The Conservation Of The Sumatran Elephant

Elephant populations suffered a drop in numbers that carried the species into the endangered animals list. At the beginning of the twentieth century, about ten million elephants lived in Africa. Presently, the ten million is reduced to half a million because of illegal hunting and habitat loss. Studies of the population show twenty-two thousand were killed in 2012 and twenty-five thousand in 2011. When comparing the death rate to the natural population growth, there is a possibility the largest mammal on Earth could be extinct soon (Vaughan 1). Because the elephant is the largest animal to walk on land, the greatly increasing human population affects the elephant population first. They live in some regions of the world that have the densest human population which continues to grow, which therefore continuously decreases their own population (Bryner 1). As the human population swiftly increases, the elephant population in turn, decreases. This is so because they cannot cohabitate the same living space. Elephants and humans cannot cohabitate because they would kill each other due to the inability to communicate. About population recovery, the Animal wildlife foundation states, “Populations of elephants- especially in Southern and Eastern Africa- that once showed promising signs of recovery could be at risk due to the recent surge in poaching for the illegal ivory trade”(1). Poaching presents one of the main issues that make recovery so difficult for these animals.

The official title of the world’s largest land dwelling animal belongs to the elephant, more specifically, the African elephant. Elephants also are some of the most deadly animals, which therefore increase the danger of human and elephant interactions. The more human interactions occur, the more deaths result, whether it is the elephant or the human who dies. These animals, surprisingly, are socially apt; their trunk is used for more than just eating and drinking- it is used for socializing. They are complex animals who live in large familial herds-females stay with their family throughout their entire lives while males only stay for approximately fifteen years (Elephant Protection, 1). Elephants possess a great memory and only forget what they learn occasionally and rarely, giving way to the “an elephant never forgets” saying (Maloiy, 178c). Despite how many people use the beloved saying, elephants may not be around much longer due to the shortened life span and increased mortality rates. Due to their incisor teeth, tusks, being extremely expensive and profitable, they are being murdered for the wealth they carry. This, coupled with the life span shortening because of malicious treatments and brutal practices reduces the life span of the African elephant from 56 to 16 years and the Asian elephant from 42 to 19 years (Elephant Protection, 1). According to what the statistics show, elephants may be following their ancestors to their death. Of the group of mammals called

Because of the poaching of game like the elephant, the number of species will start to diminish. What hunters brought to the villages of Botswana was the money and the meat from the animals to feed the many people that go hungry everyday. Hunters that would take animals such as an elephant wouldn’t take any of the meat for themselves but rather they give all of the meat to the villages in the area. However, when poaching starts to take over, there will be zero meat or money that will be put back into the community. Poachers that kill elephants are only after one thing and that is the ivory from the elephant tusks. After taking the tusks, the elephant is left to rot. Another animal that is sought after by poachers in Botswana is the rhino. The rhino is poached for their horns, which are supposedly an aphrodisiac in China so the demand is high. Because of these effects, groups like SCI are so important to different places around the world. The money brought in by the hunters is used to hire conservation officers to protect the rhinos and elephants and to buy land that will be put into game preserves so the numbers of these species will increase because there aren’t any pressures from hunting or

Trump’s lift on the ban of endangered elephant trophy imports into the U.S. is just another prime example of how politics and money take precedence over precious life and the environment. Fortunately, the new policy that Trump is considering is on-hold. According to Tanya Sernerib, Center for Biological Diversity Attorney, “we are in the midst of a poaching crisis. Elephant populations across Africa are declining”, she said in an interview with WCCO CBS Minnesota in November 2017. It was reported in that same broadcast that the elephant population on the African continent declined by 30% between 2007 and 2014 based on a report released by the Great Elephant Census Organization in 2016. If the ban is not lifted, those interested in sports

It's a widely known fact that poaching has been detrimental to the welfare and very existence of elephants. Despite countless efforts to thwart poaching and ivory trade missions, the number of elephant deaths at the hands of poachers is still critically high. IB Times reported in 2015 that due to poaching, a staggering 35,000 African elephants are killed each year—that translates to nearly 100 elephants

The African Bush elephants are found in eastern and southern Africa. Some of the areas with the highest densities of the Bush elephant is: Tanzania, South African, Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. The African Bush elephant is terrestrial. The Bush elephant usually live in the grasslands, semi-deserts and the bush lands. They also clear out forest and turn them into more of grassland, by knocking down the trees. The climate that the Bush elephant normally lives in is dry and hot. Their thin hairs and ears help them stay cool. Another way that they stay cool is that their hides become more permeable in the heat. Scientists has performed research on 13 elephants (African and Asian), they measure the release of heat and moisture. What they have found was that their skin opens up at air temperatures as low at 10°C to 12°C, this is what allows them to perspire. Elephants are different than most mammals, that sweats through glands connected to pores, elephants only have pores between their toes. Elephants do not sweat (Phillips, 1992). By all of the skin being permeable they lose more

When one imagines what elephants are like in the wild, they imagine giant animals roaming the land eating plenty of food and drinking plenty of water. The average person may not know, or understand, that there are people that practice the illegal killing of elephants, or poaching, in order to obtain and then sell or trade that ivory for whatever is valuable to the poacher. Poaching is illegal because it has led to the significant decline in the elephant population in recent years and can very well lead to severe endangerment or worse, extinction. Elephants are more than just animals that graze on the land, but they are animals that can spread the seeds of the plants they eat. Elephants roam a large area of land, and therefore, spread seeds via their dung. This is great for plants that have no ways of transportation, except for falling next to their parent plant. Along with the vast spreading of seeds, “the seeds that are in elephant stomachs are softened, which means the seeds are able to germinate faster than seeds that have not been softened”(Scientificamerican). Due to this there must be lots of plants that have been dependent on elephants because of co-evolution. The poaching of elephants is an issue that must be looked into not only because of reasons stated above, but also because the extinction of a certain species can only cause a domino effect of cataclysms.

