Yes, this is supposed to be a blog on sustainable building, but once in a while let’s veer away from all that and delve into something about the natural world. Specifically, saving elephants.
A baby elephant follows its parent. (Image from mnn.com)
I’m writing this because of last week’s news about radioactive carbon and how it can be used to date a piece of ivory and determine whether it recently came an illegal poaching. The sad fact is that despite rigorous bans ivory trade is still ongoing in the world, especially in some parts of Asia. There, ivory fetches a hefty sum of $1,300 per pound, only to be carved and used in fancy ornamental pieces and—in a deeply ironic and disheartening way—for religious icons.
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A few months back, I remember my and grandmother and I chanced upon an episode of the Discovery Channel featuring elephants. The episode was about to wrap up so we didn’t hear much, and were simply left awed by those massive, gentle beasts walking on the savanna grasses. In informed her about the sad fate awaiting many elephants: being hunted down (elephants are obviously an easy prey) and then stripped of their tusks. I told her that elephant gestation takes about two years, and then only one offspring is born, which makes elephant population all the more precarious.
Then she asked me: What good are elephants for anyway? Why the need for saving elephants?
That stumped me. All I could offer was another trivia I had read somewhere: elephants are supposedly intelligent and emotional creatures. They “grieve” over their dead family members, even carrying out a ritual of burying them. I was trying to humanize elephants for my grandmother, but I think she was unamazed.
Despite bans, ivory trade continues to be a booming business for illegal poachers.
But now, reading more about elephants, I learned something new and important about them. In the grassy region of Africa, elephants are regarded as keystone species, a term coined by zoologist Robert T. Paine to describe a species that has an enormous impact on their environment.
Take away the elephants and the environment drastically changes, affecting all other species in a subtle but cruel domino effect. Apparently, elephants do the African savanna a great service by trampling saplings and uprooting small trees with their trunks, thus making space for more grasses to grow and preventing the land from turning into a forest or woodland.
In turn, the grasses provide food for the zebras, giraffes, antelopes, wildebeests, and other grazers, which in turn become prey for predators like hyenas and lions. The waterholes that elephants dig serve as a water source for other species. Also, elephants encourage new growths of trees by eating and dispersing seeds which happen to have thick shells only an elephant can break open. Needless to say, elephant dung fertilizes the land so it yields more grass.
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Back to the radiocarbon dating and its role in saving elephants. This is based on the premise that the radioactive carbon released in the atmosphere during the 1950’s and 1960’s nuclear bomb tests were absorbed by plants, which in turn were eaten by herbivorous elephants.
Since carbon-14 effectively becomes ingrained in the animal’s cells, including its tusk, researchers can pinpoint at what point in time an elephant died just by comparing the levels of that isotope contained in a piece of ivory against the levels in the atmosphere at various points in the bomb curve. This will help in differentiating the legal market tusks from the ones that were illegally poached.
Tears well up in my eyes as I think about elephants and the slaughter that awaits some if not most of them. Whatever the case, whether radioactive carbon dating works or not, there should not be a demand for ivory in the first place. No elephant should have to sacrifice its tusk just for someone to feel glorious in the possession of a fancy ivory item.
