- Related Scientific Publications
- Adopt an Asian Elephant!
- See Asian Art at the Smithsonian's Freer and Sackler Galleries
- AZA Elephant Species Survival Plan
Time is running out for Asian elephants.
Unless we act now, Asian elephants could soon go extinct. Listed as endangered on the World Conservation Union's (IUCN's) Red List of Threatened Animals, these pachyderms’ populations have decreased by 70 percent because of human-elephant conflict and habitat loss. Today, very few areas exist that can support elephant populations long-term. Without help, this remaining habitat—along with the homes of many other animals that share the elephants’ space—may disappear within 20 years.
A Letter from the Zoo Director About Elephant Trails
To protect the future of Asian elephants, the National Zoo has launched Elephant Trails: A Campaign to Save Asian Elephants. This comprehensive breeding, education, and scientific research program is designed to help scientists care for elephants in zoos and save them in the wild.
The plan includes:
- A new, expanded home at the Zoo, where our elephants will receive the exercise, shelter, and stimulation they need to breed and grow into a multi-generational herd.
Features of Elephant Trails
Construction overview and updates
Site plan concept
- An extensive conservation program built on decades of Zoo science, which will help us understand human-elephant conflict, stabilize existing habitats and populations, and improve conditions for captive populations in Asia.
Elephant Trails conservation program
- An education program that features Asian elephants as ambassadors for their species and inspires the public to join efforts to save them.
Elephant Trails education program
- A new elephant research facility at the Zoo’s Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia, which will provide space to hold male elephants as the Zoo expands its herd, and will allow flexibility for the Zoo to grow its elephant breeding program in the future.
You can help build Elephant Trails at the Zoo and save Asian elephants in the wild.
Find out how in 
"Setting Asian Elephants on the Right Path"
Make a Donation to Elephant Trails
Help us help Asian elephants! Make a donation today.
Did You Know?
- Asian elephants can tear down trees or pick up a blade of grass with their trunks.
- Elephants have the largest brain of any land mammal. In fact, of all land mammals, they have the greatest volume of cerebral cortex available for cognitive processing.
- An elephant's trunk has more than 40,000 muscles, more than all the muscles in a human body!
- Asian elephants have a gestation period of almost 22 months—the longest of any animal. Calves often nurse for two to four years.
- Asian elephants communicate via rumbles, bellows, and moans. They also emit low-frequency infrasounds that can travel several miles.
- Along with dolphins and great apes, Asian elephants are the only animals known to recognize themselves in a mirror.
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With the largest brain of any land mammal, elephants are extremely intelligent and have an impressive memory.
