Even after a new herd adopts elephants orphaned by poachers, the young animals\u2019 chances of survival remain poor, according to new research.<\/p>\n
A pair of studies published by researchers at Colorado State University and the Kenyan advocacy group Save the Elephants have revealed that orphaned elephants have lower chances of survival even in a herd compared with elephants raised by their biological parents, which has had a significant impact on population growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor social populations, poaching has a larger impact than originally thought, because you have to account for the orphans who are left behind, who are surviving less because they don\u2019t have [their biological] mother,\u201d said\u00a0Jenna Parker<\/a>, a conservation biologist at Colorado State and the lead author of the\u00a0study published in the journal Current Biology<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cEven orphans who were no longer dependent on their mother\u2019s milk had a lower survival rate than their peers with a living mother,\u201d Parker\u2019s team found.<\/p>\n Researchers previously believed older members of elephant herds had the greatest impact on population growth because they reproduce more than younger members, according to\u00a0George Wittemyer<\/a>, a conservation biologist at Colorado State and lead author of a separate\u00a0study published in the journal Ecosphere<\/a>.<\/p>\n Wittemyer\u2019s research determined that \u201cjuvenile elephants who are just starting to become independent of their parents are the most important to elephant population dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n Wittemyer\u00a0and his co-authors found that the impact of poachers is the single most important factor that determines the survival chances across all ages of elephants.<\/p>\n Wittemyer said the two studies will help conservation biologists understand how elephant populations decline and recover. \u201cKilling an elephant is not removing one elephant from a population; killing an elephant has downstream effects on those elephants that are bonded to it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n