Title
Chapter Title: What future for Forest Elephants?
Book Title: State of the Wild 2010-2011: A Global Portrait
Author(s)
Blake, S.;Hedges, S.
Published
2010
Abstract
Despite a diverse evolutionary heritage spanning 60 million years and numerous families, genera, and species, elephants today are represented by just two species, the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). African elephants are further divided into two subspecies, the savanna elephant (L. a. africana) and the smaller forest elephant (L. a. cyclotis). Asian elephants share many traits with African forest elephants so here we refer to them as a single group, the forest elephants. Forest elephants, like their better-known savanna living counterparts, are wondrous creatures with complex social lives. They play a dominant role in the ecosystems in which they live and serve as flagships for conservation wherever they occur. For these and a host of other reasons, we have spent much of our professional lives studying and tracking forest elephants in Asia and Africa, and working toward their conservation. Ecologically, forest elephants need large areas for their populations to flourish, and therefore, their presence defines the last strongholds of the “wild” in Asian and African tropical and sub-tropical forests. In recent decades, the range and abundance of forest elephants have decreased dramatically due to a combination of habitat loss, poaching, and other forms of human–elephant conflict.
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PUB13408