Unfolding adaptive landscape management under climate and land use changes toward the Borneo pygmy elephant habitat in the transboundary landscape

Imagine the natural world as a giant, living puzzle where every animal has a specific spot it calls home. Scientists who study these puzzles use something called "Species Distribution Models." Think of this like a high-tech weather forecast, but instead of predicting rain or sunshine, it predicts where a specific animal is likely to live based on clues like temperature, rainfall, and what the ground looks like. They also track "land use," which is just a fancy way of saying how humans are using the land—whether it's a forest, a farm, or a city. When the climate changes or humans chop down trees to build plantations, the puzzle pieces shift, and animals can get stuck in the wrong spots or lose their homes entirely. This matters because when we lose these animals, the whole ecosystem can fall apart, just like a puzzle missing a few key pieces.

Now, let's zoom in on a very special, tiny version of an elephant: the Borneo pygmy elephant. These gentle giants are like the "hidden gems" of the jungle, living in a massive, cross-border neighborhood that spans Malaysia and Indonesia. A team of researchers decided to create a super-detailed map to see exactly where these elephants are living, what threats they face, and how the climate might change their future. They didn't just look at one spot; they looked at the whole neighborhood, including the protected forests, the logging areas where trees are cut down, and the oil palm plantations.

The researchers built a "super-model" by combining four different computer programs to make the most accurate prediction possible. Their map showed that the elephants live in about 206,057.58 hectares of land. Most of them (about 80.7%) hang out in Malaysia, specifically in places like Lahad Datu and Kinabatangan, while a smaller group (19.3%) lives in Indonesia's North Kalimantan. The model revealed that the elephants are picky about their home: they care most about the weather, especially how rain falls throughout the year, and they really dislike being too close to busy roads.

However, the news isn't all sunny. The team found that the elephants' homes are being squeezed. Over the last decade, from 2015 to 2025, the forest inside the elephants' territory shrank by about 3,725.7 hectares every single year. In the areas where the elephants don't live, the forest loss was even worse, dropping by a massive 23,438.5 hectares per year. The biggest culprit? Oil palm plantations. In the non-elephant areas, oil palm farms grew by 25,204.8 hectares per year, eating up the forest. Even worse, the researchers found that the elephants are sometimes living right inside these oil palm concessions, which is a very stressful situation for them.

The scientists also looked at how the climate might change by the year 2050 under a "business-as-usual" scenario (where we don't take extra steps to stop climate change). They used a "stress meter" to measure how much the temperature and rain might shift. They found that elephants living in oil palm plantations face the highest climate stress (a score of 0.63 ± 0.01), while those in protected areas are safer (0.37 ± 0.06). The southern part of the elephants' range is expected to get hit harder by extreme weather than the northern part.

So, what's the plan? The researchers created a "conservation menu" by mixing two ingredients: how much green vegetation is left and how much climate stress the area faces. They found four types of zones:

1. High Risk: Areas with few plants and high climate stress. These are mostly in logging concessions.
2. Refugia (Safe Havens): Areas with lots of plants and low climate stress. These are mostly in protected areas, covering about 278,209.21 hectares. These are the elephants' best bet for survival.
3. Restoration Zones: Areas with few plants but low climate stress. These are places where we could plant new trees to help the elephants move around.
4. Vulnerable Green Zones: Areas with lots of plants but high climate stress. These need protection from human threats like logging or farming so the plants can survive the changing weather.

The paper suggests that we can't just lock the elephants away in a "fortress" of protected land. Because the elephants need to roam across borders and through different types of land, we need a flexible, adaptive strategy. This means working with loggers and palm oil companies to keep corridors open, restoring forests in the right places, and making sure the "safe havens" stay safe. The study suggests that without this kind of teamwork across Malaysia and Indonesia, the elephants might lose their way in a changing world.