The Big 5

When you think of ‘The Big 5’, the animals in question are immediately recognized worldwide. The term originated as a way of describing these five species as the most difficult for hunters to capture or kill, due to their ferocity and their likelihood to stand their ground and retaliate. Here is a look at the five animals known wide as Africa’s Big Five.

 

The African elephant (Loxodonta africana) is the largest mammal in the world and remarkably adaptable. Elephants live in woodlands, forests, deserts and savanna, spread across 37 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The demand for ivory led to a dramatic decrease in elephant numbers, especially during the 1970's and 1980's. A ban on all ivory trade has helped stabilize the population to around 600,000 in the last decade. But poaching is still a major issue, especially in parts of Africa where there is political instability. The African elephant is listed as "vulnerable" by the IUCN Redlist of threatened species.

 

The African lion (Panthera leo) king of the sub-Saharan savanna, has been admired by man for its beauty and strength for thousands of years. It's one of the most exciting animals to see on safari. These beautiful, large cats are excellent hunters but you're more likely to see one sleeping than hunting.

Lions are very social animals, unlike other cats, they live in prides of several females, their young and a couple of males. They will cooperate when hunting difficult prey like a buffalo, but usually they'll take down an antelope on their own. Females hunt more than males and all lions will happily scavenge given half a chance. Lions ambush their prey, (like leopards), rather than track and chase (like hyenas).

 

The African leopard (Panthera pardus) is more numerous than the African rhino in the Big 5 pantheon, but they are just as difficult to spot on safari in Africa. Leopards use trees as observation platforms and for protection, so you have to remember to look up to see this solitary, beautiful cat. Leopards are shy and nocturnal, quite modest for a cat that can climb, swim and live in a wider range of habitats than most other wild cats.

Leopards live throughout sub-Saharan Africa, they cover a wide range of habitats from the thick forests of West Africa to the highlands of Ethiopia, but they prefer thick bush and riverine forests. A leopards' only predator is man. Man has succeeded in getting this magnificent cat on the IUCN's "near threatened" list by reducing the leopards' habitat, depleting its prey and hunting it.

 

Black rhinos are usually solitary, whereas white rhinos tend to be more social and live in groups. Black rhinos live in savanna, shrub and tropical bush areas, they eat leaves, bushes, small tree branches and shoots. White rhinos live in the savanna and are grazers.

Their lips are what distinguish them from one another, a black rhino has a prehensile lip to strip leaves off bushes. A white rhino has a long, flat lip adapted for grazing. Unfortunately, as a result of poaching, these magnificent animals are rarely found in the wild, and very few remain alive in conservation areas with every effort being taken to promote the survival and repopulation of two of the most important species on the planet.

 

Rhinos are large mammals (only second in size to the elephant), an adult white rhino can weigh in at close to 3000kg. Rhinos are indeed shortsighted, a little bad tempered, but magnificent to look at. Unfortunately there aren't too many to look at these days due to poaching. Rhino horn, used for medicinal purposes to reduce fevers, is much prized in Asia. In 2012, rhino horns were valued at R600 000 per kilo, with each horn weighing in at about 3-4kg, that's a lot of temptation for poachers. If they manage to avoid poachers, rhinos can live up to 30-50 years.

 

Cape Buffalo are commonly found in protected wildlife throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Four sub-species of African Buffalo have been recognized and reflect the different regions and habitats they live in: Forest Buffalo (S. c. nanus); West African Savanna Buffalo (S. c. brachyceros); Central African Savanna Buffalo (S. c. aequinoctialis); and Southern Savanna Buffalo (S. c. caffer). The forest buffalo are smaller than those found in the savanna.

 

Cape buffalo are large. Adults stand 4-6 feet tall and males weigh in at around 700 kg's. Even lions don't dare take a chunk out of this beast unless they have friends helping them. Cape Buffalo are said to have killed more big game hunters than any other animal in Africa and are one of Africa's most dangerous animals. Needless to say, the Cape buffalo has never been domesticated, but if left alone they are quite placid.

 

When you think elephant, you probably think trunk.

 An adult African elephant's trunk is about seven feet two meter long! It's actually an elongated nose and upper lip. Like most noses, trunks are for smelling. But they're also for touching and grasping.

