To whom it may concern,

 

This letter’s purpose is to address an urgent, pressing issue - The Asian elephant’s population. I urge you to take immediate action to stop this disaster. The Asian elephant is currently endangered, and it is vital to protect the Asian Elephant, as it is a key part of a major ecosystem.

 

The Asian elephant’s population has been rapidly declining for the past century due to a variety of factors, including legal and illegal poaching, habitat destruction due to deforestation and urbanization, development of railways that cut through their natural habitat, and elephant-human conflicts.

 

These issues are the main reason for the population’s decline, but there are also many smaller factors. The railways have been an issue due to their positioning, they cut through the Asian elephant’s habitat, and due to the elephant’s habit to stop to graze in an area for prolonged periods of time, they have been run over by fast moving trains before. Another issue is deforestation and transformation of their habitats into farms or cities. As Asia begins to develop, they have been cutting down forests and grasslands, which are the Asian elephant’s primary habitat. This has resulted in a lack of space and food sources for the Asian elephant, causing them to starve. Transformation, deforestation and urbanization of habitats has also led to an increase in human-elephant encounters. Locals living near elephants are usually farmers, but elephants have a notorious reputation for running through farms, eating and trampling all the crops. This has resulted in locals hunting and killing elephants in an attempt to prevent this or as an act of revenge.

 

The Asian elephant is an extremely important part of its ecosystem. Its waste product is an extremely rich fertilizer, allowing plants to grow and feed other animals in the ecosystem. The Asian elephant’s waste is also key in dispersing and spreading seeds, and without it, there would be much less plants, causing other animals in the ecosystem to die as well. The Asian elephant also creates watering holes for other smaller animals to drink from. Without the Asian elephants, the animals would have to travel much further to find water, and some would die due to dehydration.

 

The Asian elephant’s population has finally started to stabilize, but that is absolutely no reason to cut its funding. If we leave the Asian elephant alone now, its population will start diminishing once again. In fact, the stabilization of the Asian elephant’s population should cause an increase in funding. Stabilization of the species’ population was the least difficult part, as the issue was human-created, and quickly reversible by enforcing poaching laws and raising awareness. The next step is to rebuild and restore the Asian elephant’s habitat, allowing the population to gradually increase over a long period of time. This step will be substantially more expensive and will take more time, which is why we should start now. If we don’t, the Asian elephant’s habitat will continue to be destroyed and urbanized, making it harder to reverse and more expensive to restore.

 

This is very urgent. As stated earlier, if you do not act now, the Asian elephant's habitat will be more expensive and more time consuming to restore. If it is delayed too long, the Asian elephants, a vital species of this world, may even become extinct.