The world’s smallest elephants are facing extinction. One woman has a plan to save them

The Bornean elephant is the world’s smallest elephant, roughly two feet shorter than African bush elephants. (Shervin Hess via CNN Newsource)

The world’s smallest elephants are still big. Measuring around nine feet (2.7 metres) tall, Bornean elephants are the smallest subspecies of the Asian elephant, and are two feet (60 centimetres) 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,” she told CNN.

On Wednesday, she was one of six conservationists given the 2025 Whitley Award, which includes a £50,000 (US$66,000) prize for her project. The award, presented by the Whitley Fund for Nature, a UK charity, supports grassroots conservationists in the Global South.

Othman will put the new funding towards expanding the network of elephant corridors across Sabah. “If only one plantation wants to do this, it won’t work. We need to create a consortium of several plantations so that we can connect this corridor back to the wildlife sanctuary,” she said.

Coexistence

The first challenge was getting the farmers on side. For a long time, Othman said she was unable to get palm planters in the same room with her, but eventually, they found common ground.

“As planters, they actually know the need of preserving biodiversity and also the health of the soil, because this is all contributing back to the trees that they’re planting,” she said.

She added that some farmers have now agreed to plant native trees alongside their oil palms, as well as “food chests” of plants that elephants like to eat, to encourage them to use the wildlife corridors.

Othman and her team are now working with plantations to monitor the elephants to better understand their behavior. This will include training planters on how to assess herd dynamics and recognize individual elephants. Larger plantations will also be offered sessions on sustainable farming and pest control, hopefully helping to reduce the number of accidental poisonings.

She has also set up a team of elephant rangers, with members of the local community, who will monitor populations and help to ensure palm planters know how to interact with elephants safely.

Edward Whitley, founder of the Whitley Fund for Nature, said of Othman: “Her innovative project recognizes the key role that oil palm companies can play in (elephant) conservation, and her connection to and love of these beautiful giants has helped empower community members to become guardians of their environment.”

Othman worries that with the rise of human-elephant interaction, the nature of the elephants might change, from docile to more aggressive. But she hopes that through their work to build forest corridors and community outreach, this can be avoided. When an encounter does happen, she says people should act calmly and kindly, and that the elephants will respond in the same way.

She recalls times when elephants could have hurt her in the past, but didn’t. “I believe that they can really read your heart and what is in your mind,” she said.

Written by Sam Peters, CNN