Dialogue with Zhang Li, Protector of Asian Elephant Research
△ Yunnan elephant migration news
This herd of elephants in the news may not be unfamiliar to you, starting from Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, all the way north, through forest farmland, into villages and even cities, causing heated discussions around the world. People are always watching where the elephants are, some people live-stream elephant chases every day, and some people describe this elephant migration as "the fantasy drift of the elephants". No one knows where they end up.
△ Zhang Li
Zhang Li is a member of the National Science Committee on Endangered Species and a professor of ecology at Beijing Normal University. His name and the work he did to protect and study Asian elephants in China were seen by the public after this elephant migration.
Zhang Li: How much the disappearance of a species affects human beings, we can't say for a moment and a half. But each species is like a screw on the plane of the earth, the species gradually disappears, which means that the screws on the plane have fallen off one by one, so is our plane still safe?
The northward migration of elephants has attracted the attention of so many people, which is a good thing. But we think more deeply, why are there still elephant herds moving south, north, west? Why?
Since 1999, Zhang Li and his team have focused on the ecology and conservation biology of wild Asian elephant populations and behaviors in China. The publication of the book "Research on the Conservation of Asian Elephants in China" is recognized as "the highest level of Asian elephant conservation research in China, and it is also a leading result of the systematic and in-depth study of the regional status and protection of Asian elephants in the world." ”
Zhang Li: I am willing to collect anything with an elephant image.
Tagawa: People think you're looking more and more like an elephant.
Zhang Li: There is a saying that "studying what looks like something".
Zhang Li loves elephants and first saw them at the Beijing Zoo. Zhang Li said there is a big hole in the back door of the Beijing Zoo. When I was in elementary school, I often sneaked into the cave to see elephants in the elephant house.
This time we found Zhang Li, who wanted to ask him to go to the Beijing Zoo to see the elephants and talk about the hot elephant migration. But he said that talking about elephants in captivity in the zoo is really unbearable, and he is more explicitly opposed to the way animals are treated like circuses.
△ Elephants perform a show for tourists
Zhang Li: While telling the children that wild animals are our friends, we also take them to see the circus with leather whips for animals to perform, which will lead to the child's natural values being incorrect and abnormal.
Tagawa: So how exactly should we get along with these animals? Especially in this elephant migration, everyone showed more goodwill after seeing it, paying attention to whether they were safe, whether they could eat enough, why they should go north, and so on.
Zhang Li: In fact, this is our long-term publicity and protection of wild animals, which has achieved an effect that is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. But on the other hand, now that we know that there is no more suitable habitat for them ahead, we should have intervened artificially earlier.
Elephant migration is actually the normal spread of elephants, and they do not know whether there is a suitable habitat in front of them. They usually just wander around, eat wherever they go, and rest where there is less interference.
Tagawa: What do you think caused the elephants to move north?
Zhang Li: First of all, this is a normal spread, the original habitat is not suitable for its survival, or the suitable habitat is reduced, they will go to find new habitat. In fact, in Xishuangbanna, there are still many elephant herds that are constantly going out.
We analyzed that in the northeast of Pu'er, there are contiguous state-owned forests, and there are many natural forests, where there are suitable habitats for elephant herds, so they walk from Banna to Pu'er. Later, when they go outside, they may feel that the place has become unfamiliar, or there may be human interference such as the high-speed rail under construction, which has affected them. The more disturbances there are, the faster the movement of the elephants, which is an emergency response to their artificial pressure. They can go that far in a month, and we didn't anticipate it.
△ The clouds moved north and south to move the elephant herd into the city
Fifteen Asian elephants migrated north, leaving Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, in March last year to travel north to Pu'er and then north to Yuxi and Kunming. It has traveled nearly 500 kilometers, almost half of Yunnan Province, and the migration continues. At the same time, at the end of May this year, 17 wild Asian elephants left Xishuangbanna and migrated all the way south...
