Sumatran elephants run out of room as fires spread
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Between 1,320 and 1,635 Sumatran elephants are estimated to remain in the wild across Sumatra.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- Wildfires in Sumatra have damaged over 530,000ha of habitat, threatening the survival of the critically endangered Sumatran elephants, whose population has declined by 45 per cent in 20 years.
- Fire hotspots have surged from 74 in June to 2,851 in early September, worsening habitat fragmentation and squeezing elephant movements, especially in key conservation areas.
- Fires overlap with plantations and development zones, increasing human-elephant conflicts and putting natural elephant corridors at risk, complicating conservation efforts amid climate change and deforestation pressures.
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JAKARTA – A surge in wildfires across Sumatra is putting critically endangered Sumatran elephants at greater risk of extinction, with hundreds of thousands of hectares of their habitat now affected by fires.
A new report by environmental group Geopix found that about 382,778ha of elephant habitat was affected by fires throughout August. Further fires affected 147,550ha between Sept 1 and 8 across 21 population pockets on the island, which accounted for around 7.06 per cent of the total elephant habitat.