Climate crisis kills 20 times more elephants in Kenya than poachers
The drought in eastern Africa is also taking a toll on elephants.
Parts of Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia are facing extreme drought that threatens the livelihoods of people and wildlife alike.
In Kenya, the drought has become an even greater threat to these massive animals than poaching, which has long posed a serious danger to the species.
Kenya's Cabinet Secretary for Wildlife and Tourism, Najib Balala, told the BBC this week that climate change is killing 20 times as many elephants as poaching.
«This is a red alert«, Mr Balala added.
The drought is so devastating that, according to reports from the broadcaster, nearly 180 elephants in the country died as a result of the drought last year. By comparison, fewer than 10 were poached.
According to the UN, 15 million people are affected by the drought, which has also struck parts of Ethiopia and Somalia. Three million animals have perished, and many areas are facing the threat of malnutrition.
According to a 2020 study, elephants can consume dozens of litres of water per day – and even more when temperatures rise. The authors of that study estimated that elephants would need to drink every two to three days in order to avoid critical water loss in hot weather.
Parts of Kenya have been experiencing a persistent drought for at least the past year. Separate BBC footage from December 2021 showed dead giraffes and cattle carcasses, while wildlife such as warthogs and doves gathered around watering troughs.
The African savanna elephant, which lives throughout sub-Saharan Africa, is listed as «endangered» on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, a global analysis of threatened species.
According to the IUCN, threats to the species — whose population is in decline — include poaching, habitat loss, and the effects of the climate crisis such as drought.
Poaching, which largely targets the extraction of ivory from elephant tusks, has reached an «unsustainable scale» in parts of the continent, the group adds. This is despite the fact that the ivory trade has been largely banned internationally since 1989.
The new report highlights the growing threat to wildlife posed by the climate crisis. In addition to drought, the warming of the planet is also having devastating effects on some Arctic wildlife such as polar bears, which depend on the ice in the north of the planet, as well as on animals such as sea turtles, whose beach nesting sites are threatened by rising sea levels and warming temperatures.
As the climate crisis accelerates, droughts in many parts of the world will become both drier and more frequent, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading authority in climate science.
