Checking-in on Oregon Zoo’s efforts to help save the endangered Bornean elephant

Since her birth in February, Asian baby elephant Tula-tu has become a star attraction at the Oregon Zoo. Asian elephants are endangered, with roughly 40,000 of them remaining in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. With all the attention Tula-tu has been getting, it’s easy to overlook the presence of Chendra, a Bornean elephant who has been in the zoo’s care for more than 25 years and whose relatives in the wild are even more at risk of extinction.

Only about a thousand Bornean elephants remain, mostly in the forested northern tip of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia.

For more than a decade, the Oregon Zoo has been supporting efforts to help save Bornean elephants. Last month, the zoo sponsored a symposium in Borneo attended by government officials; NGOs that are helping to protect habitat and reduce conflicts between people and elephants; representatives from the palm oil and tourism industries and other participants. At the symposium, the Sabah Wildlife Department launched a new plan co-developed by the Oregon Zoo to care for the growing number of calves and juvenile elephants that are being separated from their herds or found orphaned, like Chendra.

Dr. Sharon Glaeser is the Oregon Zoo’s elephant conservation lead. She joins us with more details about the fight to save the world’s smallest elephant.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Since her birth in February, baby Asian elephant Tula-tu has become a star attraction at the Oregon Zoo. 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. Chendra’s relatives in the wild are now at great risk of extinction. For more than a decade now, the Oregon Zoo has been supporting efforts to help save Bornean elephants. Last month, the zoo sponsored a symposium in Borneo to assess how their efforts are working.

Dr. Sharon Glaeser was there. She is the Oregon Zoo’s elephant conservation lead and she joins me now. It’s great to have you on the show.

Sharon Glaeser: Thank you so much. I’m happy to be here.

Miller: What makes a Bornean elephant unique from other Asian elephants?

Glaeser: Oh my gosh. They’re smaller than the other Asian elephants. They have a little bit bigger ears than the other elephants. They have a short trunk and a long tail that goes clear to the ground. I like to think that someone pulled the tail and the trunk went up. And the tail swooshes across the ground with his hair quaffed at the end, it’s beautiful and graceful.

Miller: I have to say when I just asked you what they’re like, the smile on your face was immense. Do you love these elephants?

Glaeser: I am so charmed by them. Their facial structure is different, they have a square chin instead of a pointed chin. It gives them this round face that people say makes them cute and I would tend to agree. Except for the males, they’re still very handsome. The tallest part of their body is the middle of their back, unlike an African elephant that’s shaped more like a dog. But that’s probably because the trunk is so short, so they have to put their head down. They’re just shaped differently and they’re sort of round.

Miller: How many Bornean elephants are left in the wild?

Glaeser: Approximately 1,000, which has been decreasing.

Miller: How did the Oregon Zoo become interested in the conservation of this particular subspecies of Asian elephants?

Glaeser: Well, our connection is through Chendra. In 1998, we received Chendra. The Oregon Zoo elephant program was known around the world, and the Sabah Wildlife Department needed to find homes for some of the babies that had been orphaned, they didn’t have facilities. And they contacted the Oregon Zoo. So we’ve always had this connection through Chendra.

In 2015, we signed an MOU with other zoos to work on protections of the forest and also supported some of the research with a woman by the name of Dr. Nurzhafarina Othman, who is working with coexistence efforts now, but at the time she was doing research on the ecology of elephants, which was the first. So that was when our solid support efforts really began, was in 2015.

Miller: And then five years later in 2020, you were part of the development of this 10-year project plan called the Bornean Elephant Action Plan. What are its goals?

Glaeser: So they’re species level action plans. The goals are to identify the threats, and strategies for addressing the threats, of a species that’s endangered in the state of Sabah. So there’s an action plan for elephants. There’s pangolin, recently sun bears, the bantang, which is a wild cow, and orangutans. And there’s likely others in the works.

One of the objectives with elephants … well, there were primarily four: landscape permeability, enforcement around conflict, improving the lives of the animals that have come into human care, which is where we got directly involved. There’s many, many activities also identified in the plan.

Miller: We’re talking now because you recently went back to Borneo for a kind of halfway point check-in. What’s been working? We can start with that.

Glaeser: A lot has been working, which is hopeful. Borneo is past the point of deforestation. It’s a mosaic landscape with transition to agricultural palm oil.

Miller: When you say past the point, meaning the original forests were already cut down to make way for palm oil plantations?

Glaeser: For timber production and palm oil. In the Malaysian part of Borneo, they’re no longer cutting the timber. The land has already changed, it’s already transformed. And there’s a lot of reforestation efforts, many groups doing reforestation, connecting really critical habitats for both elephants, orangutans and other wildlife. So those efforts are working. There needs to be more of it and more food in those areas, but it’s working.

Also the coexistence efforts. People care deeply, and there’s a lot of education and outreach to help people and elephants live in the same space.

Miller: Can elephants and palm tree plantations exist in the same space?

Glaeser: They can, they can. It’s a big challenge. And this is what is so remarkable. What’s being done in Borneo really could be a model for any of the tropical areas. They are living in the same space, but it requires coexistence. It requires people being able to remain safe and elephants being able to remain safe. And that needs education, awareness, patience and empathy. It requires people working with people. Conservation is about people working together. So there is a lot of hope. And we’re supporting those efforts. Those things have been working really well.

