How Can We Let Asian Elephants Become Endangered When We Have Well Equipped Science Around Us?

The Asian Elephants, native to Southeast Asia (including Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and some parts of Africa) face threats of extinction every day due to increasing human population. Out in the wild, destruction of indigenous Asian Elephants’ habitats and hunting only satisfy humans, but does it keep elephants contented? These miraculous and some clever mammals contribute to the joys of ours when we visit zoos, however have humans ever contemplated these largely beautiful organism’s feelings?

The Asian elephants have lost vast majority of their natural habitat. “Humans have become their direct competitors for living space”. Due to the quick increase in population of humans, the need for food and space has risen; forests and living spaces for elephants, i.e. savannah habitats, have been used for growing crops, turning them into pastureland for livestock and since humans require of daily usage of vehicles or warmth, timbers are used for the fuel. In effect, the homes for elephants are being destroyed. This leads to human and elephant conflicts.

In addition, competition for food between humans and elephants intensifies. For example, in Kunene in Africa, elephants seem to be a threat for people – they cause damage to the crops, break infrastructures that are vital for the civilians, e.g. water pipes, and these become costly for the public.

The loss of elephant population results as humans begin to retaliate. On recent news, “a 57-year-old woman was slightly injured when she and a husband encountered an adult elephant (Asian) on Thursday in the east coast Telupid district in the latest human-elephant conflict”. A school of thought is that elephants may never actually come out of their homeland (i.e. jungle) and enter a city, however that is quite common now. It is mainly down to the fact that elephants are losing their habitat, which makes them ‘homeless’, and the only possible place to look for food and a place to live is to enter the city.

Not only human and elephants conflict lead to reduction in population of elephants, there has been a genetic threat too. Male Asian elephants carry tusks, therefore a target for illegal hunting would allow for poaching aimed at the tusks mainly. Tusks are used for ivory, which greatly reduces the number of male elephants. Having less male elephants would cause consequences, mainly due to the fact that poachers find it easier to kill the immature elephants as they would be a simple target, resulting in species unevenness. Moreover, this would lead to inbreeding and gradually lead to low breeding success as it would be widespread. Mortality rate would go up and genetic variation with larger gene pool will not be possible. Not only juvenile elephants would affect the breeding rate, killing larger elephants for tusks would also contribute a larger share since they will not exchange genetic material with another female species, thus the biodiversity would become less.

Humans stand up for each other, why can't we stand up for animals - in the end looking at classification, humans are defined as animals - so what's the difference. Stop this animal poaching for money sake, let's give them the rights they need!