China’s wandering elephants becoming international stars
China’s wandering elephants becoming international stars
AP
June 8, 2021
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<https://apnews.com/article/china-wandering-elephants-becoming-international-stars-05a39c9aac67013d4e7187285f55ea3e
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BEIJING: Already famous at home, China’s wandering elephants are now
becoming international stars.
Major global media are chronicling the herd’s more than yearlong,
500-kilometer (300-mile) trek from their home in a wildlife reserve in
mountainous southwest Yunnan province to the outskirts of the provincial
capital of Kunming.
Twitter and YouTube are full of clips of their various antics, particularly
those of two calves who slipped into an irrigation ditch and had to be
helped out by older members of the group.
“We should be more like the elephant and be more family oriented, take
family vacations and help and care for and protect each other,” read one
comment on YouTube signed MrDeterministicchaos. The elephants have been
trending for days on China’s Weibo microblogging service with photos of the
group sleeping attracting 25,000 posts and 200 million views Monday night.
The 15-member herd has been caught at night trotting down urban streets by
security cameras, filmed constantly from the air by more than a dozen
drones and followed by those seeking to minimize damage and keep both
pachyderms and people out of harm’s way.
They’ve raided farms for food and water, visited a car dealership and even
showed up at a retirement home, where they poked their trunks into some of
the rooms, prompting one elderly man to hide under his bed. While no
animals or people have been hurt, reports put damage to crops at more than
$1 million.
Sixteen animals were originally in the group, but the government says two
returned home and a baby was born during the walk. The herd is now composed
of six female and three male adults, three juveniles and three calves,
according to official reports.
What exactly motivated them to make the epic journey remains a mystery,
although they appear to be especially attracted to corn, tropical fruit and
other crops that are tasty, plentiful and easy to obtain in the lush
tropical region that is home to about 300 of the animals. Others have
speculated their leader may be simply lost.
Asian elephants are loyal to their home ranges unless there have been
disturbances, loss of resources or development, in which case they may move
out, according to Nilanga Jayasinghe, manager for Asian species
conservation at the World Wildlife Fund.
“In this case, we don’t really know why they left their home range, but do
know that there has been significant habitat loss due to agriculture and
conversion of forests into plantations within that range in the last few
decades,” Jayasinghe wrote in an email. “What possibly happened here is
that in their search for new habitat, they got lost along the way and kept
going.”
Authorities have been working to avoid negative interactions and “must
determine what the best next steps here are and keep human-elephant
conflict at bay,” Jayasinghe wrote.
Kunming is to host the upcoming Convention on Biological Diversity’s
Convention of Parties to discuss topics such as human-wildlife conflict,
and “this is a real-time example of the importance of addressing the issue
and its root causes for the benefit of both wildlife and people,” she wrote.
Elephants are given the top level of protection in China, allowing their
numbers to steadily increase even as their natural habitat shrinks, and
requiring farmers and others to exercise maximum restraint when
encountering them. Government orders have told people to stay inside and
not to gawk at them or use firecrackers or otherwise attempt to scare them
away.
So far, more passive means are being used to keep them out of urban areas,
including the parking of trucks and construction equipment to block roads
and the use of food drops to lure them away.
As of Tuesday, the herd remained on the outskirts of Kunming, a city of 7
million, with one of the males having moved away on his own, creating even
more excitement — and worry — for those attempting to keep tabs on them.
A statement Monday from a provincial command center set up to monitor the
group said the elephants appeared to be resting, while more than 410
emergency response personnel and police personnel, scores of vehicles and
14 drones were deployed to monitor them. Area residents were evacuated,
temporary traffic control measures implemented, and 2 tons of elephant food
put in place.
Another objective was to “maintain silence to create conditions for guiding
the elephant group to migrate west and south,” the command center said.
Asian elephants, the continent’s largest land animal, are declining
overall, with less than 50,000 left in the wild. Habitat loss and resulting
human-wildlife conflict are their biggest threats, along with poaching and
population isolation.