantations, erasing habitat at an alarming rate (Scalbert et al., 2022).
• Logging, Mining, and Infrastructure Expansion: The development of roads and infrastructure for timber and mining grants poachers greater access to once-inaccessible forest areas (Beirne et al., 2021).
• Human-Elephant Conflict: Shrinking forests push elephants into farmland, leading to fatal clashes with farmers trying to protect their crops (Ngama et al., 2016).
• Climate Change: Disruptions in rainfall patterns and fruiting cycles impact the food supply of African Forest Elephants, forcing them into riskier migration routes where they can come into contact with poachers or conflict with farmers.
• Slow Reproduction Rate: African Forest Elephants have a long gestation periods and high calf mortality, their populations cannot recover quickly from losses.

Elephants and Language: Call Combinations and Syntax

Groundbreaking research has revealed that African Forest Elephants use complex call combinations, akin to human syntax, to communicate in high-stakes situations (Hedwig & Kohlberg, 2024). Their vocal repertoire includes:

• Low-frequency rumbles: Used to coordinate movements and social interactions. These deep sounds can travel several kilometres through dense rainforest.
• Broadband roars: Express distress, urgency, or aggression, particularly in response to predators or conflict.
• Combined calls: When rumbles and roars are merged, they create new meanings. These combinations are more frequently used in competitive situations, suggesting that elephants alter their vocal signals to convey specific messages in dangerous or high-emotion contexts.

The ability to combine calls strategically may help elephants navigate social disputes, secure access to resources, or reunite with separated family members. This discovery sheds light on the cognitive abilities of these animals and their sophisticated social lives.

Large herbivores such as elephants contribute to tree diversity

A recent study using satellite data has highlighted the critical role that large herbivores play in promoting tree diversity in forest ecosystems. The…

Keep reading

Echoes of the Ancients: The Wisdom and Power of Elephants

World Elephant Day, celebrated on August 12th, honours the gentle and nurturing giants of Asia and Africa, who are revered for their deep…

Keep reading

African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change

Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle…

Keep reading

African Forest Elephants and Timber Concessions

Timber and palm oil concessions now cover vast portions of forest elephant habitat, with little understanding of how these logging operations impact elephant populations (Scalbert et al., 2022). While elephants can persist in selectively logged forests, they require large, undisturbed areas to sustain viable populations. Key findings include:

• African Forest Elephants regenerate forests: By dispersing seeds of high-carbon tree species, they facilitate the regrowth of timber species, making their role essential for maintaining the economic value of these forests.
• Logging alters movement patterns: While some elephants adapt to fragmented landscapes, others are displaced, forced into human-dominated areas where they are at greater risk of poaching and conflict.
• Forest loss drives ecological collapse: Without elephants maintaining seed dispersal, many commercially valuable trees may struggle to regenerate, ultimately degrading the timber industry’s long-term viability.

You can support this beautiful animal

Sheldrick Wildlife

Virunga National Park

Africa Conservation Foundation

Traffic

Further Information

Beirne, C., Houslay, T. M., Morkel, P., Clark, C. J., Fay, M., Okouyi, J., White, L. J. T., & Poulsen, J. R. (2021). African forest elephant movements depend on time scale and individual behavior. Scientific Reports, 11, 12634. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91627-z

Gobush, K.S., Edwards, C.T.T, Maisels, F., Wittemyer, G., Balfour, D. & Taylor, R.D. 2021. Loxodonta cyclotis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2021: e.T181007989A181019888. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2021-1.RLTS.T181007989A181019888.en. Downloaded on 08 June 2021.

Hedwig, D., & Kohlberg, A. (2024). Call combination in African forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299656

Scalbert, M., Vermeulen, C., Breuer, T., & Doucet, J. L. (2022). The challenging coexistence of forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis and timber concessions in central Africa. Mammal Review, 52(3), 501–518. https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12305

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Mail
• Mastodon

Enter your email address

Sign Up

2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#Africa #African #AfricanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #Angola #Bantrophyhunting #Benin #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #BurkinaFaso #Cameroon #CentralAfricanRepublic #climatechange #cocoa #Congo #CriticallyEndangeredSpecies #deforestation #DemocracticRepublicOfCongo #elephant #elephants #Forest #Gabon #Guinea #ivory #Mammal #Nigeria #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmoil #poaching #pollination #pollinator #rainforests #SeedDispersers #SierraLeone #timber #tobacco #vegan #WestAfrica

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

Location: Central and West Africa – Guineo-Congolian tropical forests, including Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and surrounding regions.

IUCN Status: Critically Endangered

The African Forest #Elephant is a Critically Endangered species found in the dense #rainforests of Central and #WestAfrica. They are smaller than their savanna relatives, with straighter tusks and rounder ears, uniquely adapted to their forested habitat. As ecosystem engineers, these elephants play a crucial role in maintaining Afrotropical forests by dispersing seeds and mitigating against climate change by shaping forest composition. However, relentless #poaching for ivory, habitat destruction due to #palmoil, #cocoa and #tobacco agriculture, and human-elephant conflict have decimated their population. Recent studies have shown that African Forest Elephants’ movement patterns vary significantly between individuals, with some elephants exploring vast distances while others remain in small home ranges. This variation poses unique challenges for conservation efforts. Resist and fight for their survival each time you shop, be #vegan and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife.

https://youtu.be/cldLHm2-pnQ

African Forest #Elephants are ecosystem engineers fighting #ClimateChange in #WestAfrica. Yet #poaching and #palmoil #deforestation have rendered them critically endangered 😿🐘 Help them and be #vegan #BoycottPalmOil 🌴⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/09/11/african-forest-elephant-loxodonta-cyclotis/

Supremely intelligent and sensitive African Forest #Elephants 🐘🩶 face several grave threats, incl. #PalmOil #Deforestation and #poaching in #Gabon 🇬🇦 #Congo 🇨🇩 #WestAfrica. Fight for them when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🔥🧐⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/09/11/african-forest-elephant-loxodonta-cyclotis/

Rapid land use change, including palm oil plantations across their range is driving the direct loss and fragmentation of habitat, is an increasing threat to African elephants across their range.

IUCN red list

Appearance and Behaviour

African Forest Elephants are smaller than their savanna counterparts, with a shoulder height of 2 to 3 metres. They have a more compact build, rounded ears, and long, narrow tusks that point downward, (Gobush et al., 2021). Their grey skin is often darker due to the humid rainforest environment. They live in small, matriarchal family groups and display remarkable individual variation in movement behaviours. Some elephants, known as “explorers,” travel vast distances, while others, the “idlers,” remain within confined home ranges. These behavioural differences complicate conservation efforts, as strategies must account for their diverse space-use needs.

These elephants are highly intelligent and social, living in small, matriarchal family groups that navigate the rainforest together. Their deep infrasonic rumbles travel through the ground, allowing communication over vast distances, even in the thickest jungle. Recent research has revealed that their vocalisations have a structure akin to human syntax—complex combinations of calls used to convey intricate meanings (Hedwig & Kohlberg, 2024).

Other research has found that the foraging, seed dispersal and exploration of African Forest Elephants helps to mitigate African forests against climate change. A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.

Diet

Forest Elephants are frugivorous and play an irreplaceable role as seed dispersers, particularly for large fruiting trees. They are responsible for spreading the seeds of over 41 timber species, including Bobgunnia fistuloides (pao rosa), a tree prized for its high-value wood (Blake et al., 2009; Campos-Arceiz & Blake, 2011). Without these elephants, the rainforest’s ability to regenerate and store carbon would be drastically diminished.

Reproduction and Mating

With a gestation period of 22 months—the longest of any land mammal—female African Forest elephants give birth only once every four to six years (Gobush et al., 2021). Due to their slow reproductive rate, population recovery is incredibly difficult, making conservation efforts even more urgent. Calves remain under their mother’s care for over a decade, learning crucial survival skills in the rainforest.

