Elephant
In 2008, the IUCN listed the Asian elephant as endangered due to a 50% population decline over the past 60–75 years while CITES lists the species under Appendix I. Asian elephants once ranged from Syria and Iraq (the subspecies "Elephas maximus asurus"), to China (up to the Yellow River) and Java. It is now extinct in these areas, and the current range of Asian elephants is highly fragmented. The total population of Asian elephants is estimated to be around 40,000–50,000, although this may be a loose estimate. It is likely that around half of the population is in India. Although Asian elephants are declining in numbers overall, particularly in Southeast Asia, the population in the Western Ghats appears to be increasing.
Asian elephant
Human-elephant conflict is categorised into:Development such as border fencing along the India-Bangladesh border has become a major impediment to the free movement of elephants. In Assam, more than 1,150 humans and 370 elephants died as a result of human-elephant conflict between 1980 and 2003.
In India alone, over 400 people are killed by elephants every year, and 0.8 to 1 million hectares are damaged, affecting at least 500,000 families across the country. Moreover, elephants are known to destroy crops worth up to US$2–3 million annually. This has major impacts on the welfare and livelihoods of local communities, as well as the future conservation of this species. In countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the Asian elephant is easily one of the most feared wild animals, although they are certainly far less deadly than those such as venomous snakes (which were estimated to claim more than 30 times more lives in Sri Lanka than elephants). As a whole, Asian elephants are considered behaviorally unpredictable, most tend to avoid human activity, but if surprised or scared by human activity or a mother feeling protective of a calf, an elephant may suddenly charge, which is often very dangerous to a person if they are caught out on foot. Gunfire and other forms of hazing, which are known to be effective in other potentially dangerous wild animals in causing them to avoid humans, can have a negative effect in elephants. Elephants known to be abused by humans in the past are known to occasionally become "rogue elephants", which regularly attack people with no provocation.