Looking out at the herd of Oregon Zoo elephants, it’s easy to spot Chendra. With her petite stature, short trunk, larger ears and long tail, the Bornean elephant is markedly smaller than the rest. She’s also the only one of her kind on the entire North American continent.

Chendra, an elephant from northern Borneo in the Malaysian state of Sabah, arrived at the Oregon Zoo in 1999 and has remained in its care ever since.

Sharon Glaeser, who has a doctorate in animal welfare and conservation science, works as the elephant conservation lead for the Oregon Zoo. She recently appeared on OPB’s “Think Out Loud” to share more about why one of the world’s smallest elephants ended up in Portland.

“The Oregon Zoo Elephant Program was known around the world, and the Sabah Wildlife Department needed to find homes for some of the babies that had been orphaned,” Glaeser said in the interview. “They didn’t have facilities and they contacted the Oregon Zoo.”

Many Asian elephants are already under serious threat of extinction in their native countries and those in Borneo are especially at risk. Approximately 1,000 Bornean elephants are left in the world, and that number is decreasing, Glaeser noted.

“In our human care, they have their needs met,” Glaeser said. “They get food, they get resources, they have opportunities, they have safety, they have veterinary care, which is not something that wild animals are afforded in general.”

According to the World Wildlife Fund, Bornean elephants are the smallest Asian elephant subspecies and are distinctly smaller than their mainland Asia cousins.

They were determined by WWF to be genetically different from other Asian elephants — DNA evidence shows Bornean elephants were isolated from their cousins on mainland Asia and Sumatra, Indonesia, about 300,000 years ago. As a result, Bornean elephants evolved to have longer tails that sometimes touch the ground, as well as relatively large ears and straighter tusks when compared to other elephant subspecies.

These island-dwelling elephants are known to roam large distances, sometimes covering up to 25 miles in a day, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Deforestation due to logging and palm oil production causes loss of habitat, the Oregon Zoo website says, which is the primary reason Bornean elephants are under threat. Plus, agricultural workers sometimes kill or injure elephants that raid their plantations and those actions can separate young elephants from their herds.

“In the past few years, the Sabah Wildlife Department has rescued 15 baby elephants, each less than a year old,” the zoo says. “All of them were found wandering alone in known human-elephant conflict areas along the east coast of Sabah. Chendra was orphaned this way.”

When Chendra was found, she had injuries to her front legs and left eye, and eventually became blind in that eye, according to the zoo. Since she was so young, the Sabah Wildlife Department couldn’t reunite Chendra with her herd or release her back into the wild, and instead opted to send her to the Oregon Zoo on Nov. 20, 1999.

The zoo currently funds two full-time elephant ranger positions with the Sabah Wildlife Rescue Unit and partners with the unit on several projects to create wildlife corridor habitat and reduce human-elephant conflict.

In 2020, the Oregon Zoo became part of the Bornean Elephant Action Plan, a 10-year-long project led by the Sabah Wildlife Department that is aimed at identifying threats and building strategies to address threats to endangered species. Among the species at risk are elephants, pangolin, sun bears, banteng, orangutans and more.

While the Oregon Zoo is well-known for its elephant program, it is not without criticism. Animal rights group Free the Oregon Zoo Elephants, or FOZE, has for years alleged the Oregon Zoo has an “aggressive elephant breeding program” and mistreats elephants, including Chendra. The zoo has denied these claims.