Bornean elephants are found mostly in the Malaysian state of Sabah. This makes Sabah home to the world’s smallest known subspecies of elephants.

Did you know that Bornean elephants play a crucial role as forest gardeners? As the largest land mammals, they carry and disperse seeds far and wide as they travel from one area to another. This process helps spread new plants and regenerates trees in the forest. We all need healthy forest ecosystems for clean air, fresh water, climate change mitigation, soil stability and recreation.

Sadly, Bornean elephants are:
• Coming into more contact with people, thus increasing human-elephant conflict due to improper land use planning and fragmentation of forests.
• Threatened by poaching for their tusks to fuel the ivory trade

These are worrying signs that the remaining endangered population is severely threatened and could face extinction in our lifetime if this trend continues. Today, with only about 1,500 of them left in the wild, urgent and continuous actions need to be taken in order to conserve and protect these gentle giants.

WWF-Malaysia’s Bornean elephant conservation efforts include:
• Conducting elephant satellite-collaring to identify their key space requirements and to provide recommendations to reduce future conflict.
• Establishing and restoring wildlife corridors to connect fragmented habitats.
• Promoting coexistence between plantation owners, communities and elephants through awareness programmes.
• Collaborating with government and non-government agencies on wildlife surveys, research and capacity building for protected area management.
• Setting up camera-traps which will be used to better understand their behaviour and demography for long-term monitoring of their status.
• Collaborating with the government and other non-government agencies to conduct training on gathering intelligence and smart patrolling to curb illegal wildlife trade.

Please help us save our Bornean elephants by donating today! We hope to raise RM10,000 to purchase three camera-traps for our Bornean elephant conservation efforts. Thank you for your important and meaningful contribution towards saving our Bornean elephants. All donations are tax deductible.