The human being responds viscerally to the sight of an elephant’s mutilated corpse. With it’s ivory untidily hacked away and it’s eyes dulled with lost awareness, an elephant hunted for its ivory elicits an obvious reaction from human beings.
It was on the back of images of this atrocity, that elephant conservation, as an agenda, was born. Organisations such as ours were able to achieve a foothold in Africa’s wild spaces because enough people saw images of the like described above and thought enough is enough.
However, as we have found occasion to write about often enough recently, the threats facing elephant conservation today are already much-changed from the era of hunting and poaching.
Poaching still exists, as does trophy hunting. Both result in the unnecessary deaths of too many, and will continue to do so for too long. However, poaching’s day as a real threat to the stability of elephant populations in Africa was done to day that safari-tourism proved itself a profitable industry.
But elephants, as well as all their wild neighbours, are still under threat. Africa’s human population is blooming in a way that is unrivalled on any other continent. And, even as the elephant population’s recover in certain countries, Kenya and Tanzania two amongst those success stories, this human population boom poses challenges.
If human settlement is allowed to expand unmanaged, it will fragment the rangelands of wildlife. For elephant, whose migratory paths are enormous, this is especially worrying. Already cut-off from historic sites of importance to them, they’ll be further distanced from watering holes and areas of food security that have long sustained them.
Furthermore, isolated elephant populations are at increased risk to disease. Genetic erosion is the process whereby isolated populations lose too many individuals before they get the chance to find a mate and therefore pass on their unique genetic traits to the next generation. Isolated populations lose out on that individual’s increased adaptability if it never gets to pass it’s genetic signature forward. This can ‘fast-track’ a species’ decline.
This is why land-management is at the centre of modern elephant conservation.
Without elephant, we lost a keystone species in the African savannah. We’ve written about it before, but suffice it to say here that without elephant, savannah land’s deteriorate. The savannah ecosystem, like every ecosystem, is a product of all of it’s parts. And the planet is dependent on all of it’s ecosystems operating healthily.
So, here we arrive at, lengthily and with our focus on elephant conservation, the topic of biodiversity. It is, as we have come increasingly to hear about, incredibly important if we are to maintain the health of our planet. Our planet’s plant, animal and fungal lifeforms have adapted to their homes here alongside one another.
They sustain, manage and bring the best out of one another (however, destructively). And we must preserve biodiversity if we are to keep this planet healthily spinning.
So, what can you, sitting at home in the US or Europe or here in Africa, do to promote our planet’s biodiversity?
Here is a short list, inspired and adapted from the Nature Trust of British Columbia’s own list, on how everyone can get involved in the protection and promotion of biodiversity:
- Monitor, assess and limit the impact the owning of pets can have on native plant, animal and fungal life. Our domestic cats and dogs are very important to us. But they are also, often imported into a new space that was not designed with them in mind. Especially destructive house pets outcompete certain of their newly-neighbouring species, they kill others and they can destroy the liveable spaces for still more. Keep an eye on your pets and be considered when you wonder at whether you want more.
- Use natural products and methods (as best as you possibly can) in your efforts at pest control. Pest control is, of course, essential if we are to make our productive lands, well, productive. The unchecked, indiscriminate use of pest control can, however, harm life matter that wasn’t a pest. Research your pest control methods and materials. Without doing so, you may harm your area in a way that is even counter-productive to production.
- Dispose of hazardous materials safely. Materials that are harmful to our native environments comprise many of our everyday, household furnishings. They are useful and, occasionally, essential to us but they must be disposed of safely. If they aren’t, they’re environmental impact can be long-lasting and destructive.
- Maintain natural wetlands. Wetlands get a bad name. They’re considered incubators for disease, hotbeds for pests. And, of course, they are. They are propagation points. Life thrives in wetlands and some of it is threatening. We aren’t saying you shouldn’t manage wetlands on your property in a way that suits you, but be considerate. Life teems there and that life, small, often irritating, seemingly inconsequential, is essential to biodiversity.
- Promote wild practices. Re-wilding is becoming an increasingly talked-about subject. It is the practice of letting go of the management of one’s land, leaving the job to once again be taken up by that great organiser: the ecosystem. If you have a space that you don’t need for productive purposes, consider letting the wild reclaim it. It may take time but you just might see the return of certain species that were looking for a new, happy home.