The long march of elephants adds urgency to China’s conservation efforts

A herd of wild elephants parading through towns and cities in southwest China’s Yunnan Province has caused a frenzy among online fans and added urgency to the country’s efforts to protect the natural habitat of animals.

Last spring, 16 Asian elephants began walking north from a nature reserve in Xishuangbanna, a tropical region bordering Myanmar and Laos in the southern part of the province.

In June, the group, which was now up to 15 years old and included a newborn calf, had traveled 500 km, near Yunnan’s capital, Kunming. In the process, they became a national obsession.

Chinese media have been recording the herd daily, sharing the latest drone deliveries and security camera footage of elephants strolling through tea plantations and high streets.

A fleet of vehicles and an army of officers have mobilized to escort the elephants. One day this month, authorities sent 360 emergency care officers and police personnel, 76 police cars and trucks, five excavators and nine drones and fed 16 tons of food to the elephants, according to the state agency. Xinhua News.

While some users of China’s Twitter-like Weibo microblogging platform pointed to the damage caused by elephants breaking doors in search of food, most focused on images of elephant calves. sleeping that they crowded around their mother or pointed to the intelligence of the creatures.

In a widely shared video, an elephant walks to the front door of a village house and uses the trunk to open the tap so the herd can drink.

In another, an elephant calf appeared to be intoxicated by eating fermented grains, inspiring a local musician to write a song about Yunnan’s drunken elephants.

As the herd approached Kunming, Chinese experts were urgently debating the exact causes of the migration and how to deal with the elephants that roamed the outskirts of an 8m city.

Zhao Huaidong, former director of the IFAW Asian Elephant Protection project in Xishuangbanna, which educates villagers on how to safely handle elephants, called the northern migration of the herd “very unusual” because it did not follow a fixed route.

“Over the past 20 years, the protection of Asian elephants has meant that their numbers have increased, but the decline of virgin forest outside protected areas has reduced their living space and caused elephants to spread to areas where humans are active, ”he said.

Renewed attention to elephant habitats comes as Kunming prepares to host the UN conference on biodiversity in October. Environmentalists hope China will seize the opportunity to strengthen endangered wildlife protection commitments and expand nature reserves.

Asian elephants receive the highest level of protection from China’s species. Hundreds of years ago, herds roamed what is now central China, but in recent decades the country’s population of about 300 elephants has been confined to Yunnan province.

Local authorities have launched a campaign to keep the animals away from Kunming. They have blocked roads and left routes of pineapples, sweet corn and other food to attract animals from densely populated areas.

Zhou Jinfeng, director of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, warned that attempts to push back elephants would be an incorrect approach and could lead to an increased risk of collisions with humans.

“My proposal is that we should not completely stop their migration, but establish migratory corridors,” he said.

According to Zhou, the tolerance of the villagers and the lack of violence against elephants meant a marked change from the past and a positive sign of acceptance of the protected species. “This is something that has especially relieved me,” he said.

Additional reports from Emma Zhou in Beijing