A baby elephant of the endangered Sumatran elephant subspecies was born on Tuesday in a national park on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, authorities said, welcoming the birth, the second in a month.
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The 78kg baby elephant, whose gender was not specified, was born in Way Kambas National Park, Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry said.
The baby elephant was born in an elephant center in the national park, the ministry said.
Park staff monitor the health of the mother and her calf.
According to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an environmental and wildlife advocacy group, Sumatran elephants are a subspecies classified as critically endangered. Their total population is estimated at 2,400 to 2,800 individuals worldwide.
A male elephant calf was born in the same national park in November and is in good health. This was the second baby elephant birth in 2023.
A Sumatran rhinoceros, an endangered species, was born in Way Kambas National Park on Saturday.
The WWF estimates that there are fewer than 80 Sumatran rhinos in the world, living primarily on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, an island shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and the Sultanate of Brunei.
“The good news is coming to us one by one,” Environment Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said in a press release.
“This good news should encourage us Indonesians to continue our efforts to conserve protected species in the country,” he added.
The elephant population is threatened by poaching as the ivory from their tusks is highly sought after in the illegal wildlife market.
Indonesia is continuously fighting against wildlife crime. Several cases of elephant poisoning have been reported in recent years.
Deforestation has also restricted elephants’ natural habitat, leading to conflict situations in agricultural areas where crops have been damaged.