When an elephant drinks, it sucks as much as 7.5 liters of water into its trunk at a time. Then it curls its trunk under, sticks the tip of its trunk into its mouth, and blows. Out comes the water, right down the elephant's throat.

Since African elephants live where the sun is usually blazing hot, they use their trunks to help them keep cool. First they squirt a trunkful of cool water over their bodies. Then they often follow that with a sprinkling of dust to create a protective layer of dirt on their skin (think elephant sunscreen!). Elephants pick up and spray dust the same way they do water—with their trunks.

Elephants also use their trunks as snorkels when they wade in deep water. An elephant's trunk is controlled by many muscles. Two fingerlike parts on the tip of the trunk allow the elephant to perform delicate maneuvers such as picking a berry from the ground or plucking a single leaf off a tree.

The elephant can also use its trunk to grasp an entire tree branch and pull it down to its mouth. Elephants also use their trunks to grab clumps of grass and shove the greenery into their mouths. When an elephant gets a whiff of something interesting, it sniffs the air with its trunk raised up like a submarine periscope.

If threatened, an elephant will also use its trunk to make loud trumpeting noises as a warning. Elephants are social creatures. They sometimes hug by wrapping their trunks together in displays of greeting and affection.

Facts about forests

Enviromental Facts -

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  Forests cover 30 percent of the planet’s total land area. The total forested area in 2005 was just under 4 billion hectares, at least one third less than before the dawn of agriculture, some 10,000 years ago.

 

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  The ten most forest-rich countries, which account for two-thirds of the total forested area, are the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States, China, Australia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Peru and India.

 

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  Six million hectares of primary forest are lost every year due to deforestation and modification through selective logging and other human interventions. More than one-third of all forests are primary forests, defined as forests where there are no clearly visible indications of human activity and where ecological processes are not significantly disturbed.

 

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  Primary forests shelter diverse animal and plant species, and culturally diverse indigenous people, with deep connections to their habitat.

 

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  Only 20 per cent of the world’s forests remain in large intact areas. These forests consist of tropical rain forests, mangrove, coastal and swamp forests. Monsoon and deciduous forests flourish in the drier and more mountainous regions.

 

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  Trees quite literally form the foundations of many natural systems. They help to conserve soil and water, control avalanches, prevent desertification, protect coastal areas and stabilize sand dunes.

 

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  Forests are the most important repositories of terrestrial biological biodiversity, housing up to 90 per cent of known terrestrial species.

 

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  Forest animals have a vital role in forest ecology such as pollination, seed dispersal and germination.

 

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  Trees absorb carbon dioxide and are vital carbon sinks.

 

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  It is estimated that the world’s forests store 283 Gigatonnes of carbon in their biomass alone, and that carbon stored in forest biomass, deadwood, litter and soil together is roughly 50 per cent more than the carbon in the atmosphere.

 

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  Carbon in forest biomass decreased in Africa, Asia and South America in the period 1990–2005. For the world as a whole, carbon stocks in forest biomass decreased annually by 1.1 Gigatonne of carbon (equivalent to 4 billion 25kg sacks of charcoal).

 

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  The loss of natural forests around the world contributes more to global emissions each year than the transport sector.

 

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  World population currently stands at 6.5 billion people. It is projected to grow to 9 billion by 2042.  The expansion of agricultural and industrial needs, population growth, poverty, landlessness and consumer demand are the major driving forces behind deforestation.

 

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  Most deforestation is due to conversion of forests to agricultural land. Global removals of wood for timber and fuel amounted to 3.1 billion cubic metres in 2005.

 

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  Worldwide, deforestation continues at an alarming rate, about 13 million hectares per year, an area the size of Greece or Nicaragua.

 

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  Africa and South America have the largest net loss of forests. In Africa it is estimated that nearly half of the forest loss was due to removal of wood fuel.

 

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  Forests in Europe are expanding. Asia, which had a net loss in the 1990s, reported a net gain of forests in the past five years, primarily due to large-scale forestation in China.

 

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  Eighty per cent of the world’s forests are publicly owned, but private ownership is on the rise, especially in North and Central America and in Oceania.

