“No one has ever studied pygmy elephants before, so everything we’re learning is groundbreaking data,” said Dr Christy Williams, who leads WWF’s Asian elephant conservation efforts and is working with experts to use commercial satellite technology to track Asian elephants for the first time. “We will be following these elephants for several years by satellite to identify their home ranges and working with the Malaysian government to conserve the most critical areas.”

Five elephants have been radio-collared by WWF and Malaysia's Wildlife Department in Sabah, with support from the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Among the preliminary findings from the study:

• The elephants’ movements are noticeably affected by human activity. Elephants living in areas with the most human disturbance, such as logging and commercial agriculture, spend more time on the move than elephants in more remote areas. One of the collared elephants living near human activity covered a third more ground than another who lives in more remote jungle.

• Most of the elephants spend at least some of their time in palm oil plantations or near human habitation, which leads to conflict with people. In recent years, much of the elephants’ habitat has been converted to tree plantations that produce palm oil, the leading export crop for Malaysia.

• Each elephant belongs to a herd of 30–50 elephants but often splits off into smaller groups for days or weeks at a time. The home ranges of two elephants collared in nearby forests overlap, suggesting that the two elephants’ groups may be related. Since elephants live in matriarchal societies, WWF collared only adult female elephants so that each elephant collared represents a whole herd’s movements.

• The elephants’ diet consists of at least 162 species of plants (in 49 families), including several dipterocarp tree species. This was determined during field tracking that supplements the satellite tracking. It was proved that forest quality influences the diversity and distribution of elephant food in the forest, with encroachment into palm oil plantations being higher along the degraded forest-plantation areas.

The Sabah Wildlife Department described the study as very important and the results could be used to assist the department in preparing Sabah’s elephant conservation plan.

The pygmy elephants were determined by WWF in 2003 to be a likely new subspecies of Asian elephant but very little is known about them, including how many there are. Pygmy elephants are smaller, chubbier and more gentle-natured than other Asian elephants. They are found only on the northeast tip of Borneo, mainly in the Malaysian state of Sabah.

“We are learning about more than just elephants with this project,” said Raymond Alfred, project manager of the elephant tracking project in Sabah. “Elephants are a ‘keystone species’ and habitat engineers whose impact shapes the forest in important ways for the many other species with whom they share their habitat.”

The Island of Borneo, the world’s third largest island — split between the countries of Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia — is known for its rain forests, which rival those of the Amazon and New Guinea in biological diversity. These rich forests provide a habitat for the elephants, as well as rhinos, orang-utans, clouded leopards, sun bears and Bornean gibbons. The island is also home to 10 primate species, more than 350 bird species, 150 reptiles and amphibians and 15,000 plants.

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• Through WWF’s Heart of Borneo initiative, the global conservation organization aims to assist Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia to conserve a total of 220,000km² of equatorial rainforest through a network of protected areas and sustainably-managed forest, and through international cooperation led by the Bornean governments and supported by a global effort.

• Large areas of Borneo's forest are being rapidly cleared and replaced with tree plantations for rubber, palm oil and timber production. The illegal trade in exotic animals is also on the rise, as logging trails and cleared forest open access to more remote areas.