Habitat loss, poaching and global warming are spelling doom for creatures all across the globe.

Imagine telling your children tales of great beasts that once roamed the earth. Big, fantastic looking creatures with incredible features beyond belief. No, you wouldn’t necessarily be talking about dinosaurs. You could be describing elephants, rhinos, hippos and gorillas—large herbivores facing extinction.

“The situation is so dire,” reports the Washington Post, that it threatens an “empty landscape” in some ecosystems “across much of the planet Earth.” According to a new report, 60 percent of these massive creatures are facing extinction.

But unlike the dinosaurs (who most scientists believe were wiped out by a massive meteoroid), large herbivores face demise as a result of something much less random: humans.

“Growing human populations, unsustainable hunting, high densities of livestock, and habitat loss have devastating consequences for large, long-lived, slow-breeding, and, therefore, vulnerable herbivore species,” reads “Collapse of the world’s largest herbivores” in Science Advances, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

We know the culprits, even if we’ve never set foot in Africa, where most of these creatures reside: poaching, habitat loss and environmental degradation. According to the Post, the animals have only about 19 percent of their historical ranges left to roam on, with the elephant, hippopotamus and black rhinoceros “now living on ‘tiny fractions’ of their previous empires.”

“Between 2002 and 2011 alone, the number of forest elephants in central Africa declined by 62 percent. Some 100,000 African elephants were poached between 2010 and 2012. And the western black rhinoceros in Africa was declared extinct in 2011,” reports the Post.

“This slaughter is driven by the high retail price of rhinoceros horn, which exceeds, per unit weight, that of gold, diamonds, or cocaine,” according to the study.

According to the researchers, changes are happening so rapidly that much of the world’s ecological landscape will be virtually unrecognizable in the next several years, “resulting in enormous ecological and social costs.”

And if you think the loss just means a safari visit without elephants or hippos in sight, you’d be wrong. These large herbivores aren’t just wildlife porn, they actually play crucial roles in their ecosystems, according to the Post, “expanding grasslands for plant species, dispersing seeds in manure, and, in the ultimate sacrifice, providing food for predators.”

So, what can you do? The researchers say we’re all tasked with saving these animals, particularly those among us who can afford to allocate funds to the cause: “The world’s wealthier populations will need to provide the resources essential for ensuring the preservation of our global natural heritage of large herbivores. A sense of justice and development is essential to ensure that local populations can benefit fairly from large herbivore protection and thereby have a vested interest in it.”

It’s either that, or we learn to tell our grandchildren the unbelievable tales of gorillas, elephants and other herbivorous creatures that used to call earth home, once upon a time.

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Elephant image via Shutterstock 

The post Elephants are Basically Dinosaurs: Habitat Loss, Poaching and Global Warming are Killing Our Favorite Animals appeared first on EcoSalon.

Sometimes I wonder why I don’t just Google a celebrity of the day in the morning to get my daily news. Maybe if I just typed in “Lindsay Lohan” or “Angelina Jolie” each morning, I could skip my daily skim of MSNBC.com or NewYorkTimes.com and learn all I need to know about the world. After all, don’t celebrities represent all that is human about us? Don’t they represent our hopes, dreams, and sometimes acts of utter nonsense?

Allow me to present Exhibit A, (as I step off my soap box of sarcasm). Recently, supermodel Elle “The Body” MacPherson shared the secrets to her eternal health – and it is that she consumes powdered rhino horn as a dietary supplement. As she told The Times, it tastes a “little bit like crushed bone and fungus in a capsule. Does the job though.” Powdered rhino horn is a tradition of Chinese medicine and has been used to prevent seizures and fevers. It is also illegal and banned worldwide.

Why? Because rhinos have been listed as endangered since 1977. Reports are that there are only 11,000 rhinos left on the planet. Poaching reached an all-time high last year, and four out of five species are on the verge of extinction. As MNN.com reports, most animals are either “shot or tranquilized, left to a slow, agonizing death after their horns are sawed off.” But the choice is simple for some. After all, does the world need supermodels to retain their youthful spirits? Or do we need more rhinos?

Not surprisingly, the 47-year-old model and host of Britain’s Next Top Model has bat-out-of-hell angered everyone from PETA to the Humane Society International. As Erica Martin of The International Fund for Animal Welfare says, “There is no excuse for using any endangered animal products.” As Martin concludes, “Elle has been a successful businesswoman with a high public profile for decades, and people do listen to what she says.”

But Elle is backing down. She now claims her interview, conducted via Twitter, was simply meant as “banter,” that she was “joking,” and that she regrets any offense her banter may have caused. (You can decide for yourself here.) She just announced to news.com.au that she had “never knowingly consumed or encouraged the use or consumption of any products which contain material derived from endangered species”. Thanks, Elle. I’m sure the rhinos of the world appreciate your sympathy. (Woops, stepped back up on the soapbox of sarcasm.)

Image: Y! Música

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