Zhang Li: In recent years, the elephant population has grown steadily, which actually reflects that we have done a good job in nature conservation. But many of the suitable habitats outside the protected area have disappeared because of our rapidly developing economy. On the one hand, the population is growing, and on the other hand, the habitat is decreasing, which I think is the root cause of the outward spread of the elephant herd.
△ Analysis of suitable habitats of Asian elephants in Xishuangbanna in 2000 and 2018
Zhang Li: The 2000 and 2018 analysis of suitable habitats of Asian elephants in the Banna region shows that their habitats are much smaller and fragmented. Especially in areas outside the protected area, there is basically no more. In 20 years, 40% less habitat has been lost.
△ Jiang Zhicheng photographed
Zhang Li: The most suitable habitat for elephants is not how dense a rainforest is needed, and they do not live entirely in the tropical rainforest. They need rainforests as shelters, and they also need some palm family plants that they like to eat, such as palm leaf reeds, elephant grasses...
We used to do a lot of corridors that connected broken protected areas so that the elephants' habitats could be connected. But now many areas have disappeared because of the cultivation of cash crops such as rubber and tea.
Zhang Li: In 1975, remote sensing satellite films showed that the dark yellow part was farmland. In 1990, we introduced rubber, and the price of rubber continued to rise, causing most people to start thinking about growing rubber, so the yellow area appeared. Then in 2005, pink areas appeared, and tea was grown in these places. By 2015, large-scale cultivation of tea had become a piece. At the same time, it is accompanied by the large-scale disappearance of forest resources, especially the disappearance of natural forests. Natural forests are not only the main habitat of Asian elephants, but also the habitat of many species.
Zhang Li: The population of wild animals is growing, but the area of suitable habitat is shrinking, which is the contradiction between conservation and development. In addition to this contradiction manifested in Asian elephants, wild tigers and leopards in the Northeast Tiger and Leopard Sanctuary also face the same problem, as well as many brown bears on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau who steal crops, and wild boars in some provinces and regions in the south are flooded... The growth of animal populations is the result of our wildlife conservation in the past four or five decades. However, due to the development of our economy, the habitat left for wild animals is very limited.
Professor Edward Wilson of Harvard University, a researcher of sociobiology, a representative of neo-Darwinism, proposed "leaving half the earth for other species." To consider limiting the overextended survival needs of human beings, do we really want to occupy so many places?
△ Xiong Yuxing photographed
Zhang Li: President Xi Jinping proposed that "green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains", and many people say that whether they sell green waters and green mountains to make money, they will become gold mountains and silver mountains. In fact, in 1997, Costanza made a value assessment of the global natural ecosystem services.
Tagawa: What is its value?
Zhang Li: For example, forest carbon sequestration, in tropical rainforest carbon density is very high. Each hectare of forest can be fixed at 81 tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is a huge carbon sink. At present, all industries are promoting carbon emission reduction and carbon trading, and the future may rely on this huge carbon sink to support the national policy of carbon neutrality.
The current situation in China is that many ordinary people's villages are in nature reserves. They grow tea and rubber, covering an area of more than 9,500 hectares, but in fact, they account for less than 10% of the area of the Mengyang Protected Area. But if less than 10 percent of this rainforest disappears, the ecosystem of the rainforest will not be complete. An incomplete, unhealthy ecosystem, its value will be reduced from 321 million yuan per year to 181 million yuan, and the economic value will be reduced by 40%. This shows that doing a good job in the protection of rainforests is the basis for the stable and sustainable development of local social economies.
Nature conservation is not something that cannot be seen in terms of money alone, and its economic value is measurable. "Green water and green mountains are golden mountains and silver mountains" is not an empty slogan, a good natural ecological environment is the basis for stable and sustainable economic development.
△ Zhang Li's butterfly specimen
Tagawa: I see you have a lot of butterfly specimens, and I heard that you already had an exhibition when you were in college.
Zhang Li: Yes, I did my own butterfly exhibition when I was in college at Beijing Normal University.
