ELEPHANTS IN CHINA

Asian elephant

Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) found in China have a body length of 5.5-6.4 meters, excluding a 1.2-1.5 meter tail, and a height of 2.4-3 meters. They weigh 5000 kilograms and live in tropical forests and areas around such forests. Using their curling, flexible trunk they eat of many kinds of all vegetation. They can be found in South Yunnan. They are regarded as an endangered species.

There are about 300 wild elephants in China. They were once were found as north as Beijing but over the centuries have seen their numbers decline and habitat shrink as result of wars, ivory hunting, the destruction of forests. The last remaining elephants are found in three separate areas squeezed into ever-shrinking habitats sandwiched between rubber plantations, tea farms, rice paddies, highways and development schemes. Although they are generally amiable elephants can sometimes be dangerous. More than 50 people died in incidents involving Asian elephants between 2011 and 2019, according to state media.

A male elephant named Xiguang was captured along the Chinese-Myanmar border by drug smugglers in March 2005 using heroin-laced bananas to pacify the creature, The elephant continue to be fed the bananas and became addicted to heroin. Two months later Xiaguang was captured with six other elephants in southwest China and found to suffering from withdrawal,. He was sent for rehab in a protection center on Hainan Island and was cured of his addiction using daily methadone doses five time larger than those given to humans

China is the largest market for ivory. Much of the ivory from poached elephants in Africa is smuggled into China . Jewelry, chopsticks, and figures made from ivory are widely sold in souvenir shops in southern China. According to animal welfare groups, few Chinese realize that ivory comes from killed elephants. In July 2008, CITES allowed China to import ivory from several African nations.

Elephant Conservation in China

Killing an elephant is a serious crime. In 1995, four people were executed for poaching elephants for their tusks, Since then no poaching cases have been reported although some elephants have been wounded by gunshots when they have wandered across borders to Myanmar and Laos.

Thanks to conservation efforts by Chinese China’s wild elephants have doubled in number to more between 1990 and 2020, but their habitat has shrunk by nearly two-thirds over the same period, much of it due to the development of rubber plantations in places where the elephants live. [Source: Charlie Campbell, Time magazine, July 14, 2021]

Conservationists have used the case of the wandering Yunnan elephants in 2020 and 2021 (See Below) to leverage the greater public awareness of habitat loss to ensure that real change can come from the elephants’ plight. According to Time magazine Environmentalists have called for the Chinese government to set up dedicated elephant nature reserves like the successful ones created for pandas and snow leopards. Given the price of rubber is extremely low, buying back land from farmers is a possibility. “We hope that elephants can recover their populations in their historic range,” Becky Shu Chen, from the IUCN Asian Elephant Specialist Group, told state broadcaster CTGN. “But it’s extremely challenging [for them to] coexist with people.”

Rising elephant numbers, plus the destruction of their habitats combined with their new taste for energy-rich crops, means that human-elephant conflict will only rise. “The big fear is that the intensity of conflict between humans and elephants can start as just a nuisance and quickly grow to the point where people or elephants get killed,” Joshua Plotnik, assistant professor of elephant psychology at Hunter College, City University of New York, told Time “This is already happening in some countries in Asia, and spells a dire future for elephants if we don’t reverse the trend.”

Elephants in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan

The most famous elephant herd in China is in Wild Elephant Valley park near Mengman in the Xishuangbanna region of southwest Yunnan near Laos and Myanmar. The elephants are a big tourist attraction but otherwise they have an uneasy relation with the human population there who put up with gobbled up crops, smashed greenhouses and even laundry pulled off of clotheslines by the elephants. [Source: Barbara Demick and Nicole Liu, Los Angeles Times, April 19, 2010]

In 2008, a woman who ran a food kiosk in the park was trampled to death by an angry elephant. A few months late a U.S. tourist was critically injured by an elephant while trying to take a picture. In a village near the park an elephant killed a television cameraman investigating reports about crop destruction. Another villager, an old man, was trampled to death while collecting peanuts in the mud. In 2005, raids by wild elephants in Yunnan Province killed three villagers and destroyed crops belonging to 12,000 households in 576 communities. On how locals view the elephants one villager told the Los Angeles Times, “The villagers get angry with the elephants, but there is nothing they can do about it. The elephants are protected by the government.” One elderly farmer told the Los Angeles Times, “I see them now more often than I did when I was growing up in the 1950s. Back then there was jungle everywhere and they seldom emerged.”