Geographic Range

African Forest Elephants roam vast home ranges, some spanning over 2,000 km² (Beirne et al., 2021). Their movements are largely dictated by fruiting cycles, water availability, and human encroachment. A recent study found that they exhibit remarkable individual variation in movement patterns—some acting as ‘explorers,’ roaming far and wide, while others remain within familiar territories (Beirne et al., 2021). Roads and logging concessions disrupt these traditional routes, forcing elephants into human settlements and escalating conflict.

Threats

• Illegal Wildlife Trade and Poaching: The illegal and criminal trade in elephant ivory continues to drive rampant poaching. Despite international bans, demand remains high in black markets (Wittemyer et al., 2014; Maisels et al., 2013).
• Palm Oil Agriculture Expansion: Forests are being obliterated for palm oil, cocoa, tobacco and rubber plantations, erasing habitat at an alarming rate (Scalbert et al., 2022).
• Logging, Mining, and Infrastructure Expansion: The development of roads and infrastructure for timber and mining grants poachers greater access to once-inaccessible forest areas (Beirne et al., 2021).
• Human-Elephant Conflict: Shrinking forests push elephants into farmland, leading to fatal clashes with farmers trying to protect their crops (Ngama et al., 2016).
• Climate Change: Disruptions in rainfall patterns and fruiting cycles impact the food supply of African Forest Elephants, forcing them into riskier migration routes where they can come into contact with poachers or conflict with farmers.
• Slow Reproduction Rate: African Forest Elephants have a long gestation periods and high calf mortality, their populations cannot recover quickly from losses.

Elephants and Language: Call Combinations and Syntax

Groundbreaking research has revealed that African Forest Elephants use complex call combinations, akin to human syntax, to communicate in high-stakes situations (Hedwig & Kohlberg, 2024). Their vocal repertoire includes:

• Low-frequency rumbles: Used to coordinate movements and social interactions. These deep sounds can travel several kilometres through dense rainforest.
• Broadband roars: Express distress, urgency, or aggression, particularly in response to predators or conflict.
• Combined calls: When rumbles and roars are merged, they create new meanings. These combinations are more frequently used in competitive situations, suggesting that elephants alter their vocal signals to convey specific messages in dangerous or high-emotion contexts.

The ability to combine calls strategically may help elephants navigate social disputes, secure access to resources, or reunite with separated family members. This discovery sheds light on the cognitive abilities of these animals and their sophisticated social lives.

Large herbivores such as elephants contribute to tree diversity

A recent study using satellite data has highlighted the critical role that large herbivores play in promoting tree diversity in forest ecosystems. The…

Keep reading

Echoes of the Ancients: The Wisdom and Power of Elephants

World Elephant Day, celebrated on August 12th, honours the gentle and nurturing giants of Asia and Africa, who are revered for their deep…

Keep reading

African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change

Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle…

Keep reading

African Forest Elephants and Timber Concessions

Timber and palm oil concessions now cover vast portions of forest elephant habitat, with little understanding of how these logging operations impact elephant populations (Scalbert et al., 2022). While elephants can persist in selectively logged forests, they require large, undisturbed areas to sustain viable populations. Key findings include:

• African Forest Elephants regenerate forests: By dispersing seeds of high-carbon tree species, they facilitate the regrowth of timber species, making their role essential for maintaining the economic value of these forests.
• Logging alters movement patterns: While some elephants adapt to fragmented landscapes, others are displaced, forced into human-dominated areas where they are at greater risk of poaching and conflict.
• Forest loss drives ecological collapse: Without elephants maintaining seed dispersal, many commercially valuable trees may struggle to regenerate, ultimately degrading the timber industry’s long-term viability.

You can support this beautiful animal

Sheldrick Wildlife

Virunga National Park

Africa Conservation Foundation

Traffic

Further Information

Beirne, C., Houslay, T. M., Morkel, P., Clark, C. J., Fay, M., Okouyi, J., White, L. J. T., & Poulsen, J. R. (2021). African forest elephant movements depend on time scale and individual behavior. Scientific Reports, 11, 12634. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91627-z

Gobush, K.S., Edwards, C.T.T, Maisels, F., Wittemyer, G., Balfour, D. & Taylor, R.D. 2021. Loxodonta cyclotis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2021: e.T181007989A181019888. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2021-1.RLTS.T181007989A181019888.en. Downloaded on 08 June 2021.

Hedwig, D., & Kohlberg, A. (2024). Call combination in African forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299656

Scalbert, M., Vermeulen, C., Breuer, T., & Doucet, J. L. (2022). The challenging coexistence of forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis and timber concessions in central Africa. Mammal Review, 52(3), 501–518. https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12305

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Mail
• Mastodon

Enter your email address

Sign Up

2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#Africa #African #AfricanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #Angola #Bantrophyhunting #Benin #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #BurkinaFaso #Cameroon #CentralAfricanRepublic #climatechange #cocoa #Congo #CriticallyEndangeredSpecies #deforestation #DemocracticRepublicOfCongo #elephant #elephants #Forest #Gabon #Guinea #ivory #Mammal #Nigeria #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmoil #poaching #pollination #pollinator #rainforests #SeedDispersers #SierraLeone #timber #tobacco #vegan #WestAfrica

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

Location: Central and West Africa – Guineo-Congolian tropical forests, including Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and surrounding regions.

IUCN Status: Critically Endangered

The African Forest #Elephant is a Critically Endangered species found in the dense #rainforests of Central and #WestAfrica. They are smaller than their savanna relatives, with straighter tusks and rounder ears, uniquely adapted to their forested habitat. As ecosystem engineers, these elephants play a crucial role in maintaining Afrotropical forests by dispersing seeds and mitigating against climate change by shaping forest composition. However, relentless #poaching for ivory, habitat destruction due to #palmoil, #cocoa and #tobacco agriculture, and human-elephant conflict have decimated their population. Recent studies have shown that African Forest Elephants’ movement patterns vary significantly between individuals, with some elephants exploring vast distances while others remain in small home ranges. This variation poses unique challenges for conservation efforts. Resist and fight for their survival each time you shop, be #vegan and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife.

https://youtu.be/cldLHm2-pnQ

African Forest #Elephants are ecosystem engineers fighting #ClimateChange in #WestAfrica. Yet #poaching and #palmoil #deforestation have rendered them critically endangered 😿🐘 Help them and be #vegan #BoycottPalmOil 🌴⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/09/11/african-forest-elephant-loxodonta-cyclotis/

Supremely intelligent and sensitive African Forest #Elephants 🐘🩶 face several grave threats, incl. #PalmOil #Deforestation and #poaching in #Gabon 🇬🇦 #Congo 🇨🇩 #WestAfrica. Fight for them when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🔥🧐⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/09/11/african-forest-elephant-loxodonta-cyclotis/

Rapid land use change, including palm oil plantations across their range is driving the direct loss and fragmentation of habitat, is an increasing threat to African elephants across their range.

IUCN red list

Appearance and Behaviour

African Forest Elephants are smaller than their savanna counterparts, with a shoulder height of 2 to 3 metres. They have a more compact build, rounded ears, and long, narrow tusks that point downward, (Gobush et al., 2021). Their grey skin is often darker due to the humid rainforest environment. They live in small, matriarchal family groups and display remarkable individual variation in movement behaviours. Some elephants, known as “explorers,” travel vast distances, while others, the “idlers,” remain within confined home ranges. These behavioural differences complicate conservation efforts, as strategies must account for their diverse space-use needs.

These elephants are highly intelligent and social, living in small, matriarchal family groups that navigate the rainforest together. Their deep infrasonic rumbles travel through the ground, allowing communication over vast distances, even in the thickest jungle. Recent research has revealed that their vocalisations have a structure akin to human syntax—complex combinations of calls used to convey intricate meanings (Hedwig & Kohlberg, 2024).

Other research has found that the foraging, seed dispersal and exploration of African Forest Elephants helps to mitigate African forests against climate change. A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.

