Elephant Diet Choices Are Helping Fight Climate Change
These giant herbivores prefer to eat from trees that don’t store much carbon, allowing high carbon storing trees to thrive, new research found.
An elephant splashes at sunset in the waters of the Chobe river in Botswana Chobe National Park, in the north eastern of the country on March 20, 2015.
Photographer: Chris Jek/AFP/Getty Images
Elephants’ preference for tasty leaves and large sweet fruits is helping mitigate global warming, according to new research that shows the importance to protect the mega-herbivores from extinction.
Asian and African elephants like to eat from small, leafy trees, leaving larger trees more space to grow. The latter absorb and store more planet-warming carbon dioxide and, as a result, forests with elephants hold more carbon than forests without them, according to a study published at Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Ecology on Monday.