The world’s smallest elephants are still big. Measuring around nine feet (2.7 meters) tall, Bornean elephants are the smallest subspecies of the Asian elephant, and are two feet (60 centimeters) shorter than their African counterparts.
Found only on the island of Borneo, mostly in the Malaysian state of Sabah, there are fewer than 1,000 Bornean elephants left in the wild, and they are classified as endangered.
In the last 40 years, Sabah has lost 60% of the elephant’s natural forest habitat to logging and palm oil plantations. According to one study, between 1980 and 2000, more wood was exported from Borneo than from the entirety of Africa and the Amazon combined. This has left elephant populations fragmented and squeezed into small areas of preserved forest, such as those in the Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary, an area in the floodplains of the Kinabatangan River where pockets of native forest exist within large agricultural estates.
But Malaysian elephant ecologist Dr. Farina Othman is determined to connect these habitats by building corridors of wild trees through palm oil plantations. She founded conservation organization Seratu Aatai, meaning “solidarity,” in 2018 to raise awareness of the elephants and address the rise in human-elephant conflict.
Due to encroaching plantations, the elephants have come into more frequent contact with humans, sometimes damaging crops and buildings. This leads to conflict, and between 2010 and 2020, 131 Bornean elephants were killed, primarily due to human-related causes, such as accidental poisoning or retribution killings. Othman said that while many people understand the importance of elephants as ecosystem engineers through spreading seeds, and know that they are under threat, there is still a “not in my backyard” attitude towards them.
It became her goal to change this mindset. “Who else can take that responsibility? I’m Malaysian, so I think it’s time for me to also try to educate and raise awareness,”
