BEIJING: The past two months have seen some stand-out moments for one herd of 15 Asian elephants. Without any clue as to why, this herd of nine adults, three juveniles and three calves embarked on a mysterious trek in April, leaving their regular habitat bordering Myanmar in Yunnan Province. After traveling over 500 km northward, they reached the vicinity of Yunnan’s capital, Kunming.
It’s rare for these giant animals to undertake such a journey. The towns along the elephants’ route were caught unprepared, with experts and local officials scrambling to protect both elephants and humans using any means possible. Residents in villages potentially in the elephants’ path were either moved elsewhere in advance or required to remain on higher floors of buildings. Hundreds of people have been mobilized to ensure the elephants’ security and a 24-hour command center has been set up to monitor the giants around the clock.
As members of a species under top level protection in China, the elephants were welcomed with green lights at each leg of their journey. They swaggered into villages, broke into houses, turned taps on to drink their fill and were even suspected to have broken into kitchens and got drunk on residents’ rice wine. At mealtimes, they plundered farmlands, stuffing themselves with corn, bananas or dragon fruits and leaving a mess behind. On June 2, they finally arrived on the outskirts of Kunming.
In March 2020, the herd, originally with 16 elephants, was observed leaving its usual habitat inside a national nature reserve in Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture and headed for another habitat in the neighboring Pu’er region. It is usual for Yunnan’s elephants to move between two habitats, so their movements were barely paid attention to. The herd remained in Pu’er for over a year, while the birth of a new calf in December 2020 brought their number to 17.
On April 16, the 17 elephants lumbered north into the area of Yuxi, which neighbors Pu’er but had never been visited by the elephants before, putting the herd in the spotlight.
– The Daily Mail-Beijing Review News exchange item
