Forest Elephants  Savanna Elephants  Asian Elephants

Elephas maximus

The numbers of Asian elephants are far fewer than their African cousins.  It is now estimated that the number of Asian elephants in the wild is 35,000 to 50,000 plus another 17,000 in captivity (2000).  While tens of thousands of elephants were being killed annually for their ivory in Africa, the numbers of Asian elephants being killed was in the hundreds.  The major threats to Asian elephants are loss of habitat and the resultant human-elephant conflict.  Asian elephants are disappearing from vast areas where they were once plentiful.  For example, the number of elephants in Vietnam has declined from about 1,000 in 1990 to fewer than 100 in 2002.

Though levels of poaching have been lower in Asia, because only male Asian elephants have tusks, their proportions of the population are being dramatically reduced in some regions.  Areas of southern India report male-female rations as low as 1-100.

More than 100,000 Asian elephants may have existed at the start of the twentieth century, but only some 35,000 to 50,000 now remain in the wild.  About a further 16,000 elephants are held in captivity throughout Southeast Asia; there are thought to be approximately 6,000 domesticated elephants in Myanmar alone. Source: WWF website

Population estimates for the Asian Elephant - 2000

Source: IUCN's Species Survival Commission's Asian Elephant Specialist Group. Warning! All figures are very approximate

* Bhutan also has a seasonal population of migrant elephants from India.

Forest Elephants  Savanna Elephants  Asian Elephants

The above links will take you to pages with population data.