In recent years helping the elephants has become a cause taken up by environmentalists and the government, with the latter doing things like providing compensation for crops damaged by elephants, paying villagers to collect data on the elephants and offering farmers micro-credit loans to raise tea which elephants don’t like over corn which they fancy. In large cities animal welfare groups have organized campaigns to encourage Chinese not to buy ivory and to inform them that ivory comes killed elephants. There is some discussion of setting up a captive breeding center for elephants like the one for pandas.

Officials in Yunnan Province announced the creation of “dinner halls” for wild elephants to prevent them from devouring crops and attacking villages. Seventy hectares of bananas and sugar cane have been raised on spare land away from villages in hopes that 300 wild elephants that live in the area will eat these crops and leave farmer’s crops alone.

Yunnan’s Wandering Elephants

In 2020 and 2021, the world watched as group of elephants wandered hundreds of kilometers across Yunnan province, finally turned around in Kunming, a city of around 6 million, returning home after about 17 months on the move. During their trek they smashed down doors, raiding shops, "stole" food, played around in the mud, bathed in a canal and napped in the middle of a forest and on city streets, in the process causing over US$1.1 million in damage . Tessa Wong of the BBC wrote: From breaking into villagers' homes to giving birth while on the road, it's been an epic journey that could have been straight out of The Lord of the Rings.”[Source: Tessa Wong, BBC News, August 16, 2021]

The elephants reached a distances of 500 kilometers (310 miles) from their home, record for elephant in China, and went through several highly populated areas and came in contact with vehicles and soldiers. “The trek began in their home habitat in Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, a sprawling 2,410-square-kilometers area of rainforests in southern Yunnan province on the border of Myanmar and Laos. In March, 2020, 16 elephants were seen moving north from the nature reserve toward Pu’er, a city of 2.5 million. Within a month they had reached Yuanjiang County, about 375 kilometers (230 miles) north of their starting point.

Wong wrote: Nobody batted an eyelid at first. Wild elephants are known to roam freely and regularly in the region, such that one city, Pu'er, even runs "elephant canteens" to feed their large visitors. Most don't stray very far, and usually head home after a while. But months after the herd left, officials started to realise that this was no ordinary trip. This realisation literally hit home when reports emerged of the elephants crashing into people's houses, munching on their crops, and guzzling their water. Elephants are known for their voracious appetite, and so far they have wolfed down a staggering 180 tonnes of corn, bananas, pineapples and other food laid out for them. Even a sideview mirror was torn off by a curious elephant inspecting a vehicle. CCTV footage of the elephants wandering around the streets of various cities also went viral. Even now experts remain baffled by their behaviour. A fleet of drones tracking the elephants captured some iconic moments, such as a mudbath, a tussle between two young elephants and babies who had slipped into a trench.

“In April two elephants peeled off and decided to return home. Another one strayed in June, and officials eventually tranquilised and transported him home as they were worried that he would not survive alone. All three were males, which usually travel alone. But the tribe welcomed new members too: at least two elephants gave birth, according to Prof Campos-Arceiz.

Throughout it all, the people of China remained transfixed. The Asian elephants of Yunnan became a household name as their adventures became national news, and villagers lined their route hoping for a glimpse. Every movement was closely monitored not just by the drones but also scientists studying their trails and faeces, and even paparazzi livestreamers who ate their leftover pineapples.

According to the New York Times: Social media users have cooed over videos of an older elephant rescuing a calf that fell into a gutter. They have suggested that if the elephants hurry, they will arrive in Beijing in time for the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th anniversary next month. Even Xinhua, the state news agency, has jokingly referred to the herd as a “tour group.”

The hashtag “northbound wild elephants’ buffet site” trended on Weibo, a popular social media platform in China, after residents in a village near Kunming prepared cartloads of corn stalks for them.While acknowledging the public’s amusement, the government has warned people to stay away from the animals, reminding them that they can be dangerous. The wandering herd has yet to cause any injuries to humans,” but elephants in China have. “Local officials have scrambled to draw up “Elephant Accident and Prevention Emergency Plans.” They have been tracking the elephants’ movements by drone and dispatched hundreds of workers to evacuate residents, set up emergency barriers and reserve 18 tons of food. [Source: Vivian Wang, New York Times, June 5, 2021]

