Eighteen years (2001–2018) of forest habitat loss across the Asian elephant’s range and its drivers

The Asian elephant(Elephas maximus)-the largest living land animal in Asia-is categorized as an endangered species according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN)Red List and is listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora(CITES)Appendix I[1].Over the past 100 years,the range of the Asian elephant has declined by as much as 90％[2].At present,the Asian elephant inhabits forest-dominated habitat in only 13 countries across South and Southeast Asia(Fig.S1 online),and the IUCN Species Survival Commission(SSC)Asian Elephant Specialist Group(AsESG)estimated the global wild population size of Asian ele-phants to number 45,671-49,028 individuals[3].Forest habitat loss,along with human-elephant conflict,poaching and the illegal trade in ivory and elephant body parts,is weakening global conser-vation efforts towards the recovery of wild Asian elephant popula-tions at local,national and range-wide scales[3,4].