Zhang Li has loved biology since childhood, participating in the biology extracurricular group in elementary school, and learning insect and plant classification with old professors in the Beijing Children's Palace in middle school. To collect insect and plant specimens, they used weekends and holidays to travel to almost every mountain in Beijing.
Zhang Li: The West Mountain Forest Farm, Vulture Peak, and Qinglong Bridge are all places where we mainly collect specimens. Sometimes I don't sleep all night, luring moths and catching bugs with black lights. At that time, my parents told me that as long as I didn't delay my studies and did not pass all the subjects, I could continue to go to the biology summer camp.
△ Zhang Li In his youth
In 1990, as a biological student, 19-year-old Zhang Li was sent to the Biology Department of Beijing Normal University without examination insurance, and then guaranteed a master's degree until his doctoral graduation.
Zhang Li: In the past, when I was in the school laboratory, I put the little mice in the observation box to see how they played. After studying elephants, we were put in a hidden place to see how the elephants played outside.
Although we all say that wild animals are human friends, elephants are large beasts after all, and we must be careful with this friend. It will also maintain its psychological safety distance from you, and if it goes too close, it will chase you.
Tagawa: What is this safety distance?
Zhang Li: The previous safety distance may have been one or two hundred meters.
Tagawa: That's actually quite a long way.
Zhang Li: Now, when the distance is probably two or three hundred meters, the elephants will start to be uneasy and start warning. They fan their ears, their tails, and stick out their noses.
Ian Hamilton Douglas, a well-known expert on African elephants, built his own camp in the Sambru Sanctuary. I was eating in the camp, and an African elephant wandered over to the edge of the camp to get food, and I was five meters away. I eat here, and it eats here. It shows that the relationship between people and animals in this place is relatively harmonious. And this kind of harmony is not seen in many places now.
In 1999, Zhang Li was given a project to revise the List of Asian Elephants in China. But at that time, there was no team in China to continue to study Asian elephants, where were China's Asian elephants? How many? How's it going? None of this is known. Zhang Li heard that Yunnan might be the last distribution area for Asian elephants, and he and his team traveled to all the prefectures in Yunnan with recorded records and began a journey to find Asian elephants.
△ The Asian Elephant Survey Team investigates the situation of Asian elephants by means of sample line surveys and village house interviews
Zhang Li: In Pu'er, Yunnan Province in 1999, our investigation team investigated the situation of elephants next to the pineapple field where the elephants had just finished eating. At that time, there were no elephants at all, and more feces were seen.
What impressed me the most was when I first saw an elephant. After sitting on a small stool and waiting for the elephant to not come out for a day, he hid in the secondary forest opposite and rested. At five or six o'clock, the farmers all went home with hoes to eat, and the elephants began to wander in the opposite mountain forest and began to roar. It's the kind of alarm that tells everyone, "I'm coming out, you all go."
Tagawa: They're so friendly.
Zhang Li: Yes, in fact, they don't like to be disturbed. The migration of 15 elephants was also seen, and they often rested and slept in the woodland during the day and came out to the farmland in the evening to feed.
Tagawa: How do elephants compensate farmers when they eat their crops?
Zhang Li: Long-term adaptation to human farming activities has made elephants dependent on food, which is also a real problem. Asian elephants distributed in Asian countries have similar problems.
Our country's better policy is to help the people through ecological compensation, that is, the government pays for agricultural and commercial insurance. In 1998, Yunnan promulgated the "Compensation for Wildlife Accidents" regulation, including the Wildlife Protection Law at the time, which also said that this compensation was borne by the government. But we know that places rich in biodiversity are all economically underdeveloped places, and it is difficult for the governments in these places to come up with a lot of money for ecological compensation.
Since 2009, the central government has invested more than tens of millions of insurance compensation for agricultural losses and casualties caused by elephants every year, and the state has invested a lot in this regard.