Why Did the Yunnan Elephants Wander So Far

Scientists like everyone else were baffled as to why the elephants undertook such a long trek. “It is almost certainly related to the need for resources — food, water, shelter — and this would make sense given the fact that, in most locations where Asian elephants live in the wild, there is an increase in human disturbances leading to habitat fragmentation, loss and resource reduction," Plotnik told the BBC. Elephants can eat 200 kilogram of food every day and much of their traditional habitat near Xishuangbanna has been turned into rubber plantations. [Source: Suranjana Tewarim BBC News, June 23, 2021]

Plotnik told Time “The individual personalities of the elephants in this group [may have] contributed to their decision to leave. It is also likely that once the elephants got a taste for the high quality food readily available in crop fields, such as sugar cane, they continued to seek it out.” Elephants are matriarchal with the oldest and wisest female leading the group of grandmothers, mothers and aunties along with their sons and daughters. After puberty, males break off and travel alone or link up in groups with other males for a short time. They only congregate with females temporarily to mate before leaving again. However, this herd set out as a group of 16 or 17 elephants, including three males — one who stayed almost until they reached Kunming. "It's not unusual, but I'm surprised he stayed that long. It was probably because of unfamiliar territory. When I saw them walking into a town or village, they were moving closely together — that's a sign of stress," said Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, professor and principal investigator at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden.

“Elephants are closer in behaviour to humans than other mammals, experiencing a range of emotions like joy in birth, grief in death and anxiety in unfamiliar territory. Researchers were also taken by surprise when two of the female elephants gave birth on the journey. "Elephants are very habitual and very routine driven, it's unusual for them to move to new areas when they're about to give birth — they try to find the safest place they can," Lisa Olivier at Game Rangers International, a wildlife conservation organisation based in Zambia, told the BBC.

In a paper published in Conservation Letters journal in 2021, a team of China-based experts led by Professor Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz theorised “that the elephants left to find more food due to several reasons. One is the growing elephant population — and thus greater competition for food. "Now we need to deal with the consequences of this success, which is a real challenge because the elephants are running out of physical space to move without interacting with people, crops, or infrastructure," Prof Campos-Arceiz, a principal investigator at the Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, told the BBC. [Source: Tessa Wong, BBC News, August 16, 2021]

An extreme drought, which lasted for a year up to the elephants' departure, also led food to be more scarce. Others have pointed out that over the decades, deforestation and encroaching farmland have reduced elephants' habitats in China outside protected areas. Authorities have tried to boost forest protections. But ironically this has also meant less available food for the elephants within nature reserves, with a thicker forest canopy blocking off more sunlight, resulting in fewer edible plants growing in the understorey, said Prof Campos-Arceiz.

The elephants also got their own celebrity rumour — a claim that they "got drunk" after consuming tonnes of corn wine was quickly debunked by experts. According to Time magazine: One popular live stream showed a calf trying to clamber out from under a snoozing adult during a group nap. In another, some of the elephants seemed to get drunk after feasting on fermented grain. One calf, trying to drink water, was seen plunging head first into a pond.

Yunnan’s Wandering Elephants Finally Turn Around and Go Home

Tessa Wong of the BBC wrote: By early June 2021, the herd had reached the provincial capital of Kunming — more than 500 kilometers from home and the furthest any Yunnan wild elephant had ever gone. Some began to worry for their survival as they headed to cooler climes and prolonged their interaction with human civilisation. What many saw as endearing behaviour, such as roaming in towns as a close pack and lying down for a nap, were actually signs of stress and exhaustion, experts have told the BBC. [Source: Tessa Wong, BBC News, August 16, 2021]

Much to officials' relief, the elephants began turning southwards a few weeks later, and soon neared the Yuanjiang river. Authorities said that within the herd's immediate radius, only one bridge was suitable for an elephant crossing. The taskforce sent out thousands of soldiers and workers to lay out food as bait, set up electric fences, create artificial paths, and even sprinkle water on roads to ensure they were cool enough for the elephants to step on.

But the animals were less reluctant to follow. What would have been a straightforward 30 kilometers journey turned into a 143 kilometer trek as they wandered off-piste, according to reports. Finally, on August 8, the herd lumbered across the bridge over the Yuanjiang river. Though they were still 200 kilometer away from the Xishuangbanna nature reserve, local media heralded the start of the final leg of their journey.

Image Sources: 1) Kostich; 2) Wild Alliance; 3) AAPA; 4) Tooter for Kids; 5, 6) China Alligator Fund; 7) Blogspot; 8, 9) China Science Academy; 10 Environmental News11) CNTO

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated July 2022