Think of African elephants and you can imagine them roaming between open grasslands or making their homes in the forests. But in northwestern Namibia, amid an arid landscape of rocky mountains, sand and shingle plains, herds of elephants have adapted to desert life.
They are one of only two populations of desert-adapted elephants in the world and to survive in this harsh environment they have developed unique characteristics. Their larger feet allow them to move more easily in soft sandy terrain.
Their feet also serve as a useful tool, along with their trunks, for finding water deep in the ground. They can go several days without drinking and have been observed storing water in a pharyngeal pouch in their throats, which they collect, when necessary, with their trunks.
But its most important adaptation is memory, according to Dr. Malan Lindeque, a Namibian zoologist and expert in elephant population ecology.
“They have excellent group memory — presumably maintained mainly by adults — and knowledge of widely dispersed water sources, which allow these elephants to move over very large areas, the largest recorded home ranges for elephants anywhere,” he said. Lindeque to CNN . “This allows them to look for favorable locations with enough plant material.”
He added that while other elephants forage for food and water within a radius of 20 kilometers, desert elephants can move 100 to 150 kilometers a day between water points, “often in a fairly straight line, demonstrating their knowledge of the location of these places.”
According to Elephant Human Relations Aid (EHRA), a conservation organization in Namibia, an estimated 62 desert-dwelling elephants live in the dry riverbeds of the southern Kunene and northern Erongo regions.
It is just a fraction of the 2,500 to 3,500 who lived in the Namibe region in the 18th century. Hunting, poaching, growing human populations, and political strife contributed to its decline.
Between 1970 and 1980 desert elephants completely disappeared from the Ugab River area, but in the late 1990s they began to return and today several herds roam freely in these parts.
But in this hostile environment, its survival is uncertain. The scarcity of food and water means that they regularly come into conflict with another species — humans.
shrinking giants
Human-elephant conflict is a problem across Africa and can result in deaths on both sides, as well as elephants being driven out of areas. In Namibia, elephants regularly venture into villages in search of food and water, where they can damage community water ponds and devastate subsistence farmers’ crops. This can cause significant tensions between them and economically vulnerable communities.
In 2009, EHRA established Project PEACE (People and Elephants Friendly Co-Existing), whose work includes monitoring elephant movements, ensuring communities and elephants have separate water points, and protecting village solar panels from potential damage. caused by elephants.
It also works to educate people about the value of the world’s largest land mammal. “Our generation, in 2018 they don’t know the elephant. But today, the EHRA teaches everyone about elephant behavior,” explained PEACE coordinator Herman Kasaona.
Kasaona has lived his entire life in northwest Namibia, where his father taught him to respect and track wildlife. In turn, he is teaching the next generation of “elephant guardians”, including Taiwin Garoeb, who admits he used to be afraid of animals.
“I would run away, but when I started running the PEACE project, I learned that elephants are very unique,” he said. “There is a way to change yourself that when you see elephants, there is no need to run anymore.”
From time to time elephants venture into the community, usually looking for a vegetable garden. One of the guardians’ responsibilities is to be the first to respond to such incidents.
“When I get to the farm, I have to check where the elephants have invaded, what the damage is,” Garoeb said. “If I have the right tools, I have to start building the fence again.”
This involves covering the repaired fence with a thick black paste made from chili peppers mixed with old motor oil, which acts as a deterrent to elephants. “[Elefantes] don’t like the smell,” Garoeb said. “They can smell it at 50 meters, so they don’t go any closer to the garden.”
Both Kasaona and Garoeb have been named guardians of elephants by the community, an example of Namibia’s broader community-led conservation model, where conservation is managed by the ancestral guardians of the land.
This model is increasingly being implemented in elephant areas in other parts of Africa, according to Ian Craig, conservation director at NRT Kenya, which develops community conservation areas.
“In Kenya, community conservation is an emerging and extremely effective conservation sector and recognized as such by national and municipal governments,” he said.
He added that while the model may not work for all locations, “the basic principles of property and community-led conservation are a complete game-changer in terms of gaining space for wildlife.”
“For Kenya, it is now about changing the conservation narrative to be more inclusive of people’s needs and establishing systems where people and wildlife can live in some beneficial way.”
At the beginning of the 20th century, there were about 3 to 5 million African elephants, but today there are approximately 400,000 left. As a keystone species, they can have a huge impact on the environment. Everything from their foraging habits to their dung plays a critical role in shaping their natural world, benefiting other animals and plants.
“Elephants are the architects of a diverse and healthy ecosystem,” Craig said.
He added that he is seeing some elephant conservation success stories across the continent — for example, the Elephant Protection Initiative (EPI) — a coalition of 21 African countries that support international bans on the sale of ivory.
Kasaone is also optimistic about the future of the desert elephants he protects. For him, his work success is connecting humans and elephants, highlighting our similarities. “The difference between humans and elephants is not that far apart, he said.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
