--- title: Five Best: Why It’s So Important to Conserve Elephants description: Why it's so important to conserve elephants, millions of documents could be submerged in the Hurricane Harvey floodwaters and more. canonical: https://time.com/4928990/why-its-so-important-to-conserve-elephants/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-09-06T16:00:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:58:31.456Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Why It’s So Important to Conserve Elephants og:description: And four more of today's best ideas og:url: https://time.com/4928990/why-its-so-important-to-conserve-elephants/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why It’s So Important to Conserve Elephants twitter:description: And four more of today's best ideas twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Why It’s So Important to Conserve Elephants by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Sep 6, 2017 4:00 PM UTC by [The Aspen Institute](https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/) ## The Aspen Institute Sep 6, 2017 4:00 PM UTC **1\.** [**Why is it so important to conserve elephants?**](https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21723394-biology-and-conservation-elephants-conserve-elephants-they-hold) By the _Economist_ **2\.** [**Millions of documents could be submerged in the Hurricane Harvey floodwaters. Here’s a way to save them.**](https://today.agrilife.org/2017/08/28/flood-damaged-documents-books-may-salvageable-electron-beam-technology/) By Kathleen Phillips at _Texas A&M AgriLife Today_ **3\.** [**Scientists may have found a way to reverse memory loss in Alzheimer’s patients.**](http://news.mit.edu/2017/blocking-key-enzyme-may-reverse-memory-loss-0808) By Anne Trafton in _MIT News_ **4\.** [**America needs a Generation X President.**](http://theweek.com/articles/712705/why-america-needs-generation-x-president) By Peter Weber in _The Week_ **5\.** [**One benefit of the Amazon-Whole Foods merger? Shrinking food deserts.**](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2017/08/29/how-the-amazon-whole-foods-merger-shrinks-food-deserts) By Jack Karsten and Darrell West at the _Brookings Institution_  [_The Aspen Institute_](http://www.aspeninstitute.org/) _is an educational and policy studies organization based in Washington, D.C._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4928990/why-its-so-important-to-conserve-elephants/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4928990/why-its-so-important-to-conserve-elephants/"},"headline":"Why It’s So Important to Conserve Elephants","datePublished":"2017-09-06T16:00:20.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:58:31.456Z","description":"These are today's best ideas","url":"https://time.com/4928990/why-its-so-important-to-conserve-elephants/","keywords":["Five Best Ideas","Innovation","politics","Elephants","Alzheimer's","hurricane harvey"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"The Aspen Institute","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/the-aspen-institute/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/five-best-ideas/","name":"Five Best Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4928990/why-its-so-important-to-conserve-elephants/","name":"Why It’s So Important to Conserve Elephants"}}]}] ```