Elephant locations in Malaysia

Wild population numbers are divided into: (1. Malaysia (Peninsular): 1450, 2. Borneo: 2435)

Hundreds have been removed to national parks since the 1970s, to stop raids on plantations as jungles were cleared. Translocation has ensured healthy elephant populations.

Malaysia also has a new (2003) subspecies of Asian elephant, officially named as Borneo pygmy elephant, (Elephas maximus borneensis), estimated to be less than 1,500, most of them living in Sabah.

2008: population was 1,250-1,466 Peninsula and 1,100-1,600 Borneo (Sukumar 2008)

2011: Malaysia has about 3885 (min. 2423, max. 5347) wild elephants. Source:Malaysia (Peninsular): Saaban et al. (2011), Borneo: Alfred et al. (2011). Malaysia put into place the Management & Ecology of Malaysian Elephants (MEME) project in 2011 to further study and collect data on the country’s wild elephant populations with the end goal of developing evidence-based approaches to HEC.

2020: It is estimated that there are less than 3000 individual elephants left in Peninsular Malaysia including the endangered Borneo Pygmy elephants found in Sabah.

Human-elephant conflict (HEC)

Captive elephants