Status
Critically Endangered
Habitat
Congo Basin rainforest
Range
Africa
Group
Elephants
The species that plants the rainforest it walks through.
Forest elephants disperse the seeds of large-fruited trees that nothing else can swallow. Those trees are among the densest-wooded and highest carbon-storing in the Congo Basin. Lose the elephant and you slowly lose the forest's carbon architecture.
Populations have fallen by more than eighty-six percent over thirty-one years. They breed slowly, first calving in their twenties, which makes recovery a multi-generational proposition even under perfect protection.
Where we photograph it
The open shelf
More frames of the african forest elephant
Streamed live from the Commons Quality Images archive, fifteen at a time. For viewing here — each frame remains its photographer’s.
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