https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley ... 2656.13035
Older male elephants tend to be the target of both legal trophy hunting and illegal poaching. As reproductive allocation increases with age, removing dominant older males from the population could affect the reproductive dynamics in elephants by changing the dynamics of male–male competition (i.e. through reducing the density of dominant breeders). Such changes may alter the degree of reproductive skew in a population (driving changes in the effective population size), adjust the fitness benefits of allocation in movement relative to growth at different stages and lead to the selection of different physical characteristics (e.g. early maturity). Thus, human‐driven selection could drive fundamental changes to elephant reproductive tactics and life history, which could have lasting implications on elephant populations.