Recently, 15 Asian elephants migrating all the way north have entered the vicinity of Dawan Village in Hongta District, Yuxi City, only about 15 kilometers away from the center of Yuxi, and are approaching the urban area of Kunming.
The 15 Asian elephants originally lived in the Mengyangzi Reserve in Xishuangbanna Prefecture. In December 2020, the elephant herd made its first visit to Mojiang County, Pu'er City, and began a mighty northward migration journey, which has moved 400 kilometers north. In just 40 days, the elephants caused 412 accidents, destroyed 842 acres of crops, and initial estimates, the economic losses were close to 6.8 million yuan, fortunately, the local government and insurance companies will compensate the villagers for the losses.
If these elephants enter the urban area of Kunming, the human-elephant conflict may intensify again.
The reason why wild elephants go out of nature reserves is precisely because of the strict protection of nature reserves. In 1958, The Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in Yunnan was established. At that time, considering that China's wild Asian elephants were on the verge of extinction, governments at all levels took rescue conservation and management measures. Since then, Yunnan Province has established a total of 11 protected areas in the tropical areas where Asian elephants are distributed, with a total area of about 510,000 hectares, forming an Asian elephant conservation network with national nature reserves as the mainstay and local nature reserves as supplements, providing shelter for Asian elephants.
Statistics from the Forestry and Grassland Bureau of Yunnan Province show that due to the continuous increase in protection efforts and the great increase in forest closure, the forest coverage rate of Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve has increased from 88.90% in 1983 to 97.02% in 2016, resulting in the gradual succession of understory plants such as wild plantains and rice leaf reeds, the main food of Asian elephants, into inedible woody plants. The increasing number of edible plants of Asian elephants, coupled with the increasing number of wild elephant populations and the large amount of wild elephants, many elephants gradually move outside the protected area to eat, forcing the elephant herd to gradually move outside the protected area to eat.
Outside the reserve, since the 1960s and 1970s, the tropical forests around the reserve have been large-scale logged down and planted into tropical cash crops such as rubber, tea, and coffee, and this number is staggering, and the infrastructure construction such as highways and reservoirs has split the original contiguous Asian elephant habitat, resulting in habitat fragmentation, and under multiple factors, the elephants that "drive" out of the reserve have to frequently enter farther farmland and villages to feed; wild elephants that are accustomed to eating crops such as grain have undergone certain changes in diet.
Elephants' brains are the heaviest of terrestrial mammals, about 5 kilograms; the number of neurons is also considerable, more than 200 billion, about three times that of humans. An interesting structure is the hippocampus, which is closely related to memory, and the human neurons distributed in the hippocampus account for about 0.5%, and elephants have 0.7%, which also partly explains why elephants have amazing memory.
Elephants live in a matriarchal society, headed by an elderly female elephant, with other female elephants in the group carrying their cubs; male individuals leave the herd as teenagers to form a loose group, and the male elephant is responsible for disciplining the baby male elephant. Elephants can recognize almost all the companions in the group, and can even grasp the tracks of 30 companions at the same time, which is undoubtedly beneficial to their activities and migration. They remember the danger-related signals, as well as the food and water sources in the distance, which not only makes them live better, but also saves the lives of the elephant herds even in times of danger.
And when the elephants go out of the reserve to feed, humans did not hurt them, the elephants feel safer, the courage has become bigger, they wander in disorder, frequently out of the reserve, into the human farmland to feed corn, bananas and other crops, the scope of activity is also expanding, and in recent years has become more intense.
It is the time when wild Asian elephants are not able to eat green and yellow, the living conditions of the original habitat are not enough to maintain their survival, and when the environment is saturated, coupled with the frequent outing of the reserve over the years, it has not been attacked by humans. So wild elephants may want to migrate out in search of new habitats.
Therefore, the leader of the elephant herd and the group of elephants want to migrate to a more food-rich area, but unlike in the past, the route of the elephant herd to the north is more scarce in the mountain forest due to the rising altitude. This may be the lack of experience of the leader of the elephant herd and the loss of the situation.
Outside the reserve, in the face of human avoidance, the clever elephants were even more cheerful, and on May 24, after the elephants entered Eshan County, Yuxi City, Yunnan Province. Parade freely in the streets, scavenging in the fields, and even entering the homes of villagers, when the elephant passes in front of the shop, there is even an elephant with its head hitting the iron door of the roadside house, and what is even more unexpected is that after the elephants left, they soon returned to the village, so many times.
Elephants are very destructive and pose a great threat to humans, with more than 60 deaths caused by Asian elephants since 2013 and more than 170 million property losses caused by wild elephants between 2011 and 1018.
If these elephants enter the center of Yuxi, the downtown population is large, and the female elephants have a strong sense of protection and a strong attack. To prevent juvenile elephants from being harmed, females are likely to launch violent attacks on people or animals that are too close. Therefore, in order to prevent the elephants from entering the city, 20 muck trucks have been on standby around the clock, and when necessary, they will carry out the task of intercepting wild elephants entering the city, forming a defensive line to prevent wild elephants from entering the urban area and causing harm to the lives and property of the people.
The reason why the elephant herd did not pose a threat to humans all the way is also because the monitoring personnel used drones, infrared cameras, etc. to track the latest movements of the elephant herd and give early warning, which effectively reduced the occurrence of wild elephant injuries.
After that, Yunnan will also take a variety of measures to prevent the elephants from migrating north, allowing them to gradually return to their original habitat in Pu'er or Xishuangbanna.
In fact, the country has long found that the mixed habitation of humans and elephants has been increasing in recent years, so in 2019, xishuangbanna national nature reserve launched the Asian elephant habitat restoration project.
Through human intervention, the establishment of a food source base for Asian elephants, the adoption of native wild species such as the removal of invasive alien species and the restoration of wild plantains that Asian elephants prefer to eat in their natural habitats, vegetation restoration of degraded land, and the gradual restoration of forests in combination with other forest management methods. In this way, It provides food and sufficient habitat for Asian elephants and other wild animals, and reduces the length of stay of wild Asian elephants in farmland to alleviate human-elephant conflict.
People, elephants, and forests have never been three elements independent of each other, but a system that is closely related to each other—they are intertwined with each other in time, space, and function, influencing each other, adapting to each other, and changing each other. Restoring forests and restoring the habitat of Asian elephants benefits not only Asian elephants, but also other animals and plants that depend on the rainforest for survival. In this process, it also provides more choices for people's future sustainable development.