Diet

Forest Elephants are frugivorous and play an irreplaceable role as seed dispersers, particularly for large fruiting trees. They are responsible for spreading the seeds of over 41 timber species, including Bobgunnia fistuloides (pao rosa), a tree prized for its high-value wood (Blake et al., 2009; Campos-Arceiz & Blake, 2011). Without these elephants, the rainforest’s ability to regenerate and store carbon would be drastically diminished.

Reproduction and Mating

With a gestation period of 22 months—the longest of any land mammal—female African Forest elephants give birth only once every four to six years (Gobush et al., 2021). Due to their slow reproductive rate, population recovery is incredibly difficult, making conservation efforts even more urgent. Calves remain under their mother’s care for over a decade, learning crucial survival skills in the rainforest.

Geographic Range

African Forest Elephants roam vast home ranges, some spanning over 2,000 km² (Beirne et al., 2021). Their movements are largely dictated by fruiting cycles, water availability, and human encroachment. A recent study found that they exhibit remarkable individual variation in movement patterns—some acting as ‘explorers,’ roaming far and wide, while others remain within familiar territories (Beirne et al., 2021). Roads and logging concessions disrupt these traditional routes, forcing elephants into human settlements and escalating conflict.

Threats

• Illegal Wildlife Trade and Poaching: The illegal and criminal trade in elephant ivory continues to drive rampant poaching. Despite international bans, demand remains high in black markets (Wittemyer et al., 2014; Maisels et al., 2013).
• Palm Oil Agriculture Expansion: Forests are being obliterated for palm oil, cocoa, tobacco and rubber plantations, erasing habitat at an alarming rate (Scalbert et al., 2022).
• Logging, Mining, and Infrastructure Expansion: The development of roads and infrastructure for timber and mining grants poachers greater access to once-inaccessible forest areas (Beirne et al., 2021).
• Human-Elephant Conflict: Shrinking forests push elephants into farmland, leading to fatal clashes with farmers trying to protect their crops (Ngama et al., 2016).
• Climate Change: Disruptions in rainfall patterns and fruiting cycles impact the food supply of African Forest Elephants, forcing them into riskier migration routes where they can come into contact with poachers or conflict with farmers.
• Slow Reproduction Rate: African Forest Elephants have a long gestation periods and high calf mortality, their populations cannot recover quickly from losses.

Elephants and Language: Call Combinations and Syntax

Groundbreaking research has revealed that African Forest Elephants use complex call combinations, akin to human syntax, to communicate in high-stakes situations (Hedwig & Kohlberg, 2024). Their vocal repertoire includes:

• Low-frequency rumbles: Used to coordinate movements and social interactions. These deep sounds can travel several kilometres through dense rainforest.
• Broadband roars: Express distress, urgency, or aggression, particularly in response to predators or conflict.
• Combined calls: When rumbles and roars are merged, they create new meanings. These combinations are more frequently used in competitive situations, suggesting that elephants alter their vocal signals to convey specific messages in dangerous or high-emotion contexts.

The ability to combine calls strategically may help elephants navigate social disputes, secure access to resources, or reunite with separated family members. This discovery sheds light on the cognitive abilities of these animals and their sophisticated social lives.

Large herbivores such as elephants contribute to tree diversity

A recent study using satellite data has highlighted the critical role that large herbivores play in promoting tree diversity in forest ecosystems. The…

Keep reading

Echoes of the Ancients: The Wisdom and Power of Elephants

World Elephant Day, celebrated on August 12th, honours the gentle and nurturing giants of Asia and Africa, who are revered for their deep…

Keep reading

African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change

Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle…

Keep reading

African Forest Elephants and Timber Concessions

Timber and palm oil concessions now cover vast portions of forest elephant habitat, with little understanding of how these logging operations impact elephant populations (Scalbert et al., 2022). While elephants can persist in selectively logged forests, they require large, undisturbed areas to sustain viable populations. Key findings include:

• African Forest Elephants regenerate forests: By dispersing seeds of high-carbon tree species, they facilitate the regrowth of timber species, making their role essential for maintaining the economic value of these forests.
• Logging alters movement patterns: While some elephants adapt to fragmented landscapes, others are displaced, forced into human-dominated areas where they are at greater risk of poaching and conflict.
• Forest loss drives ecological collapse: Without elephants maintaining seed dispersal, many commercially valuable trees may struggle to regenerate, ultimately degrading the timber industry’s long-term viability.

You can support this beautiful animal

Sheldrick Wildlife

Virunga National Park

Africa Conservation Foundation

Traffic

Further Information

Beirne, C., Houslay, T. M., Morkel, P., Clark, C. J., Fay, M., Okouyi, J., White, L. J. T., & Poulsen, J. R. (2021). African forest elephant movements depend on time scale and individual behavior. Scientific Reports, 11, 12634. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91627-z

Gobush, K.S., Edwards, C.T.T, Maisels, F., Wittemyer, G., Balfour, D. & Taylor, R.D. 2021. Loxodonta cyclotis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2021: e.T181007989A181019888. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2021-1.RLTS.T181007989A181019888.en. Downloaded on 08 June 2021.

Hedwig, D., & Kohlberg, A. (2024). Call combination in African forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299656

Scalbert, M., Vermeulen, C., Breuer, T., & Doucet, J. L. (2022). The challenging coexistence of forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis and timber concessions in central Africa. Mammal Review, 52(3), 501–518. https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12305

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

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2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#Africa #African #AfricanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #Angola #Bantrophyhunting #Benin #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #BurkinaFaso #Cameroon #CentralAfricanRepublic #climatechange #cocoa #Congo #CriticallyEndangeredSpecies #deforestation #DemocracticRepublicOfCongo #elephant #elephants #Forest #Gabon #Guinea #ivory #Mammal #Nigeria #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmoil #poaching #pollination #pollinator #rainforests #SeedDispersers #SierraLeone #timber #tobacco #vegan #WestAfrica

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

Location: Central and West Africa – Guineo-Congolian tropical forests, including Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, and surrounding regions.

IUCN Status: Critically Endangered

The African Forest #Elephant is a Critically Endangered species found in the dense #rainforests of Central and #WestAfrica. They are smaller than their savanna relatives, with straighter tusks and rounder ears, uniquely adapted to their forested habitat. As ecosystem engineers, these elephants play a crucial role in maintaining Afrotropical forests by dispersing seeds and mitigating against climate change by shaping forest composition. However, relentless #poaching for ivory, habitat destruction due to #palmoil, #cocoa and #tobacco agriculture, and human-elephant conflict have decimated their population. Recent studies have shown that African Forest Elephants’ movement patterns vary significantly between individuals, with some elephants exploring vast distances while others remain in small home ranges. This variation poses unique challenges for conservation efforts. Resist and fight for their survival each time you shop, be #vegan and #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife.

https://youtu.be/cldLHm2-pnQ

African Forest #Elephants are ecosystem engineers fighting #ClimateChange in #WestAfrica. Yet #poaching and #palmoil #deforestation have rendered them critically endangered 😿🐘 Help them and be #vegan #BoycottPalmOil 🌴⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/09/11/african-forest-elephant-loxodonta-cyclotis/

Supremely intelligent and sensitive African Forest #Elephants 🐘🩶 face several grave threats, incl. #PalmOil #Deforestation and #poaching in #Gabon 🇬🇦 #Congo 🇨🇩 #WestAfrica. Fight for them when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🔥🧐⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/09/11/african-forest-elephant-loxodonta-cyclotis/

Rapid land use change, including palm oil plantations across their range is driving the direct loss and fragmentation of habitat, is an increasing threat to African elephants across their range.

IUCN red list

Appearance and Behaviour

African Forest Elephants are smaller than their savanna counterparts, with a shoulder height of 2 to 3 metres. They have a more compact build, rounded ears, and long, narrow tusks that point downward, (Gobush et al., 2021). Their grey skin is often darker due to the humid rainforest environment. They live in small, matriarchal family groups and display remarkable individual variation in movement behaviours. Some elephants, known as “explorers,” travel vast distances, while others, the “idlers,” remain within confined home ranges. These behavioural differences complicate conservation efforts, as strategies must account for their diverse space-use needs.

