Indian elephant - Population & Distribution

A population on the increase?

India has by far the largest remaining populations of Indian elephant (estimated at around 57% of the total). Small populations of the subspecies are also found on the Andaman Islands and in Borneo.

There are four populations and ten sub populations of the mainland Indian elephant, distributed in the South, Central, Northwest and Northeast regions in India.

• The southern population is distributed in the forests of Western and Eastern Ghats in the states of Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu
• The north western population spans the Terai forest regions of Uttar Pradesh along the foothills of Himalayas
• The north-eastern population is found at the Himalayan foothills of Bhutan and north -west Bengal eastwards into the states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya.

Borneo's elephants represent an island population on the perimeter of the distributional range for Asian elephants in Southeast Asia.

A possibly genetically distinct subgroup...
The distribution of Borneo elephants corresponds to the Northeast Borneo Ecoregion of WWF classifications. They are likely to be genetically distinct, and may have developed other adaptations from the populations on the mainland and within the central areas of the species' range.

Elephants only occur between the Sugut River in north-eastern Sabah and Sembakung River in northern East Kalimantan.