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Dear Reader,
We talk a lot about what we can do to conserve wildlife, as if we’re doing it a favor. But wildlife does plenty for us — beyond providing awe. For instance, Katharine Hayhoe told us in a recent newsletter, forest elephants in Africa (the smallest of the world’s elephant species) help forests sequester about 2,700 hundred tons of carbon during their lifetimes because of the way they forage. They’re sometimes called the “Gardeners of the Congo,” and the forests in the Congo where they forage have been shown to sequester 7% more carbon than the forests that lack these elephants.
And Hayhoe tells us of another helpful animal: the otter. In oceans, the kelp forests tended by otters sequester 12 times more carbon than otter-less kelp forests. Why’s that? Sea otters gobble up sea urchins, which feed on the kelp.
But that’s not all that animals do to protect us from ourselves (and the carbon we’re so dedicated to dumping into our atmosphere). Whales sequester massive amounts of carbon — as much as thousands of trees — by storing it in their bodies, and then they take it to the bottom of the ocean when they die.
Beavers help us, too, by restoring wetlands, which also sequester carbon. And penguins help cool our planet, thanks to ammonia particles in their poop that form low clouds that reflect sunlight back into space.
Gratefully,
Dot
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