There are two species of elephants in Bwindi Forest; Forest elephants and savannah Elephants. The Savannah forests moved from the savannah but when adopted the tropical rain forest rain. One of the differences is that, forest elephants have straighter tucks and was therefore preferred by ivory craftsmen. Both forest and savannah elephants range overlap and there may be inter breeding. The current statistics are a little vague with the estimates of 30-50, roughly the same as eight years ago.
Forest elephants are slow breeders and have one infant every five years. Their overall diet is made up of 62% of trees, 12% bushes and 25% herbs, climbers, grasses and sedges: fruit is rare. They focus on bark in the dry season and bamboo in the wet. These feed on bamboo shoots at high altitudes during the wet season and then move to Mubwindi swamp in the dry and forage around mature forests.
If the government did not gazette Bwindi Forest in 1991, the forest elephants will be no more for now due to high rate of poaching in 90s. More so, the government of Uganda went ahead to evict Batwa pygmies who survived on poaching and fruit gathering.
Visitors can see forest animals during gorilla trekking or during nature walk. The armed rangers know how to tame these elephants to avoid causing danger. A long side forest elephant, Bwindi is home to other animals like mountain gorillas which popularizes Bwindi Forest, chimps, grey checked mangabey, duikers, red colobus monkeys, buffaloes, potto, blue monkeys, giant forest hogs, red and tailed monkeys, bushbucks, l’hoest’s monkeys, De Brazza monkeys, bush pigs, demidoff’s galago, olive baboons, civets, bats and so on.
Forest Elephants co- exist with Mountain Gorillas and other attractions like birds, other primates, mammals, butter flies, reptiles and so on.