Assignment Task: Elephants as Keystone Species in African Savanna
As in all biomes, African savanna has food webs. Its food webs often include one or more keystone species that play a major role in maintaining the structure and functioning of the ecosystem.
Ecologists view elephants as a keystone species in the African savanna. They eat woody shrubs and young trees. This helps keep the savanna from being overgrown by these woody plants and prevents the grasses from dying out. If this were to happen, antelopes, zebras, and other grass-eaters would leave the savanna in search of food and with them would go the carnivores such as lions and hyenas that feast on these grass-eaters. Elephants also dig for water during drought periods, creating or enlarging water-holes that are sued by other animals. Without African elephants, the savanna food web would collapse and the savanna would become shrubland.
Conservation scientists classify the African elephant as vulnerable to extinction. In 1979, there were an estimated 1.3 million wild African elephants. Today, an estimated 400,000 remain in the wild. This sharp decline is due mostly to the illegal killing of elephants for their valuable ivory tusks at an average rate of 96 animals a day in 2016. Since 1990, there has been an international ban of the sale of ivory and in some areas, elephants are protected as threatened or endangered species, but the illegal killing of elephants for their valuable ivory continues.
Another major threat to elephants is the loss and fragmentation of their habitats as human populations have expanded and taken over more land. Elephants are eating or trampling the crops of settlers who have moved into elephant habitat areas, and this led to the killing of some elephants by farmers - a problem being addressed by conservation scientists. If the multiple threats are not curtailed, elephants may disappear from the savanna within your lifetime.
Questions:
Q1. Explain the positive and negative implications of coexistence of man and wildlife in a common environment or habitat.
Q2. Do you think African governments would be justified in setting aside large areas of elephant habitat and prohibiting development there? Explain your reasoning.
Q3. What are other alternatives for preserving African elephants on the savanna?
Reference:
Miller, G. T., & Spoolman, S. (2019). Environmental Science. Cengage Learning, Inc.