Protecting the endangered Asiatic elephant (Elephas maximus indicus) indirectly helps safeguard India’s forests as powerful carbon stores, a new scientific study has said.

The research, however, warned that long-term carbon stabilisation cannot be ensured merely by declaring more areas as elephant reserves but by improving habitat quality, restoring wildlife corridors, and strengthening forest management.

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

The study, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Threatened Taxa, assessed the relationship between elephant conservation efforts, the expansion of elephant reserves, and wildlife-associated carbon stock enhancement in India from 1992 to 2025. Noida-based Amity University’s Tarun Kathula and Tanu Jindal are its authors.

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

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

The study estimated that about 95% of the increase in carbon storage resulted from the expansion of protected forest areas. However, elephant reserves are not uniformly conserved in the same manner as legally designated national parks or tiger reserves.

Elephants, often described as ecosystem engineers, remain ecologically vital, despite their limited contribution to faunal biomass, the researchers said. The gentle giants, they pointed out, disperse seeds, enrich soils with dung, create space for diverse vegetation, and help maintain healthy forests capable of storing carbon over the long term.

Weak link

The researchers also found a weak relationship between the number of elephant reserves and the elephant population growth, suggesting that administrative declarations alone cannot secure the species’ future if habitats remain fragmented or poorly managed.

The study further underlined a worrying trend — the decline in elephant numbers under a new census methodology called Synchronised All-India Elephant Estimate (SAIEE) 2021-25, while the number of elephant reserves has stabilised. The SAIEE count of 22,446 was 4,065 elephants fewer than the 2017 estimate, but the enumerators asserted that the two different counting methods should not be compared.

“These findings highlight the role of conservation-driven land-use stabilisation in supporting climate mitigation, while emphasising the need for cautious interpretation of wildlife-carbon relationships,” the study said.

Comparable patterns were observed in the African savannah ecosystems, where mega-herbivore management improved vegetation carbon stocks by 20-30%. “Such consistency across regions supports the generalizable ecological principle that mega-fauna protection complements forest-carbon goals,” their study said.

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

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