Elephants and Savanna Woodland Ecosystems / Conservation Science and Practice (ePub)

During the nineteenth century, ivory hunting caused a
substantial decrease of elephant numbers in southern Africa. Soon
after that, populations of many other large and medium-sized
herbivores went into steep decline due to the rinderpest pandemic
in the 1890s. These two events provided an opportunity for woodland
establishment in areas previously intensively utilized by elephants
and other herbivores. The return of elephants to currently
protected areas of their former range has greatly influenced
vegetation locally and the resulting potential negative effects on
biodiversity are causing concern among stakeholders, managers, and
scientists.

This book focuses on the ecological effects of the increasing
elephant population in northern Botswana, presenting the importance
of the elephants for the heterogeneity of the system, and showing
that elephant ecology involves much wider spatiotemporal scales
than was previously thought. Drawing on the results of their
research, the authors discuss elephant-caused effects on vegetation
in nutrient-rich and nutrient-poor savannas, and the potential
competition between elephants on the one hand and browsers and
mixed feeders on the other.

Ultimately this text provides a comprehensive review of
ecological processes in African savannas, covering long-term
ecosystem changes and human-wildlife conflicts. It summarises new
knowledge on the ecology of the sub-humid African savanna
ecosystems to advance the general functional understanding of
savanna ecosystems across moisture and nutrient gradients.