At the same time, it is officially identifying African elephants as two distinct species: savanna elephants and forest elephants. The reclassification — part of an update to IUCN’s Red List of ...

For centuries, elephants have been called forest gardeners for good reasons. “When an elephant moves through trees and bushes, it pushes them aside,” says Dr Thomas Breuer from WWF Germany.

A 2004 expedition to Ghana studied a population of elephants in the transition zone between the classic savannah and forest forms. We found a mosaic of features, including body size as large as ...