On April 16, 2021, 17 Asian elephants came from Mojiang County, Pu'er City, to Yuanjiang County, Yuxi City, and began a large-scale northward migration.
On April 24, the group of elephant soldiers divided into two routes, two elephants returned to Pu'er, and the remaining 15 continued all the way north, passing through Shiping County in Honghe Prefecture and Eshan County in Yuxi City, and arriving in Hongta District of Yuxi City on May 29.
The elephants walked 500 kilometers in 40 days, spanning most of Yunnan Province and approaching Kunming.
Footage taken by a drone on May 28
These days, this group of elephants has simply become a "walking group", and in the process of moving north, "no evil is done". They frequently entered the fields to eat crops; they also entered the farmers' yards to eat stored grain, and at one time even drank wine. They also wandered into the city of Asan on May 27, breaking into a car shop and drinking two tons of water from the store.
Along the way, it is either towns or villages, why do these wild elephants appear in these places that are not suitable for them to live?
Why did 2 elephants "get lost and return", but the other 15 continued to go north? Is there a way to get all the wild elephants back to the reserve?
This article starts from the life habits of wild elephants and answers these questions from a professional point of view.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" data-track="75" Why did > wild elephants move north? </h1>
This long-distance northward migration of wild elephants has made everyone very curious. In fact, elephants have a seasonal migration and roaming habit.
Wild elephants recycle food resources in different habitats. When food is eaten in one place, they move to another place to find food. As for when and where to forage, they are judged by memory.
Elephants like this northward migration are not native elephants from Pu'er, but moved from Xishuangbanna Prefecture in March 2020.
Originally living in the Mengyangzi Reserve of Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve, this group of elephants looks shorter than other elephant herds, so it is called the "broken nose elephant herd" by experts.
The herd had only 16 elephants when it entered Pu'er. In December 2020, a female elephant gave birth to a baby in Pu'er, so it became 17.
The "Broken Nose Elephant Herd" moves north
Therefore, it is not surprising that elephant herds migrate. Curiously, why did they go so far this time, and more and more away from their suitable habitat?
I am afraid that there are both environmental reasons and elephants themselves.
In terms of environment, in the past 30 years, the number of Asian elephants has increased from 190 to 300, but its suitable habitat has been encroached upon by tea and rubber plantations in large areas, reducing by 40%.
Smaller and smaller protected areas cannot accommodate more and more wild elephants, so a large number of wild elephants are forced to "leave their homes" and go out of the reserves to find new foraging space.
In terms of the elephants themselves, it may be that the female elephant, the leader of the elephants, may be inexperienced and misdirected. When elephants go to feed is entirely dependent on the head elephant's memory, so the experience of the head elephant plays an important role in the migration of the elephant herd.
Some people say that the head elephant is "lost", but I think this statement is not accurate enough. The elephant should have been "full" in the reserve, trying to lead his family to find a new living space, and there was no clear destination. There is no destination, how can we say "lost"?
However, what this group of elephants did not expect was that there was no suitable habitat for them to live in the north, so they went all the way north, all the way to eat, and went farther and farther.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" data-track="89" why did the two elephants > turn back? </h1>
On April 24, 2021, 2 elephants separated from the elephant herd and returned to Pu'er, why did they both know to go back?
Rumors on the Internet that the two elephants went into the farmer's house and drank wine, but they got drunk and fell off the line, so they went back. In fact, this is not the root cause.
The fundamental reason is that these two elephants are male elephants and do not belong to the elephant herd.
The elephant herd is a matrilineal group headed by the head mother elephant, and the members of the elephant group are the sisters, daughters, and their minor children.
The male elephant, on the other hand, is a solitary image that moves alone. They are in the herd when they are underage, and they are driven out by their mothers after sexual maturity at the age of 7 to 8. Thereafter, the male elephant travels far and wide and never returns to the herd in which he was born, a mechanism by which elephants avoid inbreeding.
Only when the female elephants of other herds are in heat, the male elephants will temporarily join them to mate with them, and after mating, they will leave the female elephants to live alone.
Both elephants who left the herd were reportedly young male elephants, and they may have reached the outlier period and were chased away by their mothers.
It is also possible that they are foreign prime-age male elephants, and after the mating season, they leave on their own.
In either case, they leave the herd not because they feel unreliable, not because they are drunk and left behind, but because it is time for them to go.
The current herd consists of 6 female elephants, 3 male elephants and 6 juvenile elephants. The 3 adult male elephants who are still in the group, as well as the male elephants in the juvenile elephants, are growing up, and sooner or later they are going to leave the herd.
One more question, do elephants really like to drink?
I really like to drink. However, the elephant is not attracted to the elephant because of any special penchant for alcohol, it really likes the fruit, and the smell of the wine is very similar to the ripe fruit, which attracts the elephant.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" data-track="102" how to get wild elephants back to protected areas >? </h1>
How can wild elephants be returned to the reserve? This one is very difficult.
