It is often said that fate works in mysterious ways. Deep in central Africa’s Congo Basin, the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest, the phrase has proven to be abundantly true and yet, simultaneously, a giant pile of poop.
The destinies of ebony trees, a critically endangered mammal, Cameroonian communities and a leading US guitar maker are all inextricably intertwined. Yet this future has not been read in tea leaves or the stars but instead gleaned from a new kind of divination tool: elephant dung.
Habitat loss and, critically, the illegal ivory trade have contributed to an estimated 80% drop in the continental population of African forest elephants across the past three decades, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which classifies them as nearing extinction in the wild.
Their decline could be catastrophic for the survival of ebony trees across the region, after camera traps and dung analysis shed unprecedented light on the elephants as primary actors in the dispersal and germination of its seeds.
Herds can consume the fruit of the ebony tree and carry its seeds for miles before excreting them onto the forest floor, increasing dispersal range while reducing the risk of inbreeding. Another benefit is that rodents are deterred from eating seeds encased in dung.
There were 68% fewer ebony saplings found in forest regions without elephants, the nine-year study led by the UCLA’s Congo Basin Institute (CBI) found, leading to the conclusion that, to paraphrase the lyrics of Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, the fates of ebony and ivory are joined in perfect harmony.
“The results are quite frightening,” CBI research assistant Eric Onguene told CNN.
“At the beginning, we thought that (ebony) seeds could probably be dispersed by all kinds of animals. We expected them to regenerate naturally … But if the elephant disappears, we should expect a loss, an extinction, of the ebony species.”
The research was funded in large part by California’s Taylor Guitars, which begs the question: why would a music manufacturer spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on scientific research some 8,000 miles across the world?
The answer lies in the dark, often jet-black, heartwood of the ebony tree. Dense, durable and smooth, its mirror-like finish has long been used in the bridges and fretboards of guitars. It has helped propel El Cajon-based Taylor Guitars — founded by Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug in 1974 — to global success, with Taylor Swift and Jason Mraz among those to have strummed their creations.
As a co-owner of the Crelicam ebony mill in the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé, Taylor was even more troubled by his realization that a key resource was becoming increasingly difficult to find.
The commercial value of ebony meant that trees across the roughly 3.7-million-square-kilometer basin (roughly 1.4 million square miles) had become a prime target for cutting among some of the 80 million people who live in the region.
“In most of the places where ebony had been harvested, the supply had run out,” Crelicam Mill director Matthew LeBreton told CNN.
For Taylor, his subsequent decision to bankroll research boiled down to a four-word mantra that has become a business principle: invest in the inevitable.
“You wake up one day and go, ‘Uh oh. This is not going to last forever,’” Taylor told CNN.
“I hate to throw the word sustainable around, but we could say, this is not sustainable: we will run out. So we have to do something … It’s inevitable that we’re going to run out of trees, so I’m going to invest in planting trees.”
What began in 2016 as a simple fact-finding mission has since transformed into a collaborative effort led by the CBI dubbed the Ebony Project, a partnership of businesses, local communities and scientists working to ensure the long-term prosperity of the ebony tree.
It’s an effort driven by one of the project’s earliest research revelations: ebony trees do not grow quickly. With saplings taking as long as 100 years to reach full maturity, the CBI devised a plan to distribute seeds among the Indigenous Baka communities that share the basin’s forests with the elephants.
“To protect the ecosystem of the Congo Basin, you must not decree protection or put a police officer in front of each tree,” CBI researcher Zac Tchoundjeu told CNN.
“You must involve the local population and show them what interests they have in doing this domestication because it meets their needs.”
Tchoundjeu’s assessment touches on a tricky issue: how do you persuade people to plant seeds for trees they will never sit under?
To sweeten the deal, Baka communities were offered ownership of the planted ebony trees, and were given seeds for fruit and medicinal tree seeds, including avocado and mango that grow considerably faster, giving them access to goods that could be eaten, used or sold in the short term.
There were other, more intangible benefits. Locals learned agricultural techniques at plant nurseries, creating jobs and transferable skills that are already benefitting the 13 partner communities the Ebony Project has worked with.
“It totally changed our lives,” Samuel Bambo Mempong, a planter from the Baka Indigenous village of Bifolone, on the edge of the basin’s Dja Faunal Reserve, told CNN.
“It gave me knowledge that I did not have. I’m also going to train other people elsewhere and by doing that, I am coming back with the benefits.”
“The money is going to your descendants,” Mempong said. The first ebony tree planted on his two-and-a-half-hectare plot is now seven years old. “My children, then the grandchildren: it is they who should benefit,” he added.
As the Ebony Project celebrates its 10th anniversary, almost 50,000 ebony trees have been planted in its name alongside more than 34,000 fruit trees, and Taylor has no desire to stop there.
“In 10 years from now, I hope that maybe we will have reached that million-tree mark,” he said.
“This is a demonstration project as much as anything else. There could be bigger, better, smarter, faster, richer people (that take on similar projects) … I just want to leave the next generation with more choices than we have.”
It’s an ethos that rings true for Mempong.
“We don’t want to destroy the forest at the same time anymore,” he said.
“We want to eat (harvest) the forest gently. When our moment passes, our children and our future great grandchildren take the same forest.”