Asia's Vanishing Elephant Habitat: A Crisis Centuries in the Making

Naveen Akshar, Kerala Elephant Foundation

Edited, Mark Doss

December 13, 2025

Asian elephants are running out of room and fast. A 2023 study of long-term habitat data published in Scientific Reports revealed a staggering truth: nearly two-thirds of suitable Asian elephant habit has disappeared since 1700. The study was led by conservation scientist Shermin de Silva of the University of California, San Diego, and supported by an international team of ecologists and conservationists.

What makes this especially concerning is not just the scale of the loss, but its trajectory. Following centuries of relative stability, habitat loss accelerated post-1700 due to colonial-era extraction, followed by post-1950s large-scale industrial agriculture expansion. More roads, logging, and clearing of land for agriculture have fragmented suitable habitats, with average patch size dropping an alarming 83%.

This is ecological degradation that has led to the slow rearrangement of an entire continent's relationship with one of its most iconic species. The countries bearing the heaviest burden underscore the urgency. China has lost 94% of its suitable elephant habitat, while India - home to the largest surviving wild population - has lost 86%. Other nations, from Bangladesh to Vietnam to Indonesia, have seen more than half of their suitable terrain vanish. And as forests fall below critical thresholds, human-elephant conflict (HEC) rises.

Tea estates in Assam, rice fields in Sri Lanka, palm plantations in Sumatra, all now double as battlegrounds where elephants wander in search of space, and communities struggle with crop loss, danger, and uncertainty. The dramatic 500-kilometer march of China's wandering Yunnan herd in 2021 was no anomaly, just a warning signal of what happens when landscapes fail.

Yet the study's most striking insight isn't the loss itself, it's what we choose to learn from it.

The researchers emphasize that protecting elephants does not mean freezing landscapes in time or excluding people. In fact, the communities most directly capable of shaping sustainable coexistence - rural farmers, indigenous groups, forest-dependent families, are often the very ones pushed to the margins by economic systems. Restoring elephant habitats means acknowledging their role, adjusting land-use systems, and resisting the outdated idea that wildlife must adjust while people expand without limit.

The path forward is not about keeping elephants in shrinking pockets of protected land high up in rugged terrain. It's about reconnecting ecosystems, rethinking development priorities, and recognizing that conflict is not inevitable but a consequence of human policy choices. If Asian elephants are to survive the next century, conservation must shift from reactive crisis-management to proactive landscape planning. The study's message is clear: coexistence is possible, but only if we act before the last viable corridors disappear.

Historic (brown) vs 2008 (purple) Asian elephant range, with much of Borneo excluded. De Silva, S. et al. Land-use change is associated with multi-century loss of elephant ecosystems in Asia. Sci Rep 13, 5996 (2023).