In fact, the local governments in various places where wild elephants pass have been taking measures, on the one hand, they monitor and follow up in real time, evacuate the people in time, on the other hand, they transfer large vehicles to mechanically block the road into the city, and guide the wild elephants away from the villages through feeding.
These measures have successfully prevented wild elephants from entering residential areas many times and avoided the occurrence of wild elephants hurting people, but they have never stopped the pace of wild elephants going north.
Perhaps, wild elephants know very well that their homeland is now "overcrowded" and food is scarce, so how can they be willing to go back?
Since the 1990s, as the habitat loss and fragmentation of wild elephants has intensified, more and more wild elephants have left the forest to forage for agriculture.
After more than 20 years of adaptation, wild elephants are no longer afraid of humans and are accustomed to eating more delicious foods such as crops.
In this case, the wild elephants should be allowed to return to the protected area and not come out again, unless they are returned to suitable habitat. The problem is now unsolvable.
At present, one can only hope that the right decision will be made by the head. Usually, the migration of elephant herds is seasonal. The head elephant can tell empirically when food will become plentiful again in the places where they have lived before.
With the arrival of the rainy season, the food resources in the forests of Pu'er and Xishuangbanna will become more abundant, and this nodding elephant should be able to remember. In the event of a setback to the north, it is likely to lead the herd back south.
However, as long as the situation of "more elephants and less land" is not alleviated every day, the phenomenon of wild elephants frequently entering the village cannot be cured.
Someone asked, why not anesthesia? Because the risk of anesthesia is too great, it is not the best policy.
In April 2021, during the "Wandashan No. 1" incident in Heilongjiang Province, the local government took anesthesia measures, shooting 5 stitches to put the tiger down, and 1 shot also hit the tiger's brow bone, resulting in eye injuries. If it were not for the strong and good fortune of "Wandashan No. 1", it may die or be disabled and never return to the wild.
"Wandashan No. 1" is just a tiger, this time there are 15 elephants. It is easy to frighten elephants during the anesthesia process, and there are incidents in which elephants are injured or injured, which we do not want to see.
Therefore, anesthesia is risky and requires caution. Therefore, in the face of huge economic losses, our government still did not rashly take anesthesia measures, just to achieve the goal of peace between man and elephant.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="04" data-track="117" > wild elephant hurts? </h1>
Elephants are generally gentle behemoths that rarely attack people. But that doesn't mean elephants don't hurt people.
Before the 1990s, elephant injuries in China were extremely rare. The turning point came in the late 1990s, when elephant habitats were being compressed due to overexploitation of land by humans, and more and more elephants were moving out of the forest to live in the fields, and human-elephant conflict intensified.
Since 1997, there have been 15 to 20 incidents of wild elephants injuring people every year in China, resulting in an average of 3 deaths per year.
In February 2018, two rangers were besieged by 18 wild elephants, resulting in the death of one. In April of that year, a man was trampled to death by a wild elephant.
Experts summarize past incidents of wild elephants attacking people, mainly because people do not maintain a safe distance.
Although elephants can't run, they can walk 400 to 500 meters fast at a speed of 24 kilometers per hour, which is faster than the average person. If people do not maintain a safe distance beforehand, when the elephant is frightened and suddenly attacked, it is easy to dodge.
Experts remind everyone that when elephants are found in the wild, we must pay attention to observing the location of all elephants at all times, avoid and evacuate in time, and do not come forward to watch, take pictures, and drive away.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="05" data-track="125" >Why is elephant infestation more difficult to treat than tiger infestation? </h1>
In the past 20 years, there has only been one killing of wild tigers in China, and elephant killings have been reported almost every year. Why are grass-eating elephants fiercer than meat-eating tigers?
There are reasons for the different habits of elephants and tigers themselves, as well as habitat reasons.
First of all, tigers have fixed territories, elephants don't, and where there is food, they go there. Therefore, among tigers, only sub-adult tigers without territory will roam around and easily enter the village, for example, "Wandashan No. 1" is a sub-adult male tiger. The entire population of elephants is looking for food everywhere, and it is easy to be attracted by the delicious crops and mineral-rich salt in the residential area.
But the most fundamental reason is the habitat.
At present, the only tiger settled population in China lives in the Northeast Tiger and Leopard National Park in Jilin Province, where the habitat is in good condition and properly protected, and tigers can live and work in peace and contentment.
The Asian elephants in Yunnan, the habitat is encroached upon by humans, the large protected areas are divided into several narrow sub-protected areas by farmland and road networks, and wild elephants have to often migrate through residential areas to forage for crops in the farmland, which is prone to human-elephant conflict.
Schematic map of the distribution of Asian elephants and xishuangbanna nature reserve, which shows that the fragmentation is very serious
In the future, returning farmland to forests to expand the habitat area of wild elephants and establishing ecological corridors between sub-protected areas is the fundamental way to solve the contradiction between humans and elephants.