Humanity has pursued relentless economic expansion, leaving a trail of loss, theft, and destruction in its wake. An illustration is the serious decline of the Asian elephant Elephas maximus. Although revered in many Asian cultures, this large mammal now teeters on the edge of extinction. One of the main drivers is the shrinking of habitats where these creatures can live in peace. More than half of their vast grasslands and tropical forests have vanished over the past three centuries.
Estimates suggest that about 50,000 individuals remain in the wild, with another 15,000 held in captivity.
According to a recently published Scientific Reports article led by Shermin de Silva, a renowned expert on these thick-skinned animals, the habitat of Asian elephants has contracted by more than 64 percent in a little over three centuries. This figure equates to the loss of 3.3 million square kilometers of land across Asia.
The paper’s authors note that this habitat decline follows centuries of relative stability that ended only recently. The downturn in elephant numbers aligns with shifts in land use and intensified agriculture since colonial times in South Asia.
This habitat loss may complicate coexistence with humans and raise the risk of human-elephant conflict in the near term.
To conduct the study, De Silva and colleagues mapped the spatial distribution of elephants across up to 13 Asian countries over three centuries. They integrated data on land-use changes from 1850 to 2015 to model how suitable elephant habitat has evolved over time. A habitat was deemed adequate when it met several minimum criteria, including the percentage of forest and pasture, presence of nonforested vegetation, patterns of cultivation and irrigation, wood extraction rates, and levels of urbanization.
For instance, the study found that the area elephants can inhabit today has contracted by more than 51.4 percent. In 1700, elephants could thrive across 100 percent of that region; today, they occupy only about 48.6 percent of it.
Widespread casualties in Asia
China, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, and Sumatra stand out for their sharp habitat losses. Each of these nations has surrendered more than half of the land that previously supported elephants’ lifeways.
In this assessment, China emerges as the most affected country, where the habitable zone for elephants has shrunk to roughly 6 percent over the past three centuries. India, which houses about two-thirds of the world’s elephant population, has lost at least 86 percent of suitable elephant habitat. Only on the island of Borneo, part of Indonesia, has there been a gain in areas suitable for these animals.
Researchers stress that reorganizing land use to be more friendly to the Asian elephant is essential to halting the species’ extinction trajectory.
Reference: Nature Scientific Reports 2023, article on elephant habitat decline and land-use change in Asia, authors include Shermin de Silva.
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Note: This material is cited for context and further study in conservation science.