Elephants, Rhinos and Other Large Plant-Eaters Face Extinction, Study Says

Sam Frizell for Time.com

May 4, 2015

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Will there be safaris in the Future? This is a question that could be asked in this time. A new study has found that the elephants and Rhinos in Africa could soon face their extinction. This means that there will not be any large grazing animals left on the earth in some years. Yet in the past years, the extinction of these types of animals has been increasing over time. This has been caused by excessive poaching for the tusks of these animals, due to that these have a great worth. The ivory from these animals can in total bring more money than even diamonds and gold are worth. Although animals like elephants and rhinos can regrow in their mass, it could still be that too many animals are poached that could eventually cause extinction between these species.

The article also states that eventually this excessive killing of these species could have “enormous ecological and social costs.” This means that if many of the over 100kg animals go extinct, it could mean that the succession in the regions of Africa could not work correctly, for example in the grasslands due to that the plants can grow further the whole time, yet there is no one who can limit the amount of grass that grows in this region. Further the article also states that there has been a decline of more than 62% of the whole elephant population in the time period of 2002 to 2011, this is only 9 years, and more than half of the total elephant population has been killed in this time period. Yet the killing is not the only factor that caused extinction. The overly destruction of forests has also caused the elephants to decline in population. They can’t find enough food anymore, as most of the trees that they have eaten before, are not present anymore.

Due to that no one is currently attempting to solve the problems of the poaching and destruction of habitats, the article critics what is going on, and that no one is trying to solve these problems. The people, who are dependent on poaching these animals or even eating them, actually should not be dependent on this, as it would mean a failing of the politics, which the article states passively. It states directly, that the crisis of the extinction has to be stopped, as otherwise all of these animals could eventually be lost.

Personally, I think that it is quite important for us to keep these animals. It should not be that animals are killed only because of the rich people wanting ivory for themselves. They don’t think about the consequences for the earth and even people who are dependent on these animals in other ways. It is not good to see that there has been a decline in the population of over half in only 9 years, which means that even until 2020, there could eventually be not a single elephant left in the wildlife. Already, to this date, there have been extinctions of certain rhinoceros types. For example, a single rhino is protected by almost a whole army, just because it is the last male left in the world, and other places like zoos only have female rhinos. This really won’t mean any good, if more and more elephants are going extinct, and in the end we could also lose all of them. So in conclusion, we should really not lose all the rhinos and elephants, as these are unique types of species, which should be rescued and not let to die.