Poaching causes a population of elephants to decrease by 8% per year. If there are 10,000 elephants today, about how many will remain in 50 years?
Do you mean 5 years?. If 8% is lost per year for 50 years, that's a loss of 400%. But the most that can be lost is 100%(10,000).
To find out approximately how many elephants will remain in 50 years, we need to calculate the new population each year by subtracting 8% of the previous year's population from the previous year's population. We can use the following formula:
New Population = Previous Year's Population - (8% of Previous Year's Population)
Let's start with the given information:
Initial Population (today) = 10,000 elephants
Now, we will calculate the population for each subsequent year, repeatedly applying the above formula:
Year 1:
New Population (Year 1) = 10,000 - (8% of 10,000)
= 10,000 - (0.08 * 10,000)
= 10,000 - 800
= 9,200 elephants
Year 2:
New Population (Year 2) = 9,200 - (8% of 9,200)
= 9,200 - (0.08 * 9,200)
= 9,200 - 736
= 8,464 elephants
Continuing this calculation for 50 years will give us the approximate remaining population of elephants after 50 years.
However, since the question asks for an approximation, I will provide the result after 50 years straightaway.
Approximately, the number of elephants remaining after 50 years will be 10,000 * (1 - 0.08)^50.
Calculating this using a calculator or a spreadsheet, the approximate remaining population is 1,896 elephants.
Please note that this is an estimation and doesn't take into account any other factors that may affect the elephant population.