Elephants — India, Asia & Southeast Asia

"In response to high incidents of elephant and tiger poaching in central Sumatra, World Wildlife Fund and its local partners have coordinated wildlife patrol units that conduct antipoaching patrols, confiscate snares and other means of trapping animals, educate local people on the laws in place concerning poaching, and help authorities apprehend criminals. The evidence collected by wildlife patrol units has helped bring known poachers to court. In many Asian countries, WWF works with TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, to reduce the threat that illegal and illicit domestic ivory markets pose to wild elephants."

"Until WWF began working in Borneo, no one had ever studied the pygmy elephant. In 2005, WWF successfully attached satellite collars to five pygmy elephants in different herds in the Malaysian state of Sabah. The collaring is part of the first scientific research ever conducted on this little-understood population... The best hope for the long-term survival of Borneo's elephants lies in sustainable forest management for timber production, since elephants can survive and breed in natural forests that are selectively logged. To address the problem, WWF works with plantation managers and owners in key pygmy elephant habitat in an effort to create reforested wildlife corridors that allow elephants and other species to move freely between natural forests."

"In 2012, the Sumatran elephant was changed from 'Endangered' to 'Critically Endangered' because half of its population has been lost in one generation—a decline that is largely due to habitat loss and as a result human-elephant conflict. Sumatra has experienced one of the highest rates of deforestation within the Asian elephant’s range, which has resulted in local extinctions of elephants in many areas.... Elephant numbers have declined by a staggering 80 percent in less than 25 years, confining some herds to small forest patches. These populations are not likely to survive in the long-term."

"The region around Tesso Nilo in central Sumatra is being cleared so rapidly that elephants often go to farms and commercial plantations in search of food... A major breakthrough was achieved in Sumatra with the 2004 declaration of Tesso Nilo National Park, a protected area, which represents a significant step towards the protection of the elephant's habitat. The Tesso Nilo forest is one of the last forest blocks large enough to support a viable population of critically endangered Sumatran elephants and is also home to the critically endangered Sumatran tiger." In another major victory, the Tesso Nilo National Park doubled in size in 2008.

“As South Asia’s population explodes, elephants are getting squeezed into smaller areas leading to major conflicts, we need to champion solutions that help both elephants and people.” “Bandipur, nearby Nagarahole National Park, Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary, and Kerala South Wynad Sanctuary (a wynad is a wetland area) were linked with adjoining forest reserves to create the 2150-square-mile Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve. As intact elephant habitats go these days, this represents a substantial chunk.”

"Tabin Wildlife Reserve consists of 1,220 square kilometers of mainly regenerating logged dipterocarp forest located in eastern Sabah, 42 kilometers from Lahad Datu.... Tabin Wildlife Reserve is one of the most significant conservation areas in Southeast Asia, with wild populations of Bornean elephant, Bornean orang-utan, banteng (wild cattle), Sunda clouded leopard, sun bear."

"Wild elephants only occur in the northeastern part of the island of Borneo, astride the international boundary between Malaysian Sabah and Indonesian Kalimantan... In Sabah, the primary threat to the Bornean elephant is the loss and degradation of continuous forests. Over the last 40 years, Sabah has lost about 40% of its forest currently covered by plantations and human settlements. In the 1980-90s, large tracts of these forests were divided into 'Forest Management Units'... Years of unsustainable logging before the 1990s had taken their toll, making many of these big concessions commercially unviable in the short to medium term. Therefore, some of the FMU concessionaires have been converting part of their holdings into wood or oil palm plantations. The conversion of forests to plantations remains the biggest threat to Bornean elephants, because no plantation can provide the types and amounts of foods necessary to sustain breeding populations of these elephants."

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) banned Asian Elephant ivory for commercial trade in 1977. Today, 178 countries are Parties of CITES.

Indian elephants “once spread across the largest of continents in the millions, from the Tigris-Euphrates fertile crescent in Syria to fairly far north in China, the wild population now inhabits areas totaling just 168,000 square miles, scarcely larger than the state of California. Only about 30 percent of that remaining range lies within national parks, game sanctuaries, forest reserves, or other kinds of protected lands. All the rest is at risk, and so are the elephants inhabiting it.”

"The elephant is the same as the Indian one and is fairly abundant... The elephant in Borneo is a timid animal and, therefore, difficult to come up with in the thick jungle.

"The Elephant Preservation Act (1872) of the Madras Presidency, which went into force from October 1873, and a similar act in 1879, which extended to other parts of India and eventually Burma to "prevent indiscriminate destruction of elephants," were presumably measures to ensure the continued supply of wild elephants to the military and the logging operations."

"The elephant is gregarious in the highest degree: herds of more than a hundred are sometimes seen; fifty, thirty, and twenty are common. Sullen males, which have been driven out of the herd by hard fighting, are the only solitary ones to be met with.”

"The wild elephant abounds in most the large forests of India, from the foot of the Himalayas to the extreme south, and throughout the peninsula to the east of the Bay of Bengal—viz., Chittagong, Burmah, and Siam... Herds of elephants usually consist of from thirty to fifty individuals, but much larger numbers, even one hundred, are by no means uncommon.”

“The forests abounding with elephants, ivory is of course in plenty, and is carried both to China and to Europe... They are not tamed in any part of the island. As they are gregarious, and usually traverse the country is large troops together, they prove highly destructive to the plantations of the natives, obliterating the traces of cultivation, by merely walking through the grounds.”