KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- Satellite tracking of Pygmy elephants has found that the endangered animals -- unique to Borneo island -- are under threat due to loss of habitat from logging and commercial plantations, international conservationists said Thursday.

A WWF study based on two years of satellite tracking found that Pygmy elephants thrive best in forests on flat, low lands and in river valleys -- the same terrain preferred by loggers and oil palm plantations.

About 40 percent of forest in the Malaysian state of Sabah, where most Pygmy elephants live, has been lost to logging, conversion for plantations and human settlement over the last four decades, WWF said.

Very little was known about Pygmy elephants until a chance DNA analysis in 2003 revealed them to be a distinct subspecies of Asian elephants, which triggered a new effort to conserve them.

In June 2005, the WWF set in motion a landmark project to track Pygmy elephants in the rain forests of Sabah by placing collars fitted with transmitters around the necks of five elephants, known to be leaders of their herds.

The collars beamed their locations via satellite to a WWF-Malaysia computer as often as once a day in the first ever study of its kind, providing valuable information about the elephants' grazing habits and movement patterns.

The study revealed that Pygmy elephants prefer lowland forests because there is more food of better quality on fertile lowland soils.

"The areas that these elephants need to survive are the same forests where the most intensive logging in Sabah has taken place, because flat lands and valleys incur the lowest costs when extracting timber," said Raymond Alfred, Head of WWF-Malaysia's Borneo Species Program.

The study also showed that elephants' movements are noticeably affected by human activities and forest disturbance. Data gathered so far reveals there are probably not more than 1,000 Pygmy elephants left in Sabah -- less than the 1,600 or so estimated previously.

While Pygmy elephants can live in logged and secondary forests, it is crucial that their remaining habitat is managed in a sustainable manner and not converted into plantations, the WWF statement said.

Logging in elephant habitat should only take place if there is a long-term forest management plan in place, and oil palm plantations should be established on degraded, non-forested land devoid of elephants and orangutans, it said.

Adult pygmy elephants stand up to 8 feet (2.5 meter) tall -- a foot or two (30 to 60 centimeters) shorter than mainland Asian elephants. They are more rotund and have smaller, babyish faces with longer tails that reach almost to the ground. They are also less aggressive than their Asian counterparts.

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