U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

Asian Elephant Conservation Fund

Asian Elephants are best known in the

United States as familiar circus

attractions. Yet throughout their

homeland, domesticated elephants

primarily are beasts of burden. And, in

some nations elephants hold important

religious significance. An estimated

16,000 Asian elephants have been

domesticated and used for timber

harvest, clearing forests and

agricultural development. Ironically, it is

the destruction of forests, the

advancement of agriculture, and the

encroachment of human civilization that

poses the greatest threat to the survival

of Asian elephants.

In years past, large herds of elephants

roamed freely throughout the forests

and savannahs of Asia. Today, fewer than

40,000 Asian elephants still exist in the

wild—about half of which are found in

India. Mature bulls can weigh as much

as 11,000 pounds. Each elephant

consumes more than 440 pounds of

vegetation and 52 gallons of water every

day. And, each needs a “living space” of

80 square miles. Elephants require a lot

of natural resources and as human

populations expand, conflict with

elephant populations grows.

When sizable ranges of natural habitat

are not available, elephants are attracted

to commercial plantations and private

fields of rice, cassava, bananas, oil palm,

rubber, tea and coffee. Nightly raids by

hungry elephants, coupled with frenzied

attempts by farmers to chase the

animals away, often result in tragedy. In

Sri Lanka, approximately 120 elephants

are poisoned or shot each year by

villagers, and approximately 60 people

are killed each year by elephants, in

connection with elephant crop raids.

Poaching, which is the illegal killing of

elephants for ivory, meat, skin, teeth, feet

and bones, also poses a serious threat.

Among Asian elephants, only males have

tusks. Asian elephant ivory is highly

favored, and centuries of targeting male

elephants have left some elephant

populations severely unbalanced with 50

females to every male “tusker.” In parts

of India, the poaching of tuskers is

shifting the male Asian elephant

population towards the survival of 

tusk-less males known as “mukhnas.”

In 1997, the United States Congress

passed the Asian Elephant Conservation

Act, which established a fund for

protection of the Asian Elephant and the

conservation of its habitat.

International Affairs

Division of International Conservation

4401 N. Fairfax Drive, Room 730

Arlington, VA 22203

703/358-1754

703/358-2849 fax

internationalconservation@fws.gov

http://international.fws.gov

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

www.fws.gov

Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance

Number 15.621

February 2004

Asian elephant

© Corel
Highlights of the 21 projects funded from the 2003 appropriation of $1.2 million are:

Asian elephant-human conflict

WWF/Christy Williams

• Assisting the Cambodian Ministry of

the Environment with anti-poaching

training and law enforcement

activities in the Cardamom Mountains,

which encompass the largest contiguous habitat for elephants and other

endangered species in Cambodia;

• Financial support for anti-poaching

units at India’s Biligiri Rangaswamy

Temple Wildlife Sanctuary where one

of the world’s largest single

population of Asian elephants are

found;

• Mobilizing a crop-raid prevention

team to manage human-elephant

conflict around a new wildlife

sanctuary being created by the

Government of Malaysia on the island

of Borneo;

• Testing several techniques for

preventing elephant crop raiding and

reducing elephant-human conflict in

the Way Kambas National Park,

which contains one of the top four

priority elephant populations in

Indonesia;

• Identifying and evaluating ivory

trade activities in China, South Korea,

Hong Kong and Japan, and

connections to the illegal hunting of

Asian elephants;

• Developing “elephant friendly” land

use planning strategies around Sri

Lanka’s Yala National Park where a

robust population of elephants will be

subject to range reduction as

surrounding areas are developed for

human habitation and agriculture;

• Building the capacity of l ocal

communities along India’s Nilgiri

Biosphere Reserve to preserve intact

elephant food corridors that are

heavily impacted by human resource

consumption. The Nilgiri Biosphere

Reserve complex contains

approximately 16 percent of the

world’s wild Asian elephant

population.

• Development and implementation of

a self-sustaining national elephant

conservation strategy for Burma,

which contains approximately 12

percent of the world’s total

population of Asian elephants;

• Field testing a pheromone-enhanced

mechanical device developed to deter

elephants from entering crop areas,

which would reduce human-elephant

conflict; and

• Establishing programs for elephant

monitoring, human-elephant conflict

reduction and anti-poaching for

Thailand’s Khao Yai National Park—

one of the few protected areas in

Thailand that can support a viable

population of wild Asian elephants.

Total Number of Grants Proposals Received 197

Total Number of Grants Awarded 85

Percentage of Countries with Asian Elephants that Receive Grants 92%

Total Amount Appropriated by U.S. Congress $4,136,500

Total Funds Distributed through Grants $3,918,165

Total Funds to Administration of Grants $218,335

Total Matching/In-kind Funds Leveraged by Grants $4,982,625

Asian Elephant Conservation Fund from First Appropriation in 1999 through FY 2003