The Bornean elephant has just been discovered as an isolated population of it’s own subspecies for 300,000 years in the northern 5% of the island. (Kappelhof et al 2025).
The longtime legend of Pygmy elephants is now a proven fact, announced in August of this year (2025) by an independent scientific research team (Fernando et al 2023). The team verified that the Elephas maximus borneensis has been endemic to the Borneo Island for 300,000 years. (Kappelhof. et al 2025). It would seem that the elephants evolved to just the right size fit for the island and are approximately 1/3 smaller that the African Bush elephant.
The size of these founding herds is unknown, although today the Borneo Pygmy elephant exists in numbers ± 1,500. Alarmingly, there has only been 5 varied genomes of 7 different alleles identified in the population. However, only 15 elephants were sampled, both captive & wild. This leaves a possibility of finding more genetic diversity among the pygmy count of ±1,500 total, if we can keep them alive long enough to find out.(Kappelhof et al 2025). The modern world around them has developed into an extinction vortex. The industrial age affected the Borneo pygmy through habitat/water loss & pollution caused by commercial monoculture companies operating on the island. The over exploitation & killing by poachers/growers further fragment the single already isolated population of the subspecies. The multi mortality events are little extinction events, chipping away at their DNA until they can no longer reproduce & fade or collapse away into complete extinction.
Progressive human developments such as Palm Oil moncultures, that drain the richly diverse rainforests & replace vegetation with Palm trees. These monocultures are also affiliated with snares, poison, shot guns aimed at killing elephants for a lot of trees that can be easily replace. They also interfere with water use. Poaching, is not just for tuskers anymore, as bulls, cows & calves all have an equal opportunity to be slaughtered, elephant decapitation is all the rage now. Also as far as we know, this elephant population has historically been small, & resides within the upper 5% of the island, as to this date no trace of elephants have been found anywhere else on the island. The shrinking pygmys number approximately 1500 living wild, while just in 2024 there were 32 elephant deaths (Bulls, cows, calves) 4 from decapitation, while some elephants may survive severe physical damage, it often leads to premature death from infection, compromised survival abilities, unable to compete reproductively, an overall detriment ending in early death for many elephants.
The secondary assault is genetics. As every dead elephant is a missing DNA/Data point (Weiner 1994) this reflects in the current population. Genome research on 15 Borneo elephants only produced 7 different genomes (Fernando et al 2003). Eight Thailand elephants in the same study were observed to have 17 different genomes. As of now, the Pygmy population does not seem to be exhibiting inbreeding depression, but their lack of genetic diversity could weaken them against disease, pests, due to lack of adaptability, which in turn may affect immune systems, and possibly cognizance, although to this date is unproven.Also low genetic diversity makes captive animal husbandry difficult, with a limited number of animals available avoiding inbreeding is difficult (Lee et al 2009). Also the genetic drift is negatively impacted with further loss of genetic diversity as elephants have a smaller mating pool that can not be maintained in the wild especially if not at least protected. Apparently animals don’t know the fails of inbreeding, or there’s no other choice…this may be why a minority representation of island species comprises the majority of extinctions.
The DNA deleting events results in affected elephants having reduced adaptability during variations in environment/eco system, or even a demographic stochasity of losing the matriarch may be detrimental if the rest of the herd has been wiped out & only the very young are left. Also an elephant affected with a severe inbreeding mental detriment may not be able to instinctively figure it out as their instinct is warped, thus affecting their survival. This also may be a N reduction factor.
In this age of climate change, potential disasters resulting from monoculture fires (Borneo Project 2025) and drainage of peatlands impact the Borneo ecology adversely enough to have irreversible damage.
As to save the Borneo Pygmy elephant from the fate of the Borneen rhino, an extensive harvesting to start a founding population in North America will be needed. Given the state of the present Borneo elephant habitat, it’s almost like a rescue into protective custody. Harvested animals will be chipped (like cats & dogs) with their life history & genome sequence. Also wild elephants will also be chipped the same way with added AI tracking features (Akhil et al 2025), hopefully to ward off poachers afraid of having their spoils tracked. Also as chips can be scanned, this simplifies husbandry/herd information for both captive & wild herds, streamlining care for both. As the captive herds grow, individuals will be prepared for a large re-introduction event, which will coincide with smaller harvesting approximately every 10 years.
In summary, this population of 300,000 years, which may have lasted another 10,000 years on it’s own without the anthropogenic activities of Monoculture fires & water diversion, snares, poison, gunshots, angry villagers, resource loss of land/food/water, now all inclusive poaching (calves, cows & bulls), pollution. These factors compounded with scarce (known) genetic diversity of Elephas Maximus borneensis, elevate their risk of reduced adaptability against Demographic & environmental stochasity in turn affecting their survival, reducing population numbers, resulting in further DNA loss. These factors can spin out of control into an extinction vortex, with every event exacerbated by the next.
DNA Unique to Elephas maxmimus borneensis pygmaeus
“Figure 2″ below, from the paper on ” Genomics Reveals Distinct Evolutionary Line in Asian Elephants” (Kappelhof et al 2025
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.72019), illustrates the uniqueness of the Borneo elephant genome.
The following visual data can be reviewed in the paper “DNA Analysis Indicates That Asian Elephants Are Native to Borneo and Are Therefore a High Priority for Conservation” by Fernando et al 2003, at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0000006 or https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6233845.
