Once a common sight roaming across East, Central and Southern Africa, there are now fewer than 30 African elephants (Loxodonta africana) with tusks long enough to reach the ground. Known as ‘big tuskers’, these giants inevitably attract the unwanted attention of ivory poachers.
Over a third of them are found in Tsavo National Park, Kenya, with the remaining handful of individuals spread far and wide across Africa.
At Tsavo, ten are under the careful guardianship of Richard Moller, CEO of the Tsavo Trust, who has the challenging task of keeping these precious animals safe. These figures feel astonishingly small, but Moller remains positive, having identified another 16 elephants within Tsavo that are on target to have record breaking tusks within the next decade.
“Given just another five to ten years of life these new bulls will be the big tuskers of tomorrow, and they are living proof of the extra ordinary gene pool of tuskers that Tsavo enjoys,” says Moller.
“A big tusker will have a pair of tusks, with each weighing as much as a person," explains Ian Redmond OBE, a renowned conservationist specialising in elephants and apes. “An elephant with effectively two people permanently balanced on its head must have both the skeleton and musculature to cope with that, so in essence a big tusker will be huge in every aspect.”
These fine bulls should reach their prime between 40 and 50 years of age. This time when they reach their reproductive peak, also coincides with the most pronounced tusk growth rate. “An elephant will grow more ivory in the last ten years of its life, than in the first ten or twenty,” confirms Redmond.
Their weighty teeth are the key to reproductive success, as they will be used to bully and intimidate less well-endowed males, and also size really does seem to matter among the females. But due to man’s insatiable greed for ivory, these huge tusks have become the metaphorical albatross around their necks.
Credits :
Is There Hope For The Last of The Big Tusker Elephants
By Christina Holvey
BBC Earth
26 December 2016
Over a third of them are found in Tsavo National Park, Kenya, with the remaining handful of individuals spread far and wide across Africa.
At Tsavo, ten are under the careful guardianship of Richard Moller, CEO of the Tsavo Trust, who has the challenging task of keeping these precious animals safe. These figures feel astonishingly small, but Moller remains positive, having identified another 16 elephants within Tsavo that are on target to have record breaking tusks within the next decade.
“Given just another five to ten years of life these new bulls will be the big tuskers of tomorrow, and they are living proof of the extra ordinary gene pool of tuskers that Tsavo enjoys,” says Moller.
“A big tusker will have a pair of tusks, with each weighing as much as a person," explains Ian Redmond OBE, a renowned conservationist specialising in elephants and apes. “An elephant with effectively two people permanently balanced on its head must have both the skeleton and musculature to cope with that, so in essence a big tusker will be huge in every aspect.”
These fine bulls should reach their prime between 40 and 50 years of age. This time when they reach their reproductive peak, also coincides with the most pronounced tusk growth rate. “An elephant will grow more ivory in the last ten years of its life, than in the first ten or twenty,” confirms Redmond.
Their weighty teeth are the key to reproductive success, as they will be used to bully and intimidate less well-endowed males, and also size really does seem to matter among the females. But due to man’s insatiable greed for ivory, these huge tusks have become the metaphorical albatross around their necks.
Credits :
Is There Hope For The Last of The Big Tusker Elephants
By Christina Holvey
BBC Earth
26 December 2016
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