A tale of elephants, ants, trees and fire shows how complex nature is
Aug 8th 2019ECOLOGY IS A complicated thing. Given the facts that elephant damage often kills trees and bush fires often kill trees it would be reasonable to deduce that a combination of the two would make things worse. Counter-intuitively, though, as research just published in Biotropica, by Benjamin Wigley of Nelson Mandela University in South Africa shows, if a tree has already been damaged, fire can actually help to make things better.One common way in which elephants harm trees is by stripping them of their bark. Dr Wigley, who did indeed start from the obvious assumption, set off to find out how much worse bush fires would make the effects of this bark-stripping. To this end he set up a study in the Kruger National Park, a reserve on South Africa’s border with Mozambique.Choose us for news analysis that respects your time and intelligenceSubscribe to The EconomistWe filter out the noise of the daily news cycle and analyse the trends that matterWe give you rigorous, deeply researched and fact-checked journalism. That’s why Americans named us their most trusted news source in 2017Available wherever you are—in print, digital and, uniquely, in audio, fully narrated by professional broadcastersThis website adheres to all nine of NewsGuard‘s standards of credibility and transparency.ORContinue reading this articleRegister with an email address