These elephants are highly intelligent and social, living in small, matriarchal family groups that navigate the rainforest together. Their deep infrasonic rumbles travel through the ground, allowing communication over vast distances, even in the thickest jungle. Recent research has revealed that their vocalisations have a structure akin to human syntax—complex combinations of calls used to convey intricate meanings (Hedwig & Kohlberg, 2024).

Other research has found that the foraging, seed dispersal and exploration of African Forest Elephants helps to mitigate African forests against climate change. A 2019 study from the Ndoki Forest in the Republic of Congo (ROC) and LuiKotale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) estimated that if elephants were removed from these sites, the loss of their forest-shaping food preferences would reduce the forest’s carbon capture by 7%.

Diet

Forest Elephants are frugivorous and play an irreplaceable role as seed dispersers, particularly for large fruiting trees. They are responsible for spreading the seeds of over 41 timber species, including Bobgunnia fistuloides (pao rosa), a tree prized for its high-value wood (Blake et al., 2009; Campos-Arceiz & Blake, 2011). Without these elephants, the rainforest’s ability to regenerate and store carbon would be drastically diminished.

Reproduction and Mating

With a gestation period of 22 months—the longest of any land mammal—female African Forest elephants give birth only once every four to six years (Gobush et al., 2021). Due to their slow reproductive rate, population recovery is incredibly difficult, making conservation efforts even more urgent. Calves remain under their mother’s care for over a decade, learning crucial survival skills in the rainforest.

Geographic Range

African Forest Elephants roam vast home ranges, some spanning over 2,000 km² (Beirne et al., 2021). Their movements are largely dictated by fruiting cycles, water availability, and human encroachment. A recent study found that they exhibit remarkable individual variation in movement patterns—some acting as ‘explorers,’ roaming far and wide, while others remain within familiar territories (Beirne et al., 2021). Roads and logging concessions disrupt these traditional routes, forcing elephants into human settlements and escalating conflict.

Threats

• Illegal Wildlife Trade and Poaching: The illegal and criminal trade in elephant ivory continues to drive rampant poaching. Despite international bans, demand remains high in black markets (Wittemyer et al., 2014; Maisels et al., 2013).
• Palm Oil Agriculture Expansion: Forests are being obliterated for palm oil, cocoa, tobacco and rubber plantations, erasing habitat at an alarming rate (Scalbert et al., 2022).
• Logging, Mining, and Infrastructure Expansion: The development of roads and infrastructure for timber and mining grants poachers greater access to once-inaccessible forest areas (Beirne et al., 2021).
• Human-Elephant Conflict: Shrinking forests push elephants into farmland, leading to fatal clashes with farmers trying to protect their crops (Ngama et al., 2016).
• Climate Change: Disruptions in rainfall patterns and fruiting cycles impact the food supply of African Forest Elephants, forcing them into riskier migration routes where they can come into contact with poachers or conflict with farmers.
• Slow Reproduction Rate: African Forest Elephants have a long gestation periods and high calf mortality, their populations cannot recover quickly from losses.

Elephants and Language: Call Combinations and Syntax

Groundbreaking research has revealed that African Forest Elephants use complex call combinations, akin to human syntax, to communicate in high-stakes situations (Hedwig & Kohlberg, 2024). Their vocal repertoire includes:

• Low-frequency rumbles: Used to coordinate movements and social interactions. These deep sounds can travel several kilometres through dense rainforest.
• Broadband roars: Express distress, urgency, or aggression, particularly in response to predators or conflict.
• Combined calls: When rumbles and roars are merged, they create new meanings. These combinations are more frequently used in competitive situations, suggesting that elephants alter their vocal signals to convey specific messages in dangerous or high-emotion contexts.

The ability to combine calls strategically may help elephants navigate social disputes, secure access to resources, or reunite with separated family members. This discovery sheds light on the cognitive abilities of these animals and their sophisticated social lives.

Large herbivores such as elephants contribute to tree diversity

A recent study using satellite data has highlighted the critical role that large herbivores play in promoting tree diversity in forest ecosystems. The…

Keep reading

Echoes of the Ancients: The Wisdom and Power of Elephants

World Elephant Day, celebrated on August 12th, honours the gentle and nurturing giants of Asia and Africa, who are revered for their deep…

Keep reading

African Forest Elephants Help Fight Climate Change

Discover the awe-inspiring role of African forest elephants in the Congo Basin—nature’s master gardeners who literally shape the world around them! These gentle…

Keep reading

African Forest Elephants and Timber Concessions

Timber and palm oil concessions now cover vast portions of forest elephant habitat, with little understanding of how these logging operations impact elephant populations (Scalbert et al., 2022). While elephants can persist in selectively logged forests, they require large, undisturbed areas to sustain viable populations. Key findings include:

• African Forest Elephants regenerate forests: By dispersing seeds of high-carbon tree species, they facilitate the regrowth of timber species, making their role essential for maintaining the economic value of these forests.
• Logging alters movement patterns: While some elephants adapt to fragmented landscapes, others are displaced, forced into human-dominated areas where they are at greater risk of poaching and conflict.
• Forest loss drives ecological collapse: Without elephants maintaining seed dispersal, many commercially valuable trees may struggle to regenerate, ultimately degrading the timber industry’s long-term viability.

You can support this beautiful animal

Sheldrick Wildlife

Virunga National Park

Africa Conservation Foundation

Traffic

Further Information

Beirne, C., Houslay, T. M., Morkel, P., Clark, C. J., Fay, M., Okouyi, J., White, L. J. T., & Poulsen, J. R. (2021). African forest elephant movements depend on time scale and individual behavior. Scientific Reports, 11, 12634. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-91627-z

Gobush, K.S., Edwards, C.T.T, Maisels, F., Wittemyer, G., Balfour, D. & Taylor, R.D. 2021. Loxodonta cyclotis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2021: e.T181007989A181019888. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2021-1.RLTS.T181007989A181019888.en. Downloaded on 08 June 2021.

Hedwig, D., & Kohlberg, A. (2024). Call combination in African forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0299656

Scalbert, M., Vermeulen, C., Breuer, T., & Doucet, J. L. (2022). The challenging coexistence of forest elephants Loxodonta cyclotis and timber concessions in central Africa. Mammal Review, 52(3), 501–518. https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12305

African Forest Elephant Loxodonta cyclotis

How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

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Enter your email address

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2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#Africa #African #AfricanForestElephantLoxodontaCyclotis #Angola #Bantrophyhunting #Benin #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #BurkinaFaso #Cameroon #CentralAfricanRepublic #climatechange #cocoa #Congo #CriticallyEndangeredSpecies #deforestation #DemocracticRepublicOfCongo #elephant #elephants #Forest #Gabon #Guinea #ivory #Mammal #Nigeria #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmoil #poaching #pollination #pollinator #rainforests #SeedDispersers #SierraLeone #timber #tobacco #vegan #WestAfrica

Borneo Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Bornean Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Endangered

Population: fewer than 1,000

Locations: Sabah, Malaysia and Kalimantan, Indonesia.

The endearing Borneo Pygmy Elephant is a diminutive subspecies of the Asian Elephant. They are distinguished by their unusually large ears, baby-like faces, and remarkably long tails that sometimes drag on the ground. These gentle, docile and compact elephants are able to sense through their feet and despite their size are able to walk through the jungle with barely a sound. They are endangered due mainly to #palmoil deforestation and human persecution, with fewer than 1,500 individual elephants left alive.

