The phrase "a forest elephant" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when referring to a specific type of elephant that inhabits forested areas, distinguishing it from other types of elephants.
Example: "The forest elephant is smaller than its savanna counterpart and plays a crucial role in maintaining the ecosystem of the rainforest."
Alternatives: "a woodland elephant" or "a jungle elephant".
"While there are differences between elephants in the central African rain forests and eastern Africa it is impossible to define where an elephant becomes a forest elephant or a savannah elephant," said Andrew McVey, the East Africa Regional Manager at WWF-UK, adding that "there is no clear definition on what a forest elephant is".
"If you see a forest elephant for the first time, you think, 'Wow, what is that?,'" says team member Nicholas Georgiadis, a biologist at the Mpala Research Center in Nanyuki, Kenya.
There were, however, a number of exceptions, including a forest elephant from Garamba in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, where forest and savannah populations are sympatric) that had nuclear sequences typical of savannah elephants and two savannah elephants from Cameroon (at the limit of the forest-savannah transition zone) that had nuclear sequences typical of forest elephants [ 6].
The second was One Special Elephant: The Story of Penelope Petunia, which tells of a baby forest elephant in Dzanga Bai, in central Africa, who is threatened by poachers.
A WCS-led study published last year found that a staggering 65percentt of all forest elephants have been killed for their ivory over the past decade.
We turned a corner and surprised a great bull forest elephant not 20 feet away.
'He' was 'Choco', a young bull forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) who was regularly coming out of the surrounding forest to eat fruits and tender leaves in the Bomassa field station, headquarters for the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in northern Republic of Congo.
For the African forest elephant, a road is a highway to death, says a team of researchers, who trekked more than 8000 kilometers in five African countries to assess the animals' populations.
For example, WWF considers the forest elephant a subspecies and not a full species in its own right.
While detractors point to the hybrid situation as a reason to dismiss forest elephant, reproductive hybrids aren't that uncommon in other species.
