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'Heart of Borneo' initiative

Find out about the Heart of Borneo conservation initiative, a transboundary effort to protect the island's montane forest uplands - 220,000 km2 of pristine tropical rainforests, home to pygmy elephants, orang-utans and rhinoceros.

Borneo's pygmy elephants

Bornean Pygmy elephant (Elephas maximus borneensis) family, parents with calf. Danum Valley Conservation Area, Sabah, North Borneo, Malaysia.

Bornean Pygmy elephant (Elephas maximus borneensis) family, parents with calf. Danum Valley Conservation Area, Sabah, North Borneo, Malaysia.

Walt Disney himself couldn't have crafted a cuter elephant. The pygmy elephants of Borneo are baby-faced little pachyderms, with oversized ears, plump bellies and tails so long they sometimes drag on the ground as they walk.

They are also gentle-natured, leading to the belief for years that they were simply the semi-tame remnants of a domesticated herd abandoned on the island years ago.

But a WWF study proved that wrong and Borneo’s pygmy elephants are likely to be officially declared a new subspecies. That makes them a high conservation priority. Yet they remain the least-understood elephants in the world.

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