Borneo’s elephants are genetically distinct from any South and Southeast Asian population and may have been isolated for over 300,000 years. Destruction across their range for corporate greed is out of control. Help their survival every time you shop and #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/js877ojzh6w

Gentle #endangered giants, only <1,500 Bornean Pygmy #Elephants 🐘💔 still live in #Borneo. They’re surrounded by #palmoil #deforestation and #poaching. Fight for them when you shop 👏☮️ and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🚫#Boycott4Wildlife every day! @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/bornean-pygmy-elephant-elephas-maximus-borneensis/

Laughing, crying, playing isn’t just done by #humans. #Bornean Pygmy #Elephants do the same! Fight for these intelligent, endearing beings 😻🐘🩶 who are #endangered by #palmoil #deforestation 👎🌴🚫 #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/bornean-pygmy-elephant-elephas-maximus-borneensis/

Appearances and behaviour

Borneo elephants are noticeably smaller than other Asian elephants, standing at 2-3 metres tall and weighing between 3-5 tonnes. They have a distinctly rotund appearance with their plump bellies, oversized ears, and long tails. Their trunks are equipped with a single finger-like muscle at the tip. This makes their trunks highly versatile and used for grasping objects, feeding, and drinking. Borneo Elephants are famous for their gentle and sensitive disposition, they are more docile compared to other elephants. They live in small herds, exhibiting strong social bonds and often seen playing and nurturing their young. These elephants communicate through low-frequency sounds and body language, displaying the full gamut of complex emotions from joy, mourning and grief, cheekiness and playfulness, anger and jealousy.

Fast facts

• Borneo elephants have a slower pulse rate of 27 beats per minute compared to other animals.
• They can ‘listen’ through their feet by detecting ground vibrations.
• Despite their size, Borneo elephants are capable of moving silently through dense forests.

Threats to their survival

• Palm oil deforestation: The expansion of palm oil plantations is one of the most significant threats to Borneo elephants. Vast areas of their natural habitat are being cleared to make way for these plantations, leading to habitat fragmentation and loss. This destruction not only reduces the space available for elephants to live and forage but also isolates populations, making it harder for them to find mates and sustain genetic diversity. The loss of habitat forces elephants into closer contact with humans, often leading to conflict situations.
• Habitat loss due to logging: Logging operations, both legal and illegal, are rampant in Borneo’s forests. The removal of large trees not only destroys the elephants’ habitat but also disrupts the forest structure, affecting the availability of food and water sources. The creation of logging roads further fragments the forest, creating barriers that elephants must navigate. This destruction of their environment can lead to malnutrition and increased mortality rates among the elephant population.
• Human encroachment and conflicts: As human populations grow and expand into previously wild areas, elephants find themselves increasingly squeezed into smaller habitats. Agricultural expansion, urban development, and infrastructure projects such as roads and dams encroach on their territory. This encroachment often results in human-elephant conflicts, where elephants raid crops and villages in search of food, leading to retaliation from local communities. Such conflicts can be fatal for both elephants and humans.
• Fragmentation of habitat: The fragmentation of forests into smaller, isolated patches significantly impacts Borneo elephants. Fragmented habitats can limit the elephants’ ability to migrate and access different parts of the forest for food and water. It also makes it harder for them to escape from poachers and other threats. Fragmentation often results in inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity, which can compromise the health and resilience of elephant populations.

Diet

Borneo elephants are herbivores, primarily feeding on a variety of plants, fruits, and tree bark. They require large amounts of water daily, which they often seek in rivers and other water bodies.

Mating and Reproduction

Borneo elephants have a gestation period of about 22 months, the longest of any mammal. Females usually give birth to a single calf, which is nurtured and protected by the entire herd. Calves are dependent on their mothers for milk for up to two years but start eating vegetation at around six months old.

Geographic Range

These elephants are confined to the northern and northeastern parts of Borneo, favouring lowland rainforests and river valleys. Their range is limited, and they often compete with humans for space and resources. Borneo’s nutrient-poor soils and the need for mineral sources also restrict their distribution.

Are Borneo Elephants Protected?

Several organisations are dedicated to the conservation of Borneo elephants, such as the Borneo Elephant Sanctuary and the Elephant Conservation Centre. These groups focus on habitat protection, research, and mitigating human-elephant conflicts.

Supreme Intelligence and Sensitivity

Borneo elephants are known for their gentle nature and remarkable intelligence. Their brains are the largest among all terrestrial mammals, 3-4 times bigger than human brains, although smaller in proportion to their body weight. Despite having poor vision, they possess a keen sense of smell and use their trunks to wave side to side or up in the air to better detect scents.

The elephant trunk is a multifunctional tool, used to explore the size, shape, and temperature of objects, lift food, and suck up water to drink. Borneo elephants can display a wide range of emotions, including laughing and crying. They have highly developed memories and can remember individuals and places for many years. These sensitive animals can feel grief and compassion, showing self-awareness, altruism, and playful behaviour. For instance, when a calf complains, the entire family gathers to show concern and caress the baby.

Elephants can ‘listen’ through their feet, detecting sub-sonic rumblings that cause ground vibrations, which they perceive by positioning their feet and trunks on the ground. Their ears consist of a complex system of blood vessels that help control their body temperature, allowing them to cool off by circulating blood through their ears

Bornean Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Further Information

Wikipedia contributors. (2024). Borneo elephant. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

Williams, C., Tiwari, S.K., Goswami, V.R., de Silva, S., Kumar, A., Baskaran, N., Yoganand, K. & Menon, V. 2020. Elephas maximus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T7140A45818198. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-3.RLTS.T7140A45818198.en. Accessed on 26 July 2024.

How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Mail
• Mastodon

Enter your email address

Sign Up

2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#AfricanElephant #Bantrophyhunting #Bornean #BorneanPygmyElephantElephasMaximusBorneensis #Borneo #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #elephants #endangered #EndangeredSpecies #humans #Indonesia #Malaysia #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #poaching #SouthEastAsia

Borneo Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Bornean Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Endangered

Population: fewer than 1,000

Locations: Sabah, Malaysia and Kalimantan, Indonesia.

The endearing Borneo Pygmy Elephant is a diminutive subspecies of the Asian Elephant. They are distinguished by their unusually large ears, baby-like faces, and remarkably long tails that sometimes drag on the ground. These gentle, docile and compact elephants are able to sense through their feet and despite their size are able to walk through the jungle with barely a sound. They are endangered due mainly to #palmoil deforestation and human persecution, with fewer than 1,500 individual elephants left alive.

Borneo’s elephants are genetically distinct from any South and Southeast Asian population and may have been isolated for over 300,000 years. Destruction across their range for corporate greed is out of control. Help their survival every time you shop and #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/js877ojzh6w

Gentle #endangered giants, only <1,500 Bornean Pygmy #Elephants 🐘💔 still live in #Borneo. They’re surrounded by #palmoil #deforestation and #poaching. Fight for them when you shop 👏☮️ and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🚫#Boycott4Wildlife every day! @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/bornean-pygmy-elephant-elephas-maximus-borneensis/

Laughing, crying, playing isn’t just done by #humans. #Bornean Pygmy #Elephants do the same! Fight for these intelligent, endearing beings 😻🐘🩶 who are #endangered by #palmoil #deforestation 👎🌴🚫 #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/bornean-pygmy-elephant-elephas-maximus-borneensis/

Appearances and behaviour

Borneo elephants are noticeably smaller than other Asian elephants, standing at 2-3 metres tall and weighing between 3-5 tonnes. They have a distinctly rotund appearance with their plump bellies, oversized ears, and long tails. Their trunks are equipped with a single finger-like muscle at the tip. This makes their trunks highly versatile and used for grasping objects, feeding, and drinking. Borneo Elephants are famous for their gentle and sensitive disposition, they are more docile compared to other elephants. They live in small herds, exhibiting strong social bonds and often seen playing and nurturing their young. These elephants communicate through low-frequency sounds and body language, displaying the full gamut of complex emotions from joy, mourning and grief, cheekiness and playfulness, anger and jealousy.

Fast facts

• Borneo elephants have a slower pulse rate of 27 beats per minute compared to other animals.
• They can ‘listen’ through their feet by detecting ground vibrations.
• Despite their size, Borneo elephants are capable of moving silently through dense forests.

