In the article that I chose to discuss this week, titled “Conservation and Behavior of Africa’s ‘Big Five’” by Tim Caro and Jason Riggio, the effect that Africa’s big five (lion, leopard, buffalo, black and white rhinoceros, and the elephant) behavioral knowledge in their conservation was explored. With population of the African elephant now estimated to be around 500,000, the IUCN has listed it as vulnerable. This is mainly due to the demand for ivory in China that is growing rapidly due to an expanding middle class. These elephants that remain exist largely in protected areas and they travel through “corridors” to other enclosed areas to feed. These are necessary to spread out the damage that the elephants can cause on an area. Elephants can turn a woodland into a grassland very fast, and could end up running themselves extinct if they are not free to roam. These corridors are becoming more and more infrequent due to them being broken up by the human population. Elephant hunting is actually accepted by many African countries mostly because it brings in tourists and that means more money for their economy. Elephants are matriarchal and bulls are normally solitary, rarely traveling in a group of more than 3. With all of this taken into account, it is much easier for conservationists to succeed in co-existing with these elephants.

I agree that this is a very important step to conserving not only elephants, but any animal. It is necessary to know and understand what an animal needs and how they exist without any human intervention before someone tries to step in and intervene for the growth of the animal populace. Because culling is hoped to be a last resort by all governments, I believe that hunting them, while I may not agree with it, will help keep the population under control but still able to thrive. Unlike culling, the government can take complete control of the trophy hunting and profits from it in large amounts. They even charge huge fees to transport the chosen trophy of the elephant back to whatever country the hunter is from. And the corridors that were mentioned earlier are also vital and I believe that more care should be taken to help these last. They truly are a network of different places for the elephant to thrive and also very important to keep the environment stable.