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Threats
Urbanization,
agriculture
STATUS:
ESA -- ENDANGERED
IUCN -- ENDANGERED
SIZE:
Weight:
Up to 11,500 pounds
(5,221 kg)
Shoulder height:
8.5 feet (2.6 m)
HABITAT:
Thorn-scrub, dense forests
CURRENT RANGE:
India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, southern China, Malaysia, Sumatra, Borneo
CONSERVATION:
Captive breeding;
Species Survival Plan
in effect; CITES trade restrictions; managed elephant ranges
AFRICAN ELEPHANT
Tusks appear on both male and female African elephants. Among Asian elephants, only the males grow visible tusks; the female versions usually don't protrude from the mouth. poaching isn't
as big a threat to Asian elephants as it is to their African relatives, since there are fewer Asian animals with large ivories. For both species, though, there is good news on the tusk front: the market for ivory products of all sorts has declined considerably since the international embargo on trade
in ivory began in 1989.
ASIAN ELEPHANT
Elephant ivory (as well as other elephant body parts) was one of the earliest and most valuable
trade items in human civilization; ivory has been called the diamond of ancient times. When the pharaohs of Egypt conquered West Asia
in the 15th century B.C., they took over the lucrative ivory trade that had once thrived in Egypt until elephants were hunted to extinction there. Trade continued in West Asia until the 7th century B.C., when elephants were wiped out there as well.
Elephant social structure
is organized around
long-term relationships between related females (mothers, daughters, sisters). Herds, consisting of females and their offspring, may occasionally number up to 40, but nowadays most herds are much smaller. Adult males have no permanent ties
to females, although they may associate with them while feeding and as part of the mating process. Males are generally tolerant of one another
and serious fighting is rare.
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Big Animal,
Tiny Habitat
Modern elephants and their close relatives -- called proboscideans -- once ranged around the world, on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. Proboscideans came in many shapes and sizes -- mostly large. They included mammoths, mastodons, and several others that looked quite different from modern elephants.
Today there are two members of the family left: African and Asian elephants. For both species,
habitat, populations, and survival prospects are shrinking. For Asian elephants in particular, the situation is critical.
Asian elephants used to live from Iraq to southern China. They are forest animals, and the forests they once occupied have been cut down to make way for farms and villages. They are now mostly confined to hilly and mountainous regions where human contact has been minimal. These small, isolated tracts are ill-suited to sustain Asian elephants. A single adult eats about 330 pounds (150 kg) of grasses, roots, leaves, and bark per day. When forests were more extensive, the elephants migrated with the seasons. This allowed them to find fresh food supplies, and it also gave plants and trees time to regenerate after the elephants left. Today there is nowhere for them to go. Recent figures indicate that there are about 55,000 Asian elephants left, with an available habitat of about 190,000 square miles (494,000 sq km). By contrast, the African population is about 10 times this size, living on nearly 3 million square miles (7.7 million sq km) of habitat.
Good Elephant, Bad Elephant
For more than 2,000 years, people have domesticated Asian elephants and used them for transportation and forestry in parts of southern Asia. This long-term relationship has created a generally benign image for Asian elephants, but that image changes when small herds of wild elephants trample farms and pastures in their search for food. Every year there are more and more people who need more land to live on. In India, for example, the human population has risen from 230 million to 800 million in this century. Technological innovations now make it possible for people to farm in marginal places such as forested areas, hills, and mountainous terrain that are the elephants' last remaining habitats. As their resources disappear, the elephants turn to human crops. They are particularly attracted to oil palm, sugarcane, and cereals. In some parts of Asia, they are now considered serious agricultural pests.
Barriers have been devised that keep elephants out of agricultural areas, but increasingly the elephants are being divided into "pocketed herds" -- small groups trapped in tiny patches of forest surrounded by cultivated land. These kinds of circumstances invariably lead to crop raiding and human injuries and fatalities. These, in turn, lead to increasingly adverse public attitudes towards elephants. Many experts feel that the only answer is managed elephant ranges where elephants are allowed to roam freely and human activities are limited.
Silver Linings
The outlook for Asian elephants is not without signs of hope. Generations of Asian elephants have helped generations of people log forests. There's a surprising benefit to this activity for elephants: controlled logging produces new growth, which offers wild elephants more potential food resources than they can find in dense primary forests that have never been logged.
There is also hope that human land use will stabilize in Asia in the coming century -- one result of rising prosperity throughout the region. If the Asian elephant's remaining habitat can be stabilized and the wild population can be helped through this difficult period, it's possible to envision a better future for this fascinating giant.
In Asia, domesticated elephants are
still used in the logging industry.
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