On 11 October, the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity opened. A short documentary film at the opening ceremony, Elephants to Yunnan, recalls the journey of wild Asian elephants leaving their habitats in April.
Many of the footage in the short film was filmed by the Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Brigade. On April 16 this year, the herd of elephants left their original habitat and entered Yuanjiang County, Yuxi City, Yunnan Province. After a period of "north drift" on September 10, the elephant herd crossed the border river and returned to Pu'er City. During this period, the Wild Asian Elephant Search and Monitoring Task Detachment of the Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Brigade tracked and monitored for 24 hours, and also took photos of elephants resting and "going out of the circle" at home and abroad.
Elephant herd photographed by the Forest Fire Brigade of Yunnan Province. Courtesy of respondents
Three days before the COP15 conference began, Yang Xiangyu, the leader of the detachment responsible for the search and monitoring of wild Asian elephants, went to Pu'er City to assist in monitoring the elephant herd, and once again met with the group of partners who had been together day and night for more than 3 months.
According to the white paper "Biodiversity Conservation in China", the number of Asian elephants in the wild has increased from 180 in the 1980s to about 300 at present, and this group of elephants has become the best witness to the biodiversity of Yunnan, where the conference is held.
Yang Xiangyu, the team leader in charge of the search and monitoring of wild Asian elephants. Courtesy of respondents
"Chasing fire" changed to "chasing elephants"
Beijing News: Why did the forest fire brigade come to "chase elephants", and did you come into contact with elephants before this?
Yang Xiangyu: I work in the Information and Communication Department of the Yunnan Forest Fire Brigade, and my daily work is mainly based on forest fire fighting prevention and emergency rescue tasks, we have a relatively mature UAV team and command system, and we have rich experience in judging mountain forest terrain information. For the first time, the elephant herd entered the Yuxi Eshan area, and our responsibility was to cooperate with the 24-hour drone monitoring and ground map painting work.
Before that, I had very little contact with Asian elephants, the only time was in 2016, when three Asian elephants fell into the water to rescue, when I happened to be on duty at the headquarters, responsible for the upload and distribution of rescue information. I have also heard that some veterans have rescued small Asian elephants trapped by trapped animals in the past few years.
Beijing News: Do you remember the scene when you first received the task? Are you scared to see a wild Asian elephant herd for the first time?
Yang Xiangyu: I remember very clearly, on the afternoon of May 27, I was appointed as the leader of the wild Asian elephant search and monitoring team of the Yunnan Forest Fire Brigade, leading 9 team members to immediately go to Asan County, Yuxi City, to conduct an emergency search for Asian elephants.
At three o'clock in the afternoon, I saw an elephant, arching on the hill to eat, like a piglet under the aerial overhead camera, and quite cute. But soon the elephant herds showed a tendency to descend the mountain into the county town, and there were schools and factories under the mountain, and they also overbearingly knocked down some walls when they marched. The villagers had never seen elephants curiously come to watch and take pictures, so we immediately reported to the headquarters, coordinated the traffic control of the local government, and transferred all the villagers to the roof of the third floor of the Asan Fire Brigade, which was about 100 meters away from the elephant herd, watching them walk through the empty county town.
We gradually realized that the elephant herd has independent thinking, and sometimes even the work of changing the drone battery will run out of shadows. Fortunately, the command has always had Asian elephant monitoring experts and Forestry and Grassland Bureau professionals to teach us the habits of Asian elephants and the skills of monitoring them.
Yang Xiangyu and his team members track and monitor the elephant herd 24 hours a day. Courtesy of respondents
Beijing News: Can the elephant run far away by changing the battery? What should I do when chasing elephants in the mountains has no electricity?
Yang Xiangyu: It takes about ten minutes for the drone to change the battery back and forth. Don't look at the bulky size of the elephant, but the explosive force is very strong, can run two or three kilometers in an hour. Once in late June, the elephant herd ran 30 kilometers a night, and the effective detection range of the drone in the complex terrain of Yunnan was only two or three kilometers, and we drove and ran in the mountains at night, and the site of the light conversion fixed-point monitoring was turned 13 times.
The UAV has to change the battery every forty minutes or so, and the travel in the key areas is generally two or three UAVs flying at the same time, but the machine cannot continue to operate continuously, and there will be a follow-up when the elephant rests or in the section of the road that is easy to monitor. We generally carry 10 sets of batteries with us, and we will also bring a small generator with the car, but the small power charging speed cannot catch up with the power consumption speed, and we will also coordinate the assistance of the local power supply station personnel.
We chased the elephant for about three months. At first, unfamiliar with the fear of losing, 10 people in the group, the elephant work and rest the opposite of people, sleeping during the day and marching at night, each person also sleeps two or three hours a day. After the increase in personnel, up to 32 people participated in the chase, and at that time, they were also familiar with the work, and there was a break time for 5 people to work in shifts.
"Eat corn and even get your whiskers clean"
Beijing News: Can the elephant herd realize that you have been following?
Yang Xiangyu: Elephants are particularly intelligent, and their intelligence level is similar to that of six- or seven-year-old children, and I think they know it. Monitors in Xishuangbanna said they had captured images of elephants stepping on the ground and drones. When we change the battery, we still think, will it wait for us? Will there be no drones staring at them, they are not used to it? But it turned out that we thought too much.
Beijing News: Do they have any particularly clever performance?
Yang Xiangyu: They will use simple tools, such as tickling with branches and repelling mosquitoes from baby elephants; they will use their noses to unscrew the faucets and push open the manhole cover in the field to find water to drink.
