The Sumatran Elephant: Sumatra's Beautiful Nature
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Why are they endangered?
They are endangered due to the following reasons:
1. Deforestation
People frequently cut down or burn down trees and forests for use of palm oil plantations, an economy which is currently booming despite protests from NGOs. Deforestation also affects Sumatran elephants in other ways, which will be explained in the reason below.
2. Fragmentation of habitat
Deforestation also makes the habitats fragmented, which means that small populations are scattered across the island of Sumatra. Furthermore, due to the small size of the populations, few are sustainable in the long-term.
3. Poaching
The title says it all. A lot of Sumatran elephants are killed by villagers who actually have very good reasons for that. The elephants raid the crops and also destroy the houses, and they also frequently do that in the middle of the night, so you can't really blame them for killing the elephants, whether accidentally or intentionally. However, some elephants are killed just for their tusks, and since only male elephants have tusks, that means that males get killed more than females, and if you have a million females and 0 males, the population is essentially dead because they cannot reproduce, so that is the dilemma. Population size does not reflect actual population growth. Some elephants also die because of snares, which might have been used to kill another type of animal, not the elephant. Such incidents are not rare and elephants can lose a leg or body part in the process.