Enhanced protection leads to thriving population of wild Asian elephants

The population of wild Asian elephants is thriving thanks to the greater protection efforts taken in a county of southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The county is one of the elephants' main stomping grounds, where monitoring has been enhanced to ensure the herds can avoid human contacts while enjoying a more habitable living space.

According to a member of the local monitoring team for the elephants in Jiangcheng Hani and Yi Autonomous County, there are 42 wild Asian elephants currently spotted in the area.

Due to the scarcity of food during the winter season, the workers have prepared their favorite food including bananas, sugarcane and corn in specific areas.

"We would place piles of corn near the entrance to the village to lure the elephants, since their intention in approaching the village is to look for food. By providing an alternate food source outside the village boundaries, we aim to attract the elephants and avoid their entry into residential areas as much as possible, so as to prevent them from encountering people," said Diao Faxing, a member of a local monitoring team.

To deal with the problem of conflicting living space between the elephants and the local human population, the workers track the elephants in an unobtrusive manner by using drones. Once elephants were found wandering near the village, they will send out early warnings to nearby residents.

"Here we can see 29 elephants nearby. This point indicates where the Asian elephants are located, and this point marks our current location - which is only 1.8 kilometers away. Currently we mainly use drones to monitor the elephants. However, when the weather conditions are poor such as in rainy or cloudy days, we need people on the ground to search for them. Once the elephants are located, we issue an early warning and notify the local people to stay away from the relevant areas," Diao said.

The implementation of various measures has enabled the Asian elephants to obtain enough living space without coming into direct contact with humans, and the elephant population has also been significantly increasing in recent years.