Asian elephants - Population & Distribution
Originally found from Iraq to China
Previous Population and DistributionThe Asian elephant, whose ancestors originated in Africa some 55 million years ago and ranged from modern Iraq and Syria to the Yellow River in China, is now found only from India to Vietnam, with a tiny besieged population in the extreme southwest of China's Yunnan Province.
A pygmy species of Elephas, E. falconeri, occurred on certain Mediterranean and Aegean islands in the late Pleistocene and early recent epochs. More than 100,000 Asian elephants may have existed at the start of the twentieth century.
Current Population and Distribution
Killed for their ivory, meat, and bone, and for their live young, Asia's last remaining elephants continue to decline in number in the face of poaching and habitat destruction.
As recently as 1995, only 25,600 to 32,750 Asian elephants were thought to remain in the wild (as opposed to 10 times as many elephants in Africa). Since then, several populations have dwindled still further, and scientists fear that current populations may have fallen well below 1995 estimates.
About a further 16,000 elephants are held in captivity throughout Southeast Asia while there are thought to be approximately 6,000 domesticated elephants in Myanmar alone.
