Evolution, elephants, and trauma

[harm_less]

  I hope elephants are able to survive without tusks i& I wonder whether this will affect their diet to a large extent or if they can adapt somehow. Interesting that longhorn sheep are also now having shorter horns as a result of trophy hunters targeting those with larger horns.

Im too lazy to read the article. But not so lazy as to not proffer my learned opinion.
All the biggest horns are hunted and killed, removed from the brood herd. This decreases the size of the horns by genetics, its not adaptatiion or evolutionary process.
Furthermore by the end of most seasons the biggest horns have been hunted, with only small ones left to count.

NY Times article is firewalled so unable to view it. I agree with Magoo's take on the situation except evolution will play a part as culling of large horned/tusked individuals will remove their genetic input from the population, in the same way environmentally disadvantaged traits will decrease over time.