How elephant extinction threatens everything from rainforests to musical instruments

Key takeaways

Why elephants are important to the ecosystem

Elephants eat the fruits from ebony and other trees, carrying the seeds in their digestive tracts for miles before depositing them, still intact, on the forest floor. Surrounded by elephant dung, and without the edible fruit the seeds come encased in, the researchers found the ebony seeds were protected from rodents that would otherwise eat them.

Studies show that the illegal ivory trade has driven an 86 percent decline in forest elephant populations over the past three decades. In forest regions without elephants, the study found 68 percent fewer ebony saplings.

"People think, 'Oh, it's a shame these magnificent creatures are threatened,' but what they don't understand is that we won't just lose elephants, we'll also lose the ecological functions they provide," said Smith, senior author of the study and a UCLA distinguished research professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "Forest elephants are a keystone species that disperse the seeds of both large and small rainforest trees. If they go extinct, we risk losing the ecological processes that sustain rainforests."

In addition to germinating less often, genetic testing revealed that the trees from areas without elephants became more inbred, growing in clusters where seeds dropped near parent trees, instead of miles away, where different gene pools could potentially mix. With a smaller range, the trees will lose genetic diversity, making them more vulnerable to disease and the impacts of climate change, Smith said.

"In other words, when elephants are removed from the ecosystem, ebony populations will severely decline and may ultimately collapse," Smith said. "In African rainforests, 80-90 percent of trees are dispersed by vertebrates - including great apes, birds, bats and antelopes. Without these species, the forests will eventually disappear. Our team has published numerous papers on the role of vertebrates in these processes, but we believe the focus on two emblematic species in this paper may help communicate the urgency."

In rainforests that have already lost their megafauna, like the giant ground sloths that once roamed the Amazon, trees with large seeds are only found in dwindling patches, Smith said - much like what researchers are starting to see with the ebony trees in the Congo rainforest. There, elephants are already absent from at least 65 percent of the ebony trees' historical range.

The importance of local and Indigenous knowledge

The UCLA-led study included authors from universities and institutes in Cameroon, Australia and four countries in Europe, as well as coauthors from rural Bantu and Indigenous Baka communities.

As part of the research, UCLA's Congo Basin Institute provided local communities with fruit-tree saplings, ebony tree seeds, training and plant nurseries. The fruit trees provide food and income, and local and Indigenous people joined the effort to grow ebony saplings from seeds. All the trees belong to the locals.

"My long view is that this project offers a grassroots approach to rainforest restoration," Smith said.

Working with the Indigenous Baka as escorts into the rainforest, the researchers mapped sections of the forest, marking the number and size of ebony trees, along with other trees valuable to the Baka and Bantu. In fruiting season, they collected the seeds and looked for evidence of animals eating the fruit, said the study's lead author, Vincent Deblauwe, a UCLA tropical forest ecologist and researcher with the Congo Basin Institute.

"When we did forest inventories to identify where ebony seedlings, saplings and trees grew, we weren't expecting to see large geographic differences," Deblauwe said. "But there was an obvious line between protected regions and hunted regions, with practically no young saplings in the parts of the forest without elephants. The few saplings we found there were clustered below the parent trees, as if no animals ever came to eat the fruits and disperse the seeds."

Deblauwe recalled asking the Baka for their theories. Coauthor Gaston Guy Mempong, a Baka elder, was among the group that discussed the issue and responded that it was probably because there were no more elephants in the hunting zones. The Baka explained that they had seen ebony seedlings germinating in elephant dung, Deblauwe said.

The research is the first to identify the indispensable role of elephants in the natural regeneration of ebony. The Ebony Project has planted 40,000 ebony trees and 20,000 fruit trees, which are already bearing both literal and figurative fruit.

"I've spent my life building guitars and growing a guitar company, but being part of The Ebony Project has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life," Taylor said. "It reminds me that sometimes the most important work is about planting seeds for others to benefit from."

Taylor has been and remains the primary funder for The Ebony Project, bolstering support for local communities and rainforest reforestation. A prestigious five-year, $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation helped seed the institute, with Taylor's private funding kick-starting its first project. But in the last few months, the federal government canceled two of the institute's USAID grants totaling $2 million, and canceled or suspended NASA and NSF programs that were key funding sources.

"We continue to do really groundbreaking work and provide crucial training to future scientists," Smith said. "But for groundbreaking work, you need funding, and for a project like this, you need long-term funding. It took almost 10 years to get this data."

The ebony research was funded with donations from Taylor and with grants from NASA, the Franklinia Foundation, the Global Environmental Facility, the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique and the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

Thumbnail photo of baby elephant by Manoj Shah/Getty