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It looks like when you hear the expression “it looks like a herd of elephants came through here” you might not visualize a healthy and prosperous forest with a lot of upright trees. However, some populations of elephants are adapted to forest life and not only do those forests generally remain standing, but those elephants and their picky taste buds are doing a favor for not just the forest, but the entire planet. This is because of their ability to sequester carbon, which is one of the best tools we have for fighting climate change.
By preferring leaves with lower wood density, elephants are toppling, eating, and ultimately thinning the trees that are less efficient at carbon capture and leaving those that are more efficient. Additionally, when elephants eat fruit from trees with higher wood density, it helps to spread their seeds around which ultimately increases the number of dense wood trees in the forest, which helps increase carbon storage.
The authors suggest that the effect on high wood density trees alone could mean that a forest without any elephants might store up to 9 percent less carbon in its trees. Elephants also aren’t the only large herbivores that can have this kind of impact on carbon stocks, as the presence of any kind of large wild herbivores seems to contribute positively to soil carbon not just in forests, but also in grasslands. During the late pleistocene, there were at least 50 different species of mega herbivores worldwide, and while they ate a lot of plants, they also helped spread seeds around, cycle nutrients, and make ecosystems less susceptible to fire, and it seems likely they contributed to carbon storage as well.