CNN —Elephants have lost almost two-thirds of their habitat across Asia, the result of hundreds of years of deforestation and increasing human use of land for agriculture and infrastructure, a new study has found.
The study found that the greatest decline in elephant habitats was in China, where 94% of suitable land was lost between 1700 and 2015.
Meanwhile, more than half of suitable elephant habitats have been lost in Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia’s Sumatra.
The era also saw “new value systems, market forces, and governance policies” reaching beyond the cities of Europe into the forests of Asia – speeding up elephant habitat loss and the fragmentation of the species, the study found.
Habitat loss also means elephants are migrating from their usual territories, creating “challenges for human communities that have little experience with elephants,” the study said.