Threats to their survival

• Palm oil deforestation: The expansion of palm oil plantations is one of the most significant threats to Borneo elephants. Vast areas of their natural habitat are being cleared to make way for these plantations, leading to habitat fragmentation and loss. This destruction not only reduces the space available for elephants to live and forage but also isolates populations, making it harder for them to find mates and sustain genetic diversity. The loss of habitat forces elephants into closer contact with humans, often leading to conflict situations.
• Habitat loss due to logging: Logging operations, both legal and illegal, are rampant in Borneo’s forests. The removal of large trees not only destroys the elephants’ habitat but also disrupts the forest structure, affecting the availability of food and water sources. The creation of logging roads further fragments the forest, creating barriers that elephants must navigate. This destruction of their environment can lead to malnutrition and increased mortality rates among the elephant population.
• Human encroachment and conflicts: As human populations grow and expand into previously wild areas, elephants find themselves increasingly squeezed into smaller habitats. Agricultural expansion, urban development, and infrastructure projects such as roads and dams encroach on their territory. This encroachment often results in human-elephant conflicts, where elephants raid crops and villages in search of food, leading to retaliation from local communities. Such conflicts can be fatal for both elephants and humans.
• Fragmentation of habitat: The fragmentation of forests into smaller, isolated patches significantly impacts Borneo elephants. Fragmented habitats can limit the elephants’ ability to migrate and access different parts of the forest for food and water. It also makes it harder for them to escape from poachers and other threats. Fragmentation often results in inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity, which can compromise the health and resilience of elephant populations.

Diet

Borneo elephants are herbivores, primarily feeding on a variety of plants, fruits, and tree bark. They require large amounts of water daily, which they often seek in rivers and other water bodies.

Mating and Reproduction

Borneo elephants have a gestation period of about 22 months, the longest of any mammal. Females usually give birth to a single calf, which is nurtured and protected by the entire herd. Calves are dependent on their mothers for milk for up to two years but start eating vegetation at around six months old.

Geographic Range

These elephants are confined to the northern and northeastern parts of Borneo, favouring lowland rainforests and river valleys. Their range is limited, and they often compete with humans for space and resources. Borneo’s nutrient-poor soils and the need for mineral sources also restrict their distribution.

Are Borneo Elephants Protected?

Several organisations are dedicated to the conservation of Borneo elephants, such as the Borneo Elephant Sanctuary and the Elephant Conservation Centre. These groups focus on habitat protection, research, and mitigating human-elephant conflicts.

Supreme Intelligence and Sensitivity

Borneo elephants are known for their gentle nature and remarkable intelligence. Their brains are the largest among all terrestrial mammals, 3-4 times bigger than human brains, although smaller in proportion to their body weight. Despite having poor vision, they possess a keen sense of smell and use their trunks to wave side to side or up in the air to better detect scents.

The elephant trunk is a multifunctional tool, used to explore the size, shape, and temperature of objects, lift food, and suck up water to drink. Borneo elephants can display a wide range of emotions, including laughing and crying. They have highly developed memories and can remember individuals and places for many years. These sensitive animals can feel grief and compassion, showing self-awareness, altruism, and playful behaviour. For instance, when a calf complains, the entire family gathers to show concern and caress the baby.

Elephants can ‘listen’ through their feet, detecting sub-sonic rumblings that cause ground vibrations, which they perceive by positioning their feet and trunks on the ground. Their ears consist of a complex system of blood vessels that help control their body temperature, allowing them to cool off by circulating blood through their ears

Bornean Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Further Information

Wikipedia contributors. (2024). Borneo elephant. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

Williams, C., Tiwari, S.K., Goswami, V.R., de Silva, S., Kumar, A., Baskaran, N., Yoganand, K. & Menon, V. 2020. Elephas maximus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T7140A45818198. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-3.RLTS.T7140A45818198.en. Accessed on 26 July 2024.

How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Mail
• Mastodon

Enter your email address

Sign Up

2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#AfricanElephant #Bantrophyhunting #Bornean #BorneanPygmyElephantElephasMaximusBorneensis #Borneo #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #elephants #endangered #EndangeredSpecies #humans #Indonesia #Malaysia #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #poaching #SouthEastAsia

Borneo Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Bornean Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Endangered

Population: fewer than 1,000

Locations: Sabah, Malaysia and Kalimantan, Indonesia.

The endearing Borneo Pygmy Elephant is a diminutive subspecies of the Asian Elephant. They are distinguished by their unusually large ears, baby-like faces, and remarkably long tails that sometimes drag on the ground. These gentle, docile and compact elephants are able to sense through their feet and despite their size are able to walk through the jungle with barely a sound. They are endangered due mainly to #palmoil deforestation and human persecution, with fewer than 1,500 individual elephants left alive.

Borneo’s elephants are genetically distinct from any South and Southeast Asian population and may have been isolated for over 300,000 years. Destruction across their range for corporate greed is out of control. Help their survival every time you shop and #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/js877ojzh6w

Gentle #endangered giants, only <1,500 Bornean Pygmy #Elephants 🐘💔 still live in #Borneo. They’re surrounded by #palmoil #deforestation and #poaching. Fight for them when you shop 👏☮️ and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🚫#Boycott4Wildlife every day! @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/bornean-pygmy-elephant-elephas-maximus-borneensis/

Laughing, crying, playing isn’t just done by #humans. #Bornean Pygmy #Elephants do the same! Fight for these intelligent, endearing beings 😻🐘🩶 who are #endangered by #palmoil #deforestation 👎🌴🚫 #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/bornean-pygmy-elephant-elephas-maximus-borneensis/

Appearances and behaviour

Borneo elephants are noticeably smaller than other Asian elephants, standing at 2-3 metres tall and weighing between 3-5 tonnes. They have a distinctly rotund appearance with their plump bellies, oversized ears, and long tails. Their trunks are equipped with a single finger-like muscle at the tip. This makes their trunks highly versatile and used for grasping objects, feeding, and drinking. Borneo Elephants are famous for their gentle and sensitive disposition, they are more docile compared to other elephants. They live in small herds, exhibiting strong social bonds and often seen playing and nurturing their young. These elephants communicate through low-frequency sounds and body language, displaying the full gamut of complex emotions from joy, mourning and grief, cheekiness and playfulness, anger and jealousy.

Fast facts

• Borneo elephants have a slower pulse rate of 27 beats per minute compared to other animals.
• They can ‘listen’ through their feet by detecting ground vibrations.
• Despite their size, Borneo elephants are capable of moving silently through dense forests.

Threats to their survival

• Palm oil deforestation: The expansion of palm oil plantations is one of the most significant threats to Borneo elephants. Vast areas of their natural habitat are being cleared to make way for these plantations, leading to habitat fragmentation and loss. This destruction not only reduces the space available for elephants to live and forage but also isolates populations, making it harder for them to find mates and sustain genetic diversity. The loss of habitat forces elephants into closer contact with humans, often leading to conflict situations.
• Habitat loss due to logging: Logging operations, both legal and illegal, are rampant in Borneo’s forests. The removal of large trees not only destroys the elephants’ habitat but also disrupts the forest structure, affecting the availability of food and water sources. The creation of logging roads further fragments the forest, creating barriers that elephants must navigate. This destruction of their environment can lead to malnutrition and increased mortality rates among the elephant population.
• Human encroachment and conflicts: As human populations grow and expand into previously wild areas, elephants find themselves increasingly squeezed into smaller habitats. Agricultural expansion, urban development, and infrastructure projects such as roads and dams encroach on their territory. This encroachment often results in human-elephant conflicts, where elephants raid crops and villages in search of food, leading to retaliation from local communities. Such conflicts can be fatal for both elephants and humans.
• Fragmentation of habitat: The fragmentation of forests into smaller, isolated patches significantly impacts Borneo elephants. Fragmented habitats can limit the elephants’ ability to migrate and access different parts of the forest for food and water. It also makes it harder for them to escape from poachers and other threats. Fragmentation often results in inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity, which can compromise the health and resilience of elephant populations.

