How does deforestation effect elephant?

Answer 1

Every minute within the Sumartra region, five football fields of rainforest are demolished, and within this area are the thousands of species that rely upon the rainforest ecosystem in order to survive.

The Forest elephant's diet consists of that of an herbivore, and thus it commonly eats bark, fruits leaves and other vegetation. However, the forest elephant most generally eats fruits due to their nutritional content. Due to the elephant's diet, a decrease in the biodiversity of vegetation could prove detrimental to the elephant, potentially to the point of extinction. Recent studies have concluded that the population of the forest elephant was directly proportional to that of the amount of vegetation within its habitat, thus as deforestation continues the population of the forest elephant will continue to decrease as a result of the loss of vegetation.

The African forest elephant's population was approaching the point of extinction during the 1990's and early twenty-first century, to this day the population of forest elephants is decreasing at an exponential rate with numbers decreasing from 700'000 to current levels of 100'000, whereby half the remaining population resides within the region of Gabon.

Thus, it is due to the diet and habitat of the elephant, that it has been effected to such an immense extent by a means of deforestation.