Animals

When Size Matters

Planet earth’s largest mammals are so much more than beautiful and majestic.

They are carbon sequestration superheroes.

Elephants and Whales benefit the health of the earth with their mass and how they interact with their unique habitats.

As elephants eat the smaller plants, they allow the bigger plants to thrive.
Just one elephant per square kilometer, eating close to one thousand pounds daily, can increase the amount of plant mass in the forest by up to 60 tons per hectare, enough to suck up more than 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year.

Whales also perform heroic carbon capture, by sequestering 33 tons of CO2 each per year.
Their waste fertilizes vast quantities of oxygen producing phytoplankton and their enormous bodies store carbon when they die and sink to the ocean floor.

What if we put a price on this carbon capture?

Economists calculate that elephants are worth at least $1.75 million dollars each, for their carbon collection value, while the average great whale is worth more than two million dollars.

As economists figure out ways to distribute these carbon profits to communities, they hope to incentivize more humans to become animal protectors – honoring the planet and her most colossal creatures.