Diet

Borneo elephants are herbivores, primarily feeding on a variety of plants, fruits, and tree bark. They require large amounts of water daily, which they often seek in rivers and other water bodies.

Mating and Reproduction

Borneo elephants have a gestation period of about 22 months, the longest of any mammal. Females usually give birth to a single calf, which is nurtured and protected by the entire herd. Calves are dependent on their mothers for milk for up to two years but start eating vegetation at around six months old.

Geographic Range

These elephants are confined to the northern and northeastern parts of Borneo, favouring lowland rainforests and river valleys. Their range is limited, and they often compete with humans for space and resources. Borneo’s nutrient-poor soils and the need for mineral sources also restrict their distribution.

Are Borneo Elephants Protected?

Several organisations are dedicated to the conservation of Borneo elephants, such as the Borneo Elephant Sanctuary and the Elephant Conservation Centre. These groups focus on habitat protection, research, and mitigating human-elephant conflicts.

Supreme Intelligence and Sensitivity

Borneo elephants are known for their gentle nature and remarkable intelligence. Their brains are the largest among all terrestrial mammals, 3-4 times bigger than human brains, although smaller in proportion to their body weight. Despite having poor vision, they possess a keen sense of smell and use their trunks to wave side to side or up in the air to better detect scents.

The elephant trunk is a multifunctional tool, used to explore the size, shape, and temperature of objects, lift food, and suck up water to drink. Borneo elephants can display a wide range of emotions, including laughing and crying. They have highly developed memories and can remember individuals and places for many years. These sensitive animals can feel grief and compassion, showing self-awareness, altruism, and playful behaviour. For instance, when a calf complains, the entire family gathers to show concern and caress the baby.

Elephants can ‘listen’ through their feet, detecting sub-sonic rumblings that cause ground vibrations, which they perceive by positioning their feet and trunks on the ground. Their ears consist of a complex system of blood vessels that help control their body temperature, allowing them to cool off by circulating blood through their ears

Bornean Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Further Information

Wikipedia contributors. (2024). Borneo elephant. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

Williams, C., Tiwari, S.K., Goswami, V.R., de Silva, S., Kumar, A., Baskaran, N., Yoganand, K. & Menon, V. 2020. Elephas maximus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T7140A45818198. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-3.RLTS.T7140A45818198.en. Accessed on 26 July 2024.

How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Mail
• Mastodon

Enter your email address

Sign Up

2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#AfricanElephant #Bantrophyhunting #Bornean #BorneanPygmyElephantElephasMaximusBorneensis #Borneo #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #elephants #endangered #EndangeredSpecies #humans #Indonesia #Malaysia #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #poaching #SouthEastAsia

Borneo Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Bornean Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Endangered

Population: fewer than 1,000

Locations: Sabah, Malaysia and Kalimantan, Indonesia.

The endearing Borneo Pygmy Elephant is a diminutive subspecies of the Asian Elephant. They are distinguished by their unusually large ears, baby-like faces, and remarkably long tails that sometimes drag on the ground. These gentle, docile and compact elephants are able to sense through their feet and despite their size are able to walk through the jungle with barely a sound. They are endangered due mainly to #palmoil deforestation and human persecution, with fewer than 1,500 individual elephants left alive.

Borneo’s elephants are genetically distinct from any South and Southeast Asian population and may have been isolated for over 300,000 years. Destruction across their range for corporate greed is out of control. Help their survival every time you shop and #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/js877ojzh6w

Gentle #endangered giants, only <1,500 Bornean Pygmy #Elephants 🐘💔 still live in #Borneo. They’re surrounded by #palmoil #deforestation and #poaching. Fight for them when you shop 👏☮️ and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🚫#Boycott4Wildlife every day! @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/bornean-pygmy-elephant-elephas-maximus-borneensis/

Laughing, crying, playing isn’t just done by #humans. #Bornean Pygmy #Elephants do the same! Fight for these intelligent, endearing beings 😻🐘🩶 who are #endangered by #palmoil #deforestation 👎🌴🚫 #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/bornean-pygmy-elephant-elephas-maximus-borneensis/

Appearances and behaviour

Borneo elephants are noticeably smaller than other Asian elephants, standing at 2-3 metres tall and weighing between 3-5 tonnes. They have a distinctly rotund appearance with their plump bellies, oversized ears, and long tails. Their trunks are equipped with a single finger-like muscle at the tip. This makes their trunks highly versatile and used for grasping objects, feeding, and drinking. Borneo Elephants are famous for their gentle and sensitive disposition, they are more docile compared to other elephants. They live in small herds, exhibiting strong social bonds and often seen playing and nurturing their young. These elephants communicate through low-frequency sounds and body language, displaying the full gamut of complex emotions from joy, mourning and grief, cheekiness and playfulness, anger and jealousy.

Fast facts

• Borneo elephants have a slower pulse rate of 27 beats per minute compared to other animals.
• They can ‘listen’ through their feet by detecting ground vibrations.
• Despite their size, Borneo elephants are capable of moving silently through dense forests.

Threats to their survival

• Palm oil deforestation: The expansion of palm oil plantations is one of the most significant threats to Borneo elephants. Vast areas of their natural habitat are being cleared to make way for these plantations, leading to habitat fragmentation and loss. This destruction not only reduces the space available for elephants to live and forage but also isolates populations, making it harder for them to find mates and sustain genetic diversity. The loss of habitat forces elephants into closer contact with humans, often leading to conflict situations.
• Habitat loss due to logging: Logging operations, both legal and illegal, are rampant in Borneo’s forests. The removal of large trees not only destroys the elephants’ habitat but also disrupts the forest structure, affecting the availability of food and water sources. The creation of logging roads further fragments the forest, creating barriers that elephants must navigate. This destruction of their environment can lead to malnutrition and increased mortality rates among the elephant population.
• Human encroachment and conflicts: As human populations grow and expand into previously wild areas, elephants find themselves increasingly squeezed into smaller habitats. Agricultural expansion, urban development, and infrastructure projects such as roads and dams encroach on their territory. This encroachment often results in human-elephant conflicts, where elephants raid crops and villages in search of food, leading to retaliation from local communities. Such conflicts can be fatal for both elephants and humans.
• Fragmentation of habitat: The fragmentation of forests into smaller, isolated patches significantly impacts Borneo elephants. Fragmented habitats can limit the elephants’ ability to migrate and access different parts of the forest for food and water. It also makes it harder for them to escape from poachers and other threats. Fragmentation often results in inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity, which can compromise the health and resilience of elephant populations.

Diet

Borneo elephants are herbivores, primarily feeding on a variety of plants, fruits, and tree bark. They require large amounts of water daily, which they often seek in rivers and other water bodies.

Mating and Reproduction

Borneo elephants have a gestation period of about 22 months, the longest of any mammal. Females usually give birth to a single calf, which is nurtured and protected by the entire herd. Calves are dependent on their mothers for milk for up to two years but start eating vegetation at around six months old.

Geographic Range

These elephants are confined to the northern and northeastern parts of Borneo, favouring lowland rainforests and river valleys. Their range is limited, and they often compete with humans for space and resources. Borneo’s nutrient-poor soils and the need for mineral sources also restrict their distribution.

Are Borneo Elephants Protected?

Several organisations are dedicated to the conservation of Borneo elephants, such as the Borneo Elephant Sanctuary and the Elephant Conservation Centre. These groups focus on habitat protection, research, and mitigating human-elephant conflicts.

Supreme Intelligence and Sensitivity

Borneo elephants are known for their gentle nature and remarkable intelligence. Their brains are the largest among all terrestrial mammals, 3-4 times bigger than human brains, although smaller in proportion to their body weight. Despite having poor vision, they possess a keen sense of smell and use their trunks to wave side to side or up in the air to better detect scents.