 

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  About 11 per cent of the world’s forests are designated for the conservation of biological diversity. These areas are mainly, but not exclusively, in protected areas.

 

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  Around 10 million people are employed in conventional forest management and conservation. Formal employment in forestry declined by about 10 per cent from 1990 to 2000.

Africans Must Adapt to Drought in Warming World: Report

Climate change will call for more flexible solutions to water challenges.

 

A new report cautions African countries to look beyond dams (like this one in Zimbabwe) to deal with water supply issues for an uncertain future.

Photograph from Images of Africa Photobank/Alamy

Ker Than

For National Geographic News

Published December 16, 2011

This story is part of a special National Geographic News series on global water issues.

Flexible farming methods and the ability to quickly change tactics to deal with unpredictable swings in rainfall will be vital if African nations are to survive climate change in the coming decades, scientists say.

"Adaptability I think will be the key," said Mark Mulligan, a geographer at King's College London in the United Kingdom.

"There's the assumption that we know what the future will be like. We do—more or less—for temperature, but we really don't for rainfall," he said.

Global warming is expected to raise temperatures around the globe in the coming decades. Perhaps less intuitively, it will also increase rainfall in other parts of the world because as the temperature goes up, evaporation speeds up, and the air's ability to retain moisture rises.

More evaporation creates a hydrological cycle that is turbocharged with energy, leading to more rainfall. However, the geographical distribution of rainfall will change in a warmer world, greening some current arid zones and triggering droughts in other areas such as the American southwest.

See the global impact of your water footprint >>

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Affecting Africa

According to a five-year global research project conducted on behalf of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), climate change is expected to lead to unpredictable changes in rainfall patterns in most African river basins.

This could present opportunities for improved agriculture in some dry regions that get wetter, or—if farmers are not well prepared—could lead to less food production and increased poverty as agriculture struggles to adapt.

"Climate change introduces a new element of uncertainty precisely when governments and donors are starting to have more open discussions about sharing water resources and to consider long-term investments in boosting food production," Alain Vidal, director of the CGIAR's Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), said in a statement.

"To help prevent this uncertainty from undermining key agreements and commitments, researchers must build a reliable basis for decisions, which takes into account the variable impacts of climate change on river basins," Vidal said.

(Related: "India and Pakistan at Odds Over Shrinking Indus River")

To counter such uncertainty, nations must remain nimble and provide an enabling environment for their farmers to adapt to a highly uncertain and geographically variable “changescape,” said Mulligan, who was the lead author of a report published in January in the journal Water International that detailed the CGIAR findings.

"The key is to be thinking about flexible arrangements that are fine-tuned to local geographical conditions and that can change quickly and effectively as the future unfolds," Mulligan said.

"Because we've had 10,000 years of [climate] stability, we've grown accustomed to assuming that things don't change and so we now support very high populations that are dependent on sophisticated agricultures, markets and infrastructures that may not adapt well to the period of environmental instability that is ahead of us," he said.

"Bottom up" Solutions

For example, large dams that retain water to supply urban areas, for irrigation projects, and to generate hydropower—of which there are at least 36,000 around the world—are usually designed on the basis of historical river flow data that climate scientists warn could become obsolete in a warming world where river courses can change.

Because large dams are significant and long-term investments they cannot easily be adapted to respond to the implications of changing climate, Mulligan said.

A more flexible solution, he argues, is rainwater harvesting: the construction of a series of small, farm-scale rainwater harvesting schemes, or "micro-dams,” that capture rainfall for agricultural use near the point at which it will be used rather than trapping it at a single large dam and then pumping it elsewhere.

(Related: "See Spectacular Video of a Historic Dam Removal")

Also, because the pattern of rainfall change across Africa is essentially unpredictable, CGIAR advocates a bottom-up approach to adaptation, in which solutions are highly specific to local geographical conditions rather than being defined on the basis of regional or national-scale generalities.

The role of African governments, Mulligan said, will be to facilitate locally driven adaptation and to stay out of the way of sustainable development.

"The impact of climate change on water and food security will be different in different parts of a river basin, even on different sides of a hill," he added.

"So the real adaptation will have to come from the farmers up. They'll be able to react in a way that is specific to their specific environment and needs."