China transfixed by travelling elephants

NO ONE knows where they are going or why. Since last March, a family of wild elephants in southwest China has trekked more than 480km, travelling north through fields, highways, villages and towns.

They have stolen crops, rolled around in courtyards looking for food, and broken into a car dealership where they drank water and left muddy footprints. The herd has been labelled “The Northbound Wild Elephant Eating and Walking Tour”. In one incident, two young elephants reportedly raided a villager’s stores of corn liquor and later appeared to pass out in a field.

“We have no way of telling where they are going,” said Chen Mingyong, a professor at Yunnan University who studies wild elephants.

From residents to officials and TikTok influencers, the country has been transfixed by the 15 Asian elephants which have ignored police sirens and trucks laden with food, attempts to lure them home to the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve near China’s border with Laos and Myanmar.

Yesterday, the family reached the outskirts of Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, where authorities fear deadly accidents between residents and the animals will become more likely. Traffic controls were put in place outside a village near the city of Yuxi, where the elephants were expected to pass. Crowds gathered to watch from a distance, according to media reports.

Farmers grabbed piles of dung to use as fertiliser while bloggers set up their phones to film themselves. Researchers, describing the migration as “unprecedented” in China, said the elephants might be on a quest for food and territory as a result of their shrinking habitat in their nature reserve in Yunnan. The wandering herd has caused about 6.8 million yuan (about R14.6m) in lost crops, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

“It is common for Asian elephants to migrate, but in the past that has mostly been to look for food within their habitats,” said Chen. “An exodus this far north is quite rare.”

Cao Dafan, project lead of Asian Elephant Protection, wrote in an article on the group’s WeChat page that possible reasons could be shifts in their environment, drought or changes in food supply.

“Some experts have also discussed whether it is a random choice in itself, which makes sense in my opinion,” he wrote.

According to Chen, “inexperienced leadership” of the elephant in charge could be another reason for the long journey to nowhere. “Maybe it got it wrong but still thinks it’s going the right way,” he said.