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Learn more about the Asian elephant, read our FAQs or see our Media section.
Here are some key points:
In the past 100 years the Asian elephant population has declined by 90%; the extent of their available habitat has shrunk by 95% in the same time.
- At current trends the Asian elephant could be extinct within the next thirty years.
- Only 25,000 – 35,000 Asian elephants remain in the wild in a patchwork of isolated forests.
- The range of the Asian elephant once stretched from the far corners of China to Syria covering at least 3.5 million square miles - the size of Canada. It has shrunk to some 170,000 square miles - less than the size of Spain.
- The Asian elephant is classified as endangered with a population that is decreasing: the African elephant is classified as near-threatened with a population that is increasing (IUCN Red list).
- There are at least 15 times as many African elephants as there are Asian elephants.
- Asian elephants are found in 13 countries in south-east Asia, and elephant family currently works in four of these: India, Thailand, Malaysia (Borneo) and Indonesia (Sumatra).
- There are considered to be four different subspecies of Asian elephant: Indian, Sri Lankan, Sumatran and Bornean.
- Asian elephants are smaller than their African relatives and have smaller ears. Also, unlike the African elephant, female Asian elephants usually lack tusks.
- Female elephants and their young live in small family groups led by the oldest female. Adult male elephants are usually solitary.
- Asian elephants can live for up to 60 years in the wild.
- Asian elephants are an endangered species: there are an estimated 25,000 – 35,000 remaining in the wild, down from approximately 200,000 one hundred years ago. On current trends it could be extinct in the wild within the next three decades. There are also approximately 15,000 Asian elephants in captivity.
- The main threats to their future survival are loss of habitat and that what remains is increasingly broken up due to human activity. As a direct result of this they are also increasingly threatened by coming into contact, and conflict, with people. While poaching for ivory is a small but increasing threat to Asian elephants, it has never been as significant threat as it has to their African counterparts.
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