Borneo's pygmy elephant last survivor: WWF

Adianto P. Simamora ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Fri, 04/18/2008 12:43 AM  |  Headlines

PYGMY ELEPHANTS: The file photo shows parents and calf of Bornean pygmy elephants in the Danum Valley conservation area in Sabah, Malaysia. In 2003, the pygmy elephants, found only in Sabah, were scientifically recognized as a subspecies. (Courtesy WWF-Canon/A. Christy)

Leading conservation group WWF said Borneo's mysterious pygmy elephants might be the last survivors of the now-extinct Javan elephants.

Research by the WWF found no archaeological evidence of a long-term elephant presence on Borneo.

"Just one fertile female and one fertile male elephant, if left undisturbed in a good enough habitat, could in theory end up as a population of 2,000 elephants within less than 300 years," WWF's Junaidi Payne, who co-authored the paper "Origins of the Elephants Elephas Maximus", said Thursday.

"And that may be what happened here."

The paper says the Borneo pygmy elephants have smaller bodies than mainland Asian elephants. The Borneo male elephants may grow to less than 2.5 meters while Asian elephants can reach up to three meters.

The Borneo elephants also have "babyish" faces, larger ears, longer tails that reach almost to the ground and are more rotund. They are also less aggressive than other Asian elephants.

The elephants are found primarily in the state of Sabah, Malaysia, with a few individuals having a part of their home range across the border in East Kalimantan, Indonesia.

It was only in 2003 that the pygmy elephants were identified as a new subspecies after DNA testing found they were genetically distinct.

The WWF said satellite tracking had shown the animals prefer the same lowland habitat that is being increasingly cleared for timber, rubber and palm oil plantations.

"If they came from Java, this fascinating story demonstrates the value of efforts to save even small populations of certain species, often thought to be doomed," Christy Williams, coordinator of WWF's Asian elephant and rhino program, said.

"It gives us the courage to propose such undertakings with the small remaining populations of critically endangered Sumatran rhinos and Javan rhinos, by translocating a few to better habitats to increase their numbers.

"It has worked for Africa's southern white rhinos and Indian rhinos, and now we have seen it may have worked for the Javan elephants, too."

The WWF finding supports the long-held local belief that the elephants were brought to Borneo centuries ago by the sultan of Sulu, now a province of the Philippines, and later abandoned in the jungle.

"It's exciting to consider that the forest-dwelling Borneo elephants may be the last vestiges of a subspecies that went extinct on its native Java Island, in Indonesia, centuries ago," said retired Malaysian forester Shim Phyau Soon in statement made available to The Jakarta Post.

"Elephants were shipped from place to place across Asia many hundreds of years ago, usually as gifts between rulers," Soon, whose ideas on the origins of the elephants inspired the WWF in this latest research, said.

The WWF is currently working to assist Borneo's three nations -- Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam -- to conserve the area known as the Heart of Borneo which covers 191,402 square kilometers.

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