Miller: What has not been working as well?

Glaeser: Well, with infrastructure – for example, building of roads, development which people deserve to have, that opens up land, gives access and causes animals and people to be closer together, maybe not in a space where they can live peacefully. So for example, a new highway, maybe, is going to be built. It’s a Pan Borneo highway. And in that area we can expect that there will be more conflict. There will be animals that would have been using those forests in that space and they’re going to be crisscrossing with people.

Miller: And trucks?

Glaeser: And trucks.

Miller: So how do you deal with that as a representative of the Oregon Zoo, as a member of this consortium?

Glaeser: Yeah, as a member of somebody who cares, a consortium, who does work there, we strategize. And we identify actions that will help the situation. And I think what’s so important about these plans is that they’re 10 years. They take a current situation, and try to predict and strategize about the future. And then we have to come back and review, and admit if something doesn’t work and what’s needed. It really provides a guide for people to take action.

There were over 70 stakeholders at this workshop, all of whom are taking action in some way. And we all need a plan to be able to be as effective as possible.

Miller: Can you tell us the story of a young elephant named Agathis?

Glaeser: So Agathis is a young elephant just like Chendra was. She was born in March of 2023. She was found alone – and this is often what happens, an elephant is just found alone, a young elephant. She was found in a plantation and the workers notified the Sabah Wildlife Department. And after notification, then a rescue team is sent along with a veterinarian to assess the situation, see the condition of the animal and determine what to do. She had a serious infection that required intensive treatment and it required her being brought into care. So she was brought into the care of the Sabah Wildlife Department at one of their three facilities that holds elephants and cares for elephants long-term. And she was nurtured back to health.

Miller: Back to health, but can she ever go back into the wild? Or once she’s found, her lot in life is to be with humans?

Glaeser: Currently, yes. It’s not impossible, but it’s a long and complicated process to release animals back into the wild. However, there is hope for that. In this workshop, we brought an expert who has a lot of experience with such a process and presented on what the criteria are, what the considerations are. And people were open minded about the possibility, especially with all of the landscape work being done. Because you have to return an animal to a safe space. So there is a master plan that will have a place for those elephants to be observed, and see if they can develop the right skills and the right dynamics to be candidates for release.

That is possible. But in the meantime, she is getting really good care from the rangers that care for her, they’re like surrogate moms. She’s getting good social opportunities, she’s healthy, she’s stimulated. She has a future with them that will meet her needs. And she is safe.

Miller: In the video that I saw – I think I remember this correctly, about how often she had to be fed – she was a sick baby when she was found and I think these workers would sleep in the same area where she was sleeping. They would feed her from bottles every two hours or so. It seems like a labor of care and love.

Glaeser: It is.

Miller: But ideally elephants wouldn’t be left behind. What can you do to prevent this from happening in the first place?

Glaeser: This was a big discussion and it’s something we’re very engaged in because this is Chendra’s story. One of the reasons they get left behind is they get pushed out of places. And they can be ping-ponged by pushing them out of a plantation and then into a village, and then maybe back across some landscape, back into a plantation. And if we let them move slowly, if we pull them to a certain direction by planting certain foods, then they can stay together as a group. But if they get pushed quickly …

Miller: Because, say, it’s harvest time and the plantation owner says, “well, we have to-” or it’s dangerous for the workers …

Glaeser: Yeah. Or it’s dangerous. I believe that most people want to do the right thing and it requires just having an awareness. So two things are, having more outreach to teach people how to move animals safely away. And then having some awareness that there may be a baby, that to watch for the baby and what to do when they find a baby. So avoiding the separation in the first place is step one. And that’s something we’re actively working on.

Miller: How does the time that you spend in a country like Borneo, in this case thinking about wild elephants … but as you mentioned, there are other animals even in Borneo who have their own conservation plants. How does that time affect the way you think about an elephant like Chendra or other animals in captivity, not that far from us, up the hill at the Oregon Zoo?

Glaeser: Well, in human care they have their needs met. They get food, they get resources, they have opportunities, they have safety, they have veterinary care, which is not something that wild animals are afforded in general. Let’s take a mom and a calf: she wants to keep her baby safe, she wants to give her baby enough food, she wants her baby to learn and develop in a safe environment. We look at Tula-tu, our keepers let Rose take the lead on when the baby’s gonna try a new space, for how long and if somebody can touch her. And everything the baby does, Rose gets to do in the safety of this place where she lives.

Miller: The idea is you’re giving her some kind of maternal autonomy, because that’s a version of what she would have in the wild. She would have a lot more in the wild, but you’re giving her some freedom to make her own decisions as a mother.

Glaeser: Yes. And in the wild, it’s harder to keep that baby safe. So this is a connection that I like to make, a mom in the wild has the same needs, but it is hard to keep a baby safe when you’re getting moved fast, or your source of food has something between you and that food that is making you nervous, or the herd can’t stay together. Asian elephants, their herd structure is not the same as Africans, they have fission/fusion, they move in and out of groups. But they have the same needs.

Miller: Sharon Glaeser, thanks very much.

Glaeser: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure.

Miller: Dr. Sharon Glaeser is the elephant conservation lead at the Oregon Zoo.

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