Only 1,325-1,648 wild elephants left in Indonesia, government says

A new 10-year plan for elephant conservation released by the Indonesian government places the country’s wild elephant population at an estimated 1,325-1,648 individuals.

The previous figure, published in 2007, was 2,400-2,800 individuals, meaning the new estimate represents a decline of 41-45%.

The launch of the 2026-2036 strategy and action plan comes after a long wait. After the 2007-2017 elephant plan expired, the government was supposed to release a new one. While a draft 2019-2029 plan was completed in 2017, then-President Joko Widodo’s administration never finalized the plan or shared it with the public.

The draft 2019-2029 plan, seen by Mongabay, placed Indonesia’s elephant population at just 928-1,379 individuals, Mongabay reported in 2022.

The plans are drafted by the Indonesian Elephant Conservation Forum (FKGI), a multi-stakeholder group composed of conservationists from NGOs and government agencies, and submitted to the forestry ministry for approval. FKGI deputy head Wishnu Sukmantoro suggested the discrepancy between the new plan and the previous unreleased one was due to the incorporation of new data.

“The higher figure [in 2026] doesn’t mean the elephant population has increased” since 2017, Wishnu told Mongabay. The updated number better represents the situation on the ground, he said. “It is a combination of scientific analysis and agreements among elephant conservationists.”

Nearly all of Indonesia’s elephants are Sumatran elephants (Elephas maximus sumatranus), a critically endangered subspecies of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), which is itself endangered. Fewer than 52,000 Asian elephants are left, most of them in India, according to WWF.

Indonesia’s new estimate for Sumatran elephants is 1,320-1,635 left in the wild. Its new estimate for Bornean elephants (Elephas maximus borneensis) is five to 13, though around 1,000 Bornean elephants are thought to live in the Malaysian state of Sabah in the northern part of of the island of Borneo.

The previous unreleased plan placed those figures at 924-1,359 for the Sumatran elephant and four to 20 for Indonesia’s population of Bornean elephants.

The elephants’ decline has been fueled by the destruction of their rainforest habitats for oil palm and pulpwood plantations, among other activities. Indonesia produces most of the world’s palm oil and is also a major exporter of raw wood pulp and finished paper products.

The new action plan says that only 23% of Indonesia’s wild elephants live in areas designated as protected by the government.

22 population pockets

The new plan sorts Indonesia’s wild elephants into 21 population pockets in Sumatra and one in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo. The previous unreleased plan had 22 Sumatra pockets and 23 total. The new plan merges some pockets into one and divides others into separate pockets.

“Agreement factor” between the NGOs and government agencies in the FKGI network was needed because estimating a wild elephant population is not an easy process, Wishnu said. In past decades, due to limited funding and the elephants’ vast range, population surveys were occasionally conducted by various nonprofit organizations and state bodies. Each had their own survey methodology and subjective understanding of how certain elephant groups are connected into one population pocket, he said.

FKGI head Donny Gunaryadi said the drafting process of the 2026-2036 plan tried to accommodate the different perspectives. “The most important thing for us is the democratic process involving perspectives from all parties,” he told Mongabay. One example of disagreement is identifying what constitutes a population pocket. “We had intense debates whether or not certain areas should be considered as one population pocket,” Wishnu said.

Disagreements over which areas should be considered as a single population pocket could result in different overall population estimates, since the same elephant group could be counted twice or different groups could be counted as one, Wishnu said.

The other reason for the increase, Wishnu said, was that some data were not included in the unpublished 2019 document, including from Subulussalam in Aceh province, Sembilang in South Sumatra province, and Bukit Tigapuluh in Jambi province. By including these new numbers, “I think the data is quite representative now,” he said.

In the new plan, pockets wholly or partly in Aceh province are estimated to contain 510-608 elephants, up from 392-451 in the previous plan.

Outside the FKGI network, some academics were not aware of the new number until the release of the new plan on Aug. 12. Burhanuddin Masyud, a conservation expert from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), said he respects the new estimate. “They must have their own methodology,” he told Mongabay. But the “data accuracy” of the population number itself, he noted, “should always be dynamic.” “It’s obvious that the trend of human-elephant conflict in Sumatra has been increasing in the past decades,” he said.

On Aug. 9, a male Sumatran elephant was found dead in an oil palm plantation in Aceh Tamiang district, one of several elephant deaths recorded in the province this year.

Standardizing survey methods

Wishnu admitted that the number could be contested. “We need more robust data for the population count,” he said. “That’s why we need to ensure that every survey is standardized.”

Various organizations, which include nonprofits and ministerial agencies, used different survey methodologies in estimating the number of elephant populations across Sumatra and Kalimantan. Some of them, according to Wishnu, were robust, such as the DNA-based survey in Way Kambas and Bukit Barisan Selatan national parks. But some others such as simple direct counting, he  said, were not standardized.

The new plan establishes the need to conduct standardized elephant population surveys as a top priority. Wishnu said his team was now composing guidelines to be used for island-wide monitoring. This includes systematic, peer-reviewed DNA survey, dung count, thermal drone monitoring and even bioacoustics. “People cannot rely on subjective observation,” he said.

Raja Juli Antoni, Indonesia’s minister of forestry, says the government now has a stronger commitment to save the country’s largest mammal from extinction. A recent presidential instruction on elephant conservation signed by President Prabowo Subianto, he’s quoted as saying in the elephant plan, “emphasizes that elephant conservation is a shared responsibility and needs cross-sectoral collaboration.”

In addition to the elephant plan, the Ministry of Forestry and conservation experts are reportedly formulating a new long-term strategy and action plan for orangutans, after the last plan for the endangered apes expired in 2019.

Banner image: Ayu Rosalina, a 2-day old baby Sumatran elephant, stands near her mother at Conservation Response Unit (CRU) in Ulu Masen, Aceh Jaya, Aceh, 2012. Image by AP Photo/Heri Juanda.

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Cite this article

Dyna Rochmyaningsih (2026). Only 1,325-1,648 wild elephants left in Indonesia, government says. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-327276