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A group of wild elephants walked through villages and towns in Yunnan Province in southwestern China, arousing fanaticism on the Internet and increasing the urgency of protecting the country’s natural habitats.
Last spring, 16 Asian elephants began to walk north from a nature reserve in Xishuangbanna, a tropical area in the southern part of the province that borders Myanmar and Laos.
By June, this group had been reduced to 15 people, including a newborn calf. They had walked 500 kilometers close to Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province. In the process, they became obsessed with the country.
The Chinese media are checking the herd of elephants every day, sharing the latest drone and security camera footage. These elephants roam the tea plantations and streets.
A convoy and a team of officials have been mobilized to escort the elephants. According to the official Xinhua News Agency, one day this month, the authorities sent 360 emergency and police personnel, 76 police cars and dump trucks, 5 excavators and 9 drones, and fed 16 tons of elephants. food.
Although some users on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform noticed the damage caused by elephants smashing doors in search of food, most users paid attention to photos of sleeping elephants curled up next to their mothers or noticed these. Animal intelligence.
In a widely circulated video, an elephant walks to the front door of a household and uses its nose to open the tap to let the elephant drink water.
In another photo, a baby elephant appeared to be intoxicated by eating fermented grains, which prompted a local musician to write a song about drunk elephants in Yunnan.
When the elephant herd approached Kunming, Chinese experts urgently discussed the exact reasons for the migration and how to deal with the elephants roaming around the 8m city.
Zhao Huaidong, the former director of the IFAW Asian Elephant Conservation Project in Xishuangbanna, educates local villagers on how to handle elephants safely, saying that the migration of this group of elephants to the north is “very unusual” because it does not follow a fixed route.
“In the past 20 years, the protection of Asian elephants has meant that their numbers have increased, but the reduction of virgin forest outside the reserve has reduced their living space and has led to the spread of elephants to areas where human activities are carried out,” he said .
As Kunming prepares to host the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in October, the elephant habitat has received renewed attention. Environmentalists hope that China will take this opportunity to strengthen its commitment to protecting endangered wildlife and expanding nature reserves.
Environmentalists say that the elephant herd can pass through the village undisturbed, which shows that compared with the past, China has taken a step forward in protecting species. © via Reuters
Asian elephants receive the highest level of species protection in China. Hundreds of years ago, elephant herds would travel far to the present central China, but in recent decades, the number of about 300 elephants in the country has been restricted to Yunnan Province.
The local authorities launched a campaign to keep these animals away from Kunming. They blocked roads and paved pineapple, sweet corn and other food trails to lure animals away from densely populated areas.
Zhou Jinfeng, chairman of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, warned that trying to drive elephants back is wrong and may lead to a greater risk of conflict with humans.
“My suggestion is that we should not stop their migration completely, but build migration corridors,” he said.
According to Zhou, the villagers’ tolerance and lack of violence towards elephants is a significant change from the past and a positive sign of acceptance of protected species. “This makes me particularly relieved,” he said.
Additional reporting by Emma Zhou in Beijing
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