FASTFACTS

AREA COVERED:

About 300 miles per year.

HABITAT:

Forests in Mali.

PREDATORS:

Human poachers.

INDIVIDUAL HERD POPULATION:

Unknown, possibly in the low hundreds.

MALI ELEPHANT IN-DEPTH

More from NationalGeographic.com

MALI ELEPHANT (Loxodonta Africana)

The elephants found in Mali are African elephants, Loxodonta Africana. The latter have long been viewed as a single species, but recently, some scientists recently have proposed dividing them into two separate species, the bush or savanna African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the forest African elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis). That idea has yet to gain wide acceptance. No one is sure how many Mali elephants exist, but the number is probably very small. One research effort in 2005 observed a migrating group of more than 100 elephants. They eat a variety of vegetation, including leaves and branches of trees and bushes, tree bark, fruit and grass. Some believe that the Mali elephants’ characteristic stubby tusks are so short because human hunters long ago killed all the longer-tusked individuals for their ivory.

To get the 225 liters of scarce water that each of them need to drink daily, Mali’s elephants must roam from one water hole to another, trudging along in single file. The elephants linger at a lake on the northern edge of their range until the seasonal rains begin in June, and then head south in search of more water, eventually crossing briefly into northern Burkina Faso before returning home. Once they find a watering hole, they seek shelter in the thorny acacia forests during the day, when temperatures can reach a brutal 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and then come out at night to drink.

African elephants play a multifaceted ecological role. They modify their habitat by clearing and converting areas of forest to grassland, making them accessible to other animals and humans. The wide paths they clear through forests act as natural firebreaks. They also are important dispersers of seeds, and can help provide water for other species by digging holes in dry riverbeds.