Save the...Elephants by Sarah L. Thomson & Chelsea Clinton

Author:Sarah L. Thomson & Chelsea Clinton [Thomson, Sarah L. & Clinton, Chelsea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2022-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

Just by finding the food they need, these African forest elephants are helping to protect the world from climate change.

They tend to knock down softwood trees that are less than one foot thick. “Softwood” means just what it sounds like—the wood from these kinds of trees is soft and easy for elephants to chew.

So as elephants move through the forest, they take down smaller softwood trees and leave the larger hardwood trees alone. (You guessed it—“hardwood” means just what it sounds like, too—trees that have tougher, stronger wood.) Then the bigger trees have more room to grow. It’s easier for sunlight to reach them. So they just keep on getting bigger.

Over time, forests where elephants live have more bigger hardwood trees and fewer smaller softwood trees. And that’s important, because trees (and other plants) take a gas called carbon dioxide into their leaves. Their leaves also give out oxygen.

Oxygen is what humans (and elephants and other animals) need to breathe. We’d die without it. And carbon dioxide is one of the gases that helps trap heat in the atmosphere. It makes global warming worse.

The small trees that the elephants knock over take in small amounts of carbon dioxide. But the big ones that the elephants leave standing? They soak up a lot of carbon dioxide.

By making the forest a better place for big trees, forest elephants are helping to fight global warming. If humans can do the same thing, it will be good for the elephants and for us.

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