According to the British “Sky News” network, the extinction of elephants, which are among the endangered animals, may increase the repercussions of global warming on the planet.
Experts believe that the extinction of the largest mammal living above the surface of the earth will severely affect the second largest rainforest in the world.
The figures indicate a significant decline in elephant numbers in the Congo Basin, which extends over the lands of a number of central and western African countries.
And figures from the Marine Life Conservation Society show that the number of elephants has decreased by 60 percent, to just 40,000 in this region.
The overhunting of this animal, with the aim of obtaining its ivory and smuggling it abroad, is among the main reasons for the decline in the number of elephants.
Experts say that if elephants were to disappear completely, the Congo rainforest, which is second only to the Amazon in Brazil, would lose up to 9 percent of its ability to absorb carbon in the atmosphere.
Stephen Blake, an assistant professor of life sciences at St. Louis University in Missouri, believes that if elephants become extinct from forests, this will be a painful blow to efforts to combat climate change.
The extinction of elephants raises these concerns because they absorb carbon, and they also feed on trees that are low in carbon intensity, because they are more nutritionally beneficial to them.
