Protecting elephants helps safeguard India’s forests as powerful carbon stores: Study

Conservation of the endangered Asian elephant (Elephas maximus indicusIt indirectly helps preserve India’s forests as potent carbon stores, a new scientific study has said.

But the study warned that long-term carbon stability cannot be achieved simply by declaring more areas as elephant reserves, but instead by improving habitat quality, restoring wildlife corridors and strengthening forest management.

Carbon stabilization, a vital mechanism for eliminating greenhouse gases and mitigating climate change, is the process of sequestering atmospheric carbon and locking it into stable, solid forms (such as soil or organic matter). This helps resist decay, erosion, or the release of carbon back into the atmosphere.

The research was published in the latest issue Journal of Threatened TaxaEvaluated the relationship between elephant conservation efforts, expansion of elephant reserves, and increasing wildlife-associated carbon stock in India from 1992 to 2025. Its authors are Tarun Kathula and Tanu Jindal from Noida-based Amity University.

Researchers found that India’s elephant reserve network has expanded from 18,297 km2. (across three elephant reserves) to 80,777 km2. (33 elephant reserves), while the elephant population increased by approximately 6.7% from the estimated 25,604 in 1992-93. Despite the marginal increase in the number of pachyderms, the estimated carbon stored in elephant reserves increased by 38%.

This increase should not be interpreted as elephants directly creating more forest biomass, the researchers said, as it “primarily reflects increased maintenance and reduced degradation of pre-existing forest carbon stocks.”

The study estimates that approximately 95% of the increase in carbon storage is due to the expansion of protected forest areas. However, elephant reserves are not protected in the same way as legally designated national parks or tiger reserves.

Elephants, often described as ecosystem engineers, are ecologically vital despite their limited contribution to faunal biomass, the researchers said. They noted that the gentle giants disperse seeds, enrich the soil with fertilizer, create space for diverse vegetation and help maintain healthy forests that can store carbon over the long term.

weak link

Researchers also found a weak correlation between the number of elephant reserves and elephant population growth; This suggests that if habitats are fragmented or poorly managed, administrative notifications alone cannot secure the future of the species.

The study also highlighted a worrying trend: while elephant numbers have seen a decline under a new census methodology called Synchronized All India Elephant Estimate (SAIEE) 2021-25, the number of elephant reserves has stabilized. SAIEE’s elephant count of 22,446 was 4,065 elephants fewer than the 2017 estimate, but enumerators argued that two different counting methods should not be compared.

“These findings highlight the role of conservation-focused land use stabilization in supporting climate change mitigation, while also highlighting the need for careful interpretation of wildlife-carbon relationships,” the study said.

Similar patterns have been observed in African savannah ecosystems, where megaherbivore management improved vegetation carbon stocks by 20–30%. “Such consistency across regions supports the generalizable ecological principle that megafaunal conservation complements forest carbon targets,” the study said.

“Policy integration of these results can strengthen India’s commitments to achieve additional carbon sinks equivalent to 2.5-3 billion tCO₂ (total carbon dioxide) by 2030. Incorporating wildlife-inclusive accounting into REDD+ frameworks can generate measurable ecosystem service credits while providing co-benefits for biodiversity,” the study said.

REDD expands on ‘Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation’.