Cultural Importance: Humans use elephants in Asia to log forests, transport heavy loads and carry tourists. Elephants can walk in areas where machines are unable to navigate. About 15,000 Asian elephants are held in captivity as work animals. Elephants are important in Asian folklore and religion. They are believed to be cousins of the clouds and able to cause lightening.
Threats To Survival: The loss of habitat is the primary threat to Asian elephants. Approximately 20% of the world’s population lives in or near the range of Asian elephants. The homes of these elephants are being cleared for many reasons including warfare, agricultural development, human settlement, and logging. Asian elephants are less prone to poaching (killing elephants for ivory tusks) because few males (and no females) grow tusks. In China, the penalty for poaching is the death sentence.
Conflicts between Asian elephants and humans often occur because of habitat destruction. Sometimes there is not enough food in small forests to sustain elephants, so they look for the nearest source which is usually the field of a local farmer.
Protect the wild ones