Eating is more and more picky, corn will not be eaten with stalks, the corn is left down with the feet, the nose is peeled off layer by layer, the skin is removed and must be plucked, only the core is eaten; the monitoring personnel in Xishuangbanna told us that they have found that they eat the farmer's oranges, the surface looks very good, but the juice inside has been completely absorbed.
They also especially like to play with mud, using their noses to suck on themselves. We ran to the experts at the headquarters and asked them why they always liked to roll in the mud. Experts say that one can remove the bacteria on the body, the other is to protect the sun, prevent mosquito bites, don't look at the Asian elephant skin thick flesh, or quite sensitive.
When crossing dangerous areas such as rivers and roads, they will send a male elephant to observe like a scout in a higher position, come back to meet the elephants in a meeting, and then decide how to march. This trajectory of action is particularly evident every time. In the Luohe River in the Yuxi Hongta District, the embankment is relatively high and steep for the elephants, we predicted their travel route in advance, and mopped a gentle slope with dirt on the shore, and the elephant herd walked back and forth on the south bank for several hours before determining the route and reaching the other side of the river.
Beijing News: Will you set up some obstacles and try not to let them go north?
Yang Xiangyu: After entering the Kunming boundary, the population density is getting larger and larger, and the altitude is also very high, and the elephant herds themselves may also feel the reduction of food and the discomfort of altitude, we will block some intersections with large trucks, consciously feed on some routes, and slowly they will turn around and go west. But trucks don't actually pose an obstacle for elephants, so the change of course is more due to their own will.
Take a photo of the elephant herd "out of the circle"
Beijing News: There is a photo of an elephant sleeping around a baby elephant on the grass, which is particularly "out of the circle", how was it taken at that time?
Yang Xiangyu: This photo was taken by our team member Zhang Xiong. On June 7th, the elephants traveled to Laijia New Village in Jinning District, Kunming, and rested on the mountain opposite us. The night before it rained, the fog dissipated in the early morning, Zhang Xiong and their drone shots swept past, the elephants were resting, very regularly in one direction end to end, surrounded by small elephants in the middle, the picture was particularly beautiful and pure, we were all shocked. The picture is so loving, it feels cute.
After a long time, when I think about this moment, I feel that it is the simple beauty of the elephant, the family concept of love that has touched us. When crossing the road, the baby elephant is less than a meter shorter, and when the elephant passes in front, it will clear the obstacles and squash the railing; when going down the mountain, the mother elephant will help the baby elephant with her feet in front of the mountain to help it go downhill; when passing through the county town, the baby elephant will fall behind, and the elephant herd will turn back and wait on the street for more than 40 minutes to leave together.
Beijing News: Have you had any closer contact with the elephant herd? How do you keep yourself from facing danger?
Yang Xiangyu: The elephants' foot pads are very thick, so they hardly move when they walk, and a few times when we tracked the elephants at the point, we found that they appeared behind us. Even in the Hongta District of Yuxi City, Yunnan Province, the team members crossed the field at night and encountered a herd of elephants crossing the highway, suddenly woke up, turned off the vehicle, turned off the headlights, and held their breath. Asian elephants can be observed looking into the car, even touching their noses to the window glass to smell if there is food inside.
Elephants are sensitive to sound and dynamics, interested in eating, we kept quiet, and there happened to be nothing to eat in the car, so we safely survived the danger. It can certainly know that there are people in the car, but it does not shout at us to demonstrate, it is still relatively friendly, and it walks away without doing anything.
Mutual trust between the crowd and the elephant herd
Beijing News: Can three months of monitoring feel the changes in this group of elephants going north?
Yang Xiangyu: It is obvious that the elephant herd's trust in humans is gradually increasing. At first, they did not eat food sent by humans, but later they gradually trusted humans and behaved more and more casually. Yunnan local for wildlife damage has insurance compensation, locals do not have much opinion on the arrival of elephants, Jinning District villagers also cut off all their corn for elephants to eat, saying that their ancestors have not seen elephants for generations, afraid that they will not have enough to eat. After the elephants left, the local people also raised a phrase "auspicious elephant (auspicious) into the Yuxi".
There are baby elephants in the elephant herd who were born in October last year, and when they went north, they did not have digestive function and only drank breast milk, and when they went south this year, we monitored that the baby elephants began to eat some corn crops, and we monitored them all the way, and it was also growing all the way.
Beijing News: Are there elephants in the northern elephant herd that you can recognize at a glance?
Yang Xiangyu: There are many heads, one of the female elephants has obvious ivory exposed, one has a short-nosed elephant whose nose is obviously shorter, and the other four-headed elephant with a slightly smaller body plays and plays together every day, and sometimes dreams of them at night. In the past, a friend of the Asian Elephant Monitoring and Early Warning Center showed me photos of other elephant herds, and when I looked at them, I said that it was definitely not this group, and I could not be fooled.
During the COP15 conference, we assisted the Pu'er Municipal Government in monitoring the stages, and on October 8th, I came to their habitat to see this group of elephants again, and I was very happy. I look at them as if they are a little fatter again, and they have been eating and drinking in the mountains these days, and they feel very good.
Beijing News: After such a long period of observation and contact, what do you think humans can do to provide them with a good ecological environment and protection?
Yang Xiangyu: In fact, you see, there are differences between the living areas of wild animals and humans, but when we come together, mutual tolerance and friendship can get along more harmoniously. I previously learned that some places in Pu'er would set up elephant canteens to grow food for them to avoid the elephant herds destroying the farmland and harming the farmers. This time the elephant herd moved north, so that more people paid attention to the wildlife group, and for ordinary people, going to the wild to reduce garbage pollution and maintain kindness when encountering them is what we can do.
Beijing News reporter Ma Jinqian
Trainee Editor Liu Xixian Proofreader Fu Chunyan