△ Asian Elephant Survey Team (Zhang Li in the middle)
Data from Zhang Li's 2015 study of Asian elephants shows that the number of Asian elephants in China is about 219 to 242. In recent years, Chinese governments at all levels have established 11 nature reserves in the distribution area of Asian elephants, and established the "China Yunnan Asian Elephant Breeding and Rescue Center" and the "Yunnan Xishuangbanna Menghai Asian Elephant Monitoring and Early Warning Center". In 2019, the State Forestry and Grassland Administration announced that the number of Asian elephants in China was 295. Elephant conservation still requires more wisdom and effort.
Zhang Li: I met two villages in Pu'er Simao. Traditional Dai villages treat elephants as mascots, let them eat when they come to eat, and leave after eating, and no one goes to bombard them. Therefore, when the elephants go to the edge of the village farmland, they will step on the field and line up, and will not step on the paddy field. Villagers in another village had emigrated, and when the elephants came, they set off firecrackers to drive them away. The people there said that every time the elephants came to them, they would roll a few times in the paddy fields and trample on the crops. If baby elephants die because they eat pesticide crops, the elephants will be more aggressive towards the locals. Such a vicious circle will lead to the intensification of human-elephant conflict. So the question of the relationship between man and animal is really not one-sided.
I always tell my students not to chase elephants, and to study elephants you don't have to see them. Animal behavior and ability, we do not understand or know, we can not according to the way of human thinking to speculate on the psychology of elephants. The more we study zoology and behavior, the more we feel that we know too little about other species.
Yunnan is a treasure trove of Biodiversity in China, and Xishuangbanna is a jewel in this treasure trove. This pearl is 2,400 square kilometers of virgin forest, as well as endangered species such as the Asian elephant and the green peacock. If they disappear, China will not have these species. But if the local people are not allowed to plant sugar cane and rubber, how will they develop? How is income guaranteed? These problems may need to be solved together.
In 2016, Zhang Li joined the SEE Foundation and transformed from the front line of scientific research to a fundraiser and disseminator of wildlife conservation and biodiversity projects. He said that now he is willing to spend more time doing science for children, because let children know and learn about nature, and the conservation work will not stop.
Zhang Li: Alxa SEE Southwest Project Center, did a Noah's Ark project in Yunnan. Protect these species by protecting the habitat of wild animals and protect biodiversity. We also do a lot of social work, such as turning scientific research results into popular science books, so that primary school students can understand elephants. Then through them, they tell their parents not to chase and watch when they encounter elephants.
We are also working with the Menglun Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences to monitor elephants with infrared cameras. At the mouth of the village where they are frequented, early warning and forecasting facilities for sound and light are set up. When an infrared camera captures an elephant, it passes the information to the villagers through a horn or mobile phone app. Since 2015, there has not been a single incident of people trampled to death by elephants around villages with early warning systems. If this facility is promoted, combined with our nature education, it can play a certain role in alleviating human-elephant conflict.
△ Turn scientific research results into popular science books that are easy for children to understand
Zhang Li: Every year, we raise 3 million to 5 million yuan to do experiments on the habitat restoration of Asian elephants. In the past two years, these funds have effectively helped the people of several communities in Menghai to subsidize oak trees, subsidies for farmland, and also plant wild plants that elephants like to eat. This is not something that our scientific research team can do, it needs to mobilize the strength of the whole society.
△ Jane Goodall
Zhang Li: Jane Goodall, the world's most famous wildlife conservationist, I have met her many times. When she was in college, she came to speak at our school, and she said that maybe the news we saw was all negative, the elephant was hunted again, the tiger was dead again, the species was extinct... But there are many people who do useful little things, but they will not attract too much attention. If we talk about these small things and let everyone do a little thing, it can cause a little effect, and the more people who do it, the greater the effect. We want to get more people to do a little bit of it, and that's the most important thing.
("Aoyama Zhi" series of head photos: Jiang Zhicheng took)
Choreographer: Wang Jie
Edit: 612, Li Wei