Asian Elephants

The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species changed the Sumatran elephant's status.

The House of Representatives yesterday passed by voice vote legislation that would establish a new postage stamp to benefit species conservation efforts. The legislation was first conceived by World Wildlife Fund in 2000 and creation and implementation of the program has been a priority for WWF for the past 10 years.

Legal loopholes and insufficient law enforcement mean that Thailand continues to harbour the largest illegal ivory market in Asia, says a new report from the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC.

World Wildlife Fund today released its annual list of some of the most threatened species around the world, saying that the long-term survival of many iconic animals is increasingly in doubt due to a host of threats.

A border guard in Myanmar takes bribes to smuggle elephants into Thailand so he can travel to World Cup soccer matches, according to an undercover investigation by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network of World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The report found that so many live elephants have been smuggled to support “elephant trekking” tourism in Thailand that some parts of the Myanmar appear to have lost their elephant populations.

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) hailed today's commitment by the government of Indonesia to more than double the size of Sumatra's Tesso Nilo National Park, one of the last havens for endangered Sumatran elephants and critically endangered Sumatran tigers.

The Borneo pygmy elephant may not be native to the island of Borneo after all. Instead, the population could be the last survivors of the Javan elephant race – accidentally saved from extinction by the Sultan of Sulu centuries ago, suggests an article co-authored by World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Pekanbaru, Sumatra-Turning just one Sumatran province's forests and peat swamps into pulpwood and palm oil plantations is generating more annual greenhouse gas emissions than the Netherlands and rapidly driving the province's elephants into extinction, a new study by WWF and partners has found.

Washington, D.C. - A new WWF study tracking pygmy elephants by satellite shows that the remaining herds of these endangered elephants, which live only on the island of Borneo, are under threat from forest fragmentation and loss of habitat.

WWF researchers have discovered that ten endangered wild Sumatran elephants are being kept chained to trees without enough food or water in the Riau Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra in violation of an agreement the government signed in 2004 known as the Riau Human-Elephant Conflict Mitigation Protocol. The elephants have been made homeless by the destruction of the forest they inhabited. Government authorities captured the elephants ten days ago after they raided crops and terrorized residents of a nearby village.

WASHINGTON - World Wildlife Fund today praised a surprise decision by the government of the Malaysian state of Sabah to protect its most important remaining lowland forests on the island of Borneo. This decision will permanently preserve one of just two places in the world where the endangered orangutans, Bornean Pygmy elephants and the critically endangered Sumatran rhino co-exist and where forests are still large enough to maintain viable populations of each.

Washington - Following the apparent poisoning of a herd of endangered Sumatran elephants last week, the Indonesian Forest Protection and Nature Conservation Agency (PHKA) and World Wildlife Fund, announced plans to immediately begin implementing a protocol to reduce human-elephant conflict in central Sumatra. PHKA also called for an immediate stop to the clearing of all natural forests remaining in Riau Province, site of ongoing human-elephant conflict.

Sabah Wildlife Department and World Wildife Fund-Malaysia (Asian Rhinoceros and Elephant Action Strategy - AREAS Project) with support from SARAYA Co. Ltd. (Japan) successfully located and treated an injured Borneo Pygmy elephant at Bukit Permata, Lower Kinabatangan on Jan. 24, 2006.

Washington -- The same satellite system used by the U.S. military to track vehicle convoys in Iraq is helping World Wildlife Fund shed light on the little-known world of pygmy elephants in Borneo.

Washington - World Wildlife Fund today invited elephant lovers to help name a Borneo pygmy elephant that will be part of the first study ever conducted on the pint-sized pachyderms.