The elephant trunk is a multifunctional tool, used to explore the size, shape, and temperature of objects, lift food, and suck up water to drink. Borneo elephants can display a wide range of emotions, including laughing and crying. They have highly developed memories and can remember individuals and places for many years. These sensitive animals can feel grief and compassion, showing self-awareness, altruism, and playful behaviour. For instance, when a calf complains, the entire family gathers to show concern and caress the baby.

Elephants can ‘listen’ through their feet, detecting sub-sonic rumblings that cause ground vibrations, which they perceive by positioning their feet and trunks on the ground. Their ears consist of a complex system of blood vessels that help control their body temperature, allowing them to cool off by circulating blood through their ears

Bornean Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Further Information

Wikipedia contributors. (2024). Borneo elephant. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

Williams, C., Tiwari, S.K., Goswami, V.R., de Silva, S., Kumar, A., Baskaran, N., Yoganand, K. & Menon, V. 2020. Elephas maximus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T7140A45818198. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-3.RLTS.T7140A45818198.en. Accessed on 26 July 2024.

How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?

Take Action in Five Ways

1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• WordPress
• YouTube
• Mail
• Mastodon

Enter your email address

Sign Up

2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.

Wildlife Artist Juanchi Pérez

Read more

Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

Read more

Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao

Read more

Health Physician Dr Evan Allen

Read more

The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

Read more

How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy

Read more

3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.

https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20

https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20

https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20

4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.

5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here

#AfricanElephant #Bantrophyhunting #Bornean #BorneanPygmyElephantElephasMaximusBorneensis #Borneo #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #deforestation #elephants #endangered #EndangeredSpecies #humans #Indonesia #Malaysia #Pachyderm #pachyderms #palmOilDeforestation #palmoil #poaching #SouthEastAsia

Borneo Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Bornean Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Endangered

Population: fewer than 1,000

Locations: Sabah, Malaysia and Kalimantan, Indonesia.

The endearing Borneo Pygmy Elephant is a diminutive subspecies of the Asian Elephant. They are distinguished by their unusually large ears, baby-like faces, and remarkably long tails that sometimes drag on the ground. These gentle, docile and compact elephants are able to sense through their feet and despite their size are able to walk through the jungle with barely a sound. They are endangered due mainly to #palmoil deforestation and human persecution, with fewer than 1,500 individual elephants left alive.

Borneo’s elephants are genetically distinct from any South and Southeast Asian population and may have been isolated for over 300,000 years. Destruction across their range for corporate greed is out of control. Help their survival every time you shop and #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife

https://youtu.be/js877ojzh6w

Gentle #endangered giants, only <1,500 Bornean Pygmy #Elephants 🐘💔 still live in #Borneo. They’re surrounded by #palmoil #deforestation and #poaching. Fight for them when you shop 👏☮️ and #Boycottpalmoil 🌴🚫#Boycott4Wildlife every day! @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/bornean-pygmy-elephant-elephas-maximus-borneensis/

Laughing, crying, playing isn’t just done by #humans. #Bornean Pygmy #Elephants do the same! Fight for these intelligent, endearing beings 😻🐘🩶 who are #endangered by #palmoil #deforestation 👎🌴🚫 #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/01/19/bornean-pygmy-elephant-elephas-maximus-borneensis/

Appearances and behaviour

Borneo elephants are noticeably smaller than other Asian elephants, standing at 2-3 metres tall and weighing between 3-5 tonnes. They have a distinctly rotund appearance with their plump bellies, oversized ears, and long tails. Their trunks are equipped with a single finger-like muscle at the tip. This makes their trunks highly versatile and used for grasping objects, feeding, and drinking. Borneo Elephants are famous for their gentle and sensitive disposition, they are more docile compared to other elephants. They live in small herds, exhibiting strong social bonds and often seen playing and nurturing their young. These elephants communicate through low-frequency sounds and body language, displaying the full gamut of complex emotions from joy, mourning and grief, cheekiness and playfulness, anger and jealousy.

Fast facts

• Borneo elephants have a slower pulse rate of 27 beats per minute compared to other animals.
• They can ‘listen’ through their feet by detecting ground vibrations.
• Despite their size, Borneo elephants are capable of moving silently through dense forests.

Threats to their survival

• Palm oil deforestation: The expansion of palm oil plantations is one of the most significant threats to Borneo elephants. Vast areas of their natural habitat are being cleared to make way for these plantations, leading to habitat fragmentation and loss. This destruction not only reduces the space available for elephants to live and forage but also isolates populations, making it harder for them to find mates and sustain genetic diversity. The loss of habitat forces elephants into closer contact with humans, often leading to conflict situations.
• Habitat loss due to logging: Logging operations, both legal and illegal, are rampant in Borneo’s forests. The removal of large trees not only destroys the elephants’ habitat but also disrupts the forest structure, affecting the availability of food and water sources. The creation of logging roads further fragments the forest, creating barriers that elephants must navigate. This destruction of their environment can lead to malnutrition and increased mortality rates among the elephant population.
• Human encroachment and conflicts: As human populations grow and expand into previously wild areas, elephants find themselves increasingly squeezed into smaller habitats. Agricultural expansion, urban development, and infrastructure projects such as roads and dams encroach on their territory. This encroachment often results in human-elephant conflicts, where elephants raid crops and villages in search of food, leading to retaliation from local communities. Such conflicts can be fatal for both elephants and humans.
• Fragmentation of habitat: The fragmentation of forests into smaller, isolated patches significantly impacts Borneo elephants. Fragmented habitats can limit the elephants’ ability to migrate and access different parts of the forest for food and water. It also makes it harder for them to escape from poachers and other threats. Fragmentation often results in inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity, which can compromise the health and resilience of elephant populations.

Diet

Borneo elephants are herbivores, primarily feeding on a variety of plants, fruits, and tree bark. They require large amounts of water daily, which they often seek in rivers and other water bodies.

Mating and Reproduction

Borneo elephants have a gestation period of about 22 months, the longest of any mammal. Females usually give birth to a single calf, which is nurtured and protected by the entire herd. Calves are dependent on their mothers for milk for up to two years but start eating vegetation at around six months old.

Geographic Range

These elephants are confined to the northern and northeastern parts of Borneo, favouring lowland rainforests and river valleys. Their range is limited, and they often compete with humans for space and resources. Borneo’s nutrient-poor soils and the need for mineral sources also restrict their distribution.

Are Borneo Elephants Protected?

Several organisations are dedicated to the conservation of Borneo elephants, such as the Borneo Elephant Sanctuary and the Elephant Conservation Centre. These groups focus on habitat protection, research, and mitigating human-elephant conflicts.

Supreme Intelligence and Sensitivity

Borneo elephants are known for their gentle nature and remarkable intelligence. Their brains are the largest among all terrestrial mammals, 3-4 times bigger than human brains, although smaller in proportion to their body weight. Despite having poor vision, they possess a keen sense of smell and use their trunks to wave side to side or up in the air to better detect scents.

The elephant trunk is a multifunctional tool, used to explore the size, shape, and temperature of objects, lift food, and suck up water to drink. Borneo elephants can display a wide range of emotions, including laughing and crying. They have highly developed memories and can remember individuals and places for many years. These sensitive animals can feel grief and compassion, showing self-awareness, altruism, and playful behaviour. For instance, when a calf complains, the entire family gathers to show concern and caress the baby.

Elephants can ‘listen’ through their feet, detecting sub-sonic rumblings that cause ground vibrations, which they perceive by positioning their feet and trunks on the ground. Their ears consist of a complex system of blood vessels that help control their body temperature, allowing them to cool off by circulating blood through their ears

Bornean Pygmy Elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Further Information

Wikipedia contributors. (2024). Borneo elephant. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.

Williams, C., Tiwari, S.K., Goswami, V.R., de Silva, S., Kumar, A., Baskaran, N., Yoganand, K. & Menon, V. 2020. Elephas maximus. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2020: e.T7140A45818198. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2020-3.RLTS.T7140A45818198.en. Accessed on 26 July 2024.

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Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings

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The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert

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