Trouble-making elephant to be freed after "emotional evaluation"

Wildlife authorities in southwest China's Yunnan Province said they will release the Asian elephant they captured Friday back into the wild in an appropriate time.

The Asian elephants breeding and rescue center of Yunnan said Saturday the elephant, which ran amok in a town before it was captured Friday, would be released but needs to pass a comprehensive emotional and physical assessment first.

The 20-year-old elephant Weizhayo, meaning victor in the Dai language, was an underdog in a fight for mate and turned fractious after being expelled from the pack by the winning alpha, according to the forestry and grassland administration of Dai Autonomous Prefecture of Xishuangbanna.

The 4-tonne animal intruded into Meng'a Town, Menghai County, six times between March 17 and April 4, tramping crowded roads and damaging 16 motor vehicles and five buildings.

After meeting with experts, the provincial forestry authority approved the request for an "arrest." The prefecture government then formulated a hunting plan and an emergency pre-plan, and set up an operation command.

On Thursday, the elephant invaded Meng'a again and walked around a school and a sugarhouse. The hunt was on.

On Friday morning, an anesthetist stalked on the target near the town government building and shot a 1.2-ml narcotic needle in its rear using a blow pipe.

After 12 minutes, Weizhayo fell heavily to the ground and was caged. He woke up 35 minutes later showing normal vital signs and was sent to the center, "safe and sound."

During mating season, competition between male elephants can be intense and lead to frequent fights, imperiling residents in the area.

A wild Asian elephant came into the city of Pu'er last April and took a stroll for six hours before it was brought under control and kept in the elephant breeding and rescue center in Xishuangbanna.

Thanks to improving environment, the number of wild Asian elephants, which are under A-level state protection, has grown from 170 in the 1990s to about 300 in China, leading to more human-elephant conflict.

Last month, an elephant habitat reconstruction project was launched in Yunnan to build a 51-hectare "dining area" for wild elephants to solve conflicts between the endangered animal and local residents.

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Trouble-making wild elephant tamed by blowpipe in southwest China

Wildlife authorities Friday used a blowpipe to sedate and capture a wild Asian elephant after it ran amok in a town in southwest China's Yunnan Province. The elephant was an underdog in a mating fight and turned fractious after being expelled from the pack by the winning alpha, said the forestry and grassland administration of Dai Autonomous Prefecture of Xishuangbanna.

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Thieving wild elephant steals rice from house in Chinese village

Mobile phone footage captured a wild Asian elephant stealing a bag of rice from a village home in southwestern China.

In the clip, shot in Pu’er City in Yunnan Province last Wednesday (October 24), an Asian elephant uses its trunk to steal a bag of rice from villager Yang Xuechang’s house and then runs away.

In another video, captured on October 25, the elephant can be seen sneaking into Yang’s house again, but villagers shout at it to drive it away.

Since Yang had since hidden all the rice, the elephant did not get anything the second time.

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Enviro Monday: Shipments of wild baby elephants captured in Zimbabwe are destined for China

Wild baby elephants captured in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe have reportedly been exported to two safari parks in China.

The 31 elephants were captured in August 2017 and footage of the operation was secretly released to the media. The shipment was confirmed by the Zimbabwean Conservation Task Force (ZCTF).

A government official is reported to have said that the elephants aged between three and six years old were traumatized and some were weak with open sores on their bodies.

The Guardian published the disturbing footage of the elephants being captured showing one of the calves being kicked in the head.


International trade in live elephants is legal, but is being debated at the highest level. At a Cites meeting in Geneva representatives from the African Elephant Coalition raised serious concerns on the trade.

Peter Stroud, a former curator of the Melbourne Zoo who was involved in sourcing elephants from Thailand, calls moving wild-caught animals to zoos “unconscionable”.

“Young elephants will never develop naturally as socially and ecologically functioning beings in zoos. They will face a very long and very slow process of a mental and physiological breakdown resulting inevitably in chronic physical and mental abnormality, disease and premature death.”

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The plight of baby elephants in Zimbabwe

The cruelty of the capture of baby elephants from their families in the wild has been revealed in disturbing photos and videos secretly taken in Zimbabwe last month, writes Adam Cruise. They show newly captured elephants being repeatedly kicked in the head.

Since 2012, over eighty elephants (including last month’s batch of fourteen) have been captured from Hwange, Zimbabwe’s largest National Park and sold by the Zimbabwean Government to Chinese zoos. The process is both cruel and violent.

For the capture, a family herd is selected and a helicopter sent in to dart the baby elephants with tranquilizers from the air. As the young elephants collapse, the helicopter dive-bombs the distressed mothers to keep them away while a ground-team with trucks, tractors and trailers rapidly moves  in to bundle the elephants into crates.

The young elephants, some yet to be weaned from their mothers, were then moved to holding pens at an off-limits facility within the park. Here, as the video and photographic evidence reveals, they spent a few confused months terrified, underfed, and abused.

From secret observations of the previous captures of live elephants, this latest batch, after a few months in the holding pens, will be transported in small crates by truck a 250 kilometers to Victoria Falls Airport. Here the elephants will be airlifted to China. Once there, they will be placed in quarantine before they are separated and shipped to zoos and safari parks across the country.

In 2012, three young elephants died after arriving in China, and one died in transit during the flight from Zimbabwe to China in 2016. The actual captures are particularly brutal. According to internal reports from ZimParks, there was at least one death during the capture operation in 2016 presumedly after being crushed by the stampeding herd, while three very young elephants were severely injured during the captures in 2014 – one with a broken leg, another with a damaged trunk and a third with a damaged trunk and tail.

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