Because of the poaching of African elephants there has been a decrease in the average weight of their tusks, poachers look for elephants with larger tusks. This has been recorded by the Uganda Game Department between 1925 to 1928 (Dawkins, 2009). Natural selections is a mechanism of evolution beginning with variations of traits within a population, these variations must be heritable in order to be passed to offspring, there must also be differential reproductive success, this causes the organisms with the favorable gene to survive and pass the trait on to future generations (Berkeley.edu, 2015). Poaching results in natural selection because there is a variation in the gene that codes for tusk sizes. The larger tusks are being targeted and killed, smaller tusked elephants remain giving them a better chance to reproduce and pass their genes, causing the genes that result in smaller tusks to appear more frequently. Directional selection, which is a mode of natural selection, is happening in this population because one phenotype is more favorable. These elephants are displaying a change in genetic frequency, a result of a mutation causing variation in tusk size. This is a heritable trait, the genes that code for smaller tusk sizes are being passed down more than those for larger tusk sizes. Evolution is the change frequency of allele, because the elephants with the larger tusks are being killed the elephants with smaller tusks are left with the best fitness. This leads to a

Back in the early part of the 20th century there may have been as many as three million african elephants. Now there are only 470,000 elephants left in Africa,and the number is declining each day.(wwf,panda.org). Since 1984, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has been dedicated to protecting endangered species using investigations to help polices and actions that protect animals that are endangered like whales, elephants, rhinos, whales, and dolphins . EIA is exposing illegal ivory trade routes and advocates to stop the trade and to protect elephants.Poachers are killing a lot of rhinos because the profit from the rapidly growing demand for Rhino horn in Asia. Poachers are killing whales for their blubber and for fat, and,also for lamp oil. Gorillas can be pets for some people,so they just take the gorillas out the wild. Also gorillas are poached for trophies and their body parts. I am so upset how people kill harmless animals just for sport and just for pure

When discussing about the global ivory trade one must consider the social issues that impacts the common people who share the same land as the elephants. A major misconception that people have is the belief that elephants only live on game reserves. In reality, elephants inhabit the same lands with their human neighbors. Because of this fact, the elephant population sometimes pose as a nuisance to human life and activities. As their population because more populated, elephants can sometimes wander out of the natural parks boundaries and into human communities which can create

Specific animals like elephants, tigers, lions, and rhinoceroses should be preserved because of their roles within their respective ecosystems. Elephants, the ¨mega gardeners” of the forest, are essential to the transportation of seeds that maintain tree diversity. When we lose elephants, full extinction is estimated to occur by 2020, we lose not only the species but their ecological role (African Elephants face extinction, 2008). The wise leaders of past lives, elephants used to settle debates of the forest and create vital watering holes for smaller animals as the noble masters in fables told by African natives. When poaching finally takes the last living elephant due to selfishness, many African countries lose both a species, and a culture. Tigers - walking gold to poachers- are worth a fortune on the black market for their beautiful fur coats and bones, used for a delicate Chinese wine (Guynup, S., 2015). The last three thousand wild tigers are facing

Just imagine life without any elephants, wiped out just like the dinosaurs. In the early 1980’s, there were more than a million reported elephants in Africa. Tragically, during that decade, 600,000 elephants were destroyed for ivory products. Today, conceivably no more than 400,000 elephants remain across the continent. Elephants are facing a very real threat of extinction; In fact, the African elephants are listed on the

The African Bush Elephant, Loxodonta has adapted to suit its harsh environment. They can be found in most of Zimbabwe and Botswana. The rainfall in Botswana mainly occurs in December, January and February which is the wet season. There is 600mm of rain in the north-east of Botswana and 200mm in the drier south-west. (Siyabona Africa, 2014, stated)

Irwin (n.d) wrote, writes “I believe our biggest issue is the same biggest issue that the whole world is facing, and that’s habitat destruction...some 46-58 thousand square miles of forest are lost each year equivalent to 48 football fields every minute.” (para.7/5). “In Asia the elephant population is dwindling to around 20% because of the habitat loss from people who live in or around their habitat.” (World Wildlife fund, 2014, para.) The Asian conflict primarily revolves around elephants being taken from the wild while alive, for Thailand’s tourism industry. The brazilin soy plantations not only harm the environment around it but also the poor people who are taken from villages and slums to be forced to work in the plantations in barbaric conditions. For example, children work inhuman shifts, even at gunpoint, and those who get sick are abandoned and replaced by others. For hundreds of years habitat loss has been plaguing the human race, but more so the animals because people are not only destroying their home but forcing them to come into the city, and then most people would call them nosiness and try to kill them. The three major causes of habitat loss around the world are deforestation, agricultural development, and overgrazing.

Elephants, scientifically known as Loxodonta africana, are such remarkable animals, being the largest land mammal. Elephants are native to 37 countries in Africa and 13 countries in Asia; there are roughly four hundred and seventy thousand of them left. (“AWF – Learn about the elephant!”). They are friendly creatures that are unfortunately in danger due to the arrogance of the human population.