Borneo is home to all sorts of weird and wonderful plant and animal species. While some of them are famous worldwide, like the conservation symbol that is the Bornean orangutan or the lesser-known ...

Chendra, an elephant from northern Borneo in the Malaysian state of Sabah, arrived at the Oregon Zoo in 1999 and has remained in its care ever since. Sharon Glaeser, who has a doctorate in animal ...

The plight of the Bornean elephants began in the 1970s. Between 1973 and 2010, Sabah lost more than 52% of its lowland forest (below 500 meters, or 1,640 feet, above sea level) to logging. Many of ...

But with all the attention Tula-tu has been getting, it’s easy to overlook the presence of Chendra, an elephant from Borneo who’s been in the zoo’s care for more than 25 years.

Measuring around nine feet (2.7 meters) tall, Bornean elephants are the smallest subspecies of the Asian elephant, and are two feet (60 centimeters) shorter than their African counterparts.

Measuring around nine feet (2.7 meters) tall, Bornean elephants are the smallest subspecies of the Asian elephant, and are two feet (60 centimeters) shorter than their African counterparts.

Bornean elephants, best known as the world’s smallest living elephants, have now been classified as “Endangered” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), following ...

The 2024 update also highlights the Asian elephant in Borneo as an endangered species. It is estimated that only about 1,000 Bornean elephants remain in the wild, according to IUCN analysis.

If you liked this story, share it with other people. Conservationist Farina Othman, a 2025 Whitley Award winner, has been working with endangered Bornean elephants in Sabah, Malaysia, since 2006 ...