Poaching destabilizes nations, disrupts ecosystems and threatens biodiversity. A recent study suggests still another consequence: Some types of poaching may also accelerate climate change.

Forest elephants — the smaller, endangered relatives of African savanna elephants — promote the growth of large trees that excel at storing carbon, according to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Should forest elephants disappear, scientists estimated, Central Africa’s rain forest will lose about three billion tons of carbon — the equivalent of France’s total CO2 emissions for 27 years.

“This new paper points to something that we in Central Africa have suspected for a long time, but now this group has thrown some serious science at the issue,” said Fiona Maisels, a conservation scientist at the Wildlife Conservation Society and at the University of Stirling in Scotland.