Wild elephant intrudes into village in southwest China

A wild Asian elephant intruded into a village in Jinggu Dai and Yi Autonomous County of southwest China's Yunnan Province in search of food, according to the local forestry police on Thursday.

The county's forestry police received a report on Sunday that a male wild elephant was wandering around Xinzhai Village, eating and damaging corn and bananas.

"I got up at around 7 a.m. to look for my ox on a mountain and discovered the feces and footprints of an elephant," said villager Li Zhigui. He saw the elephant eating bananas outside the village in the afternoon.

Police immediately came to the village and monitored the whereabouts of the adult elephant, which was thought to be aggressive, to prevent human-animal conflict.

"With strengthened protection efforts for the environment and wildlife, the number of wild Asian elephants has been growing in China in recent years," said Chen Mingyong, a wildlife expert at Yunnan University.

Conflicts between elephants and humans are on the rise. In August, elephants charged a family of three heading to Jinghong City on a motorbike, killing two of the people.

Wild Asian elephants are under Class A protection in China, with a population of about 300, mainly scattered in Xishuangbanna and the cities of Pu'er and Lincang in Yunnan.

The elephant discovered on Sunday is still in the county and being monitored by forestry police, who warned villagers not to provoke or hurt the animal. The government will compensate for damage to crops and houses caused by elephants.

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Chinese village builds barricades to fend off marauding wild elephants

Locals living in nature reserve were plagued by animals looking for food.

Villagers in southwest China who have been plagued for years by rampaging wild elephants looking for food have welcomed a scheme to build a barrier to protect them.

The pilot project to build an enclosure round Xiangyanqing in Yunnan province has been judged so successful that it will now be expanded to other villages in the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, state television reported on Thursday.

Residents reported a dozen incidents in which elephants were kept out of the village in just over a month, Guo Xianming, director of the Asian elephants protection project in Xishuangbanna, told CCTV.

The reserve hosts most of the country’s wild Asian elephants, which number between 200 and 300, according to a study published by the country’s Institute of Zoology.

The village introduced the barriers recently to cope with attacks from the wild elephants which came looking for sugar cane and banana leaves and would eat their grain and destroy electric appliances in their houses, villager Feng Guanglin told the broadcaster.

The locals have also established a public liability insurance system which will cover losses caused by wild elephants with government funds.

They have also set up watch teams to observe the elephants and monitor the situation.

“We have found a good way to prevent people’s lives and property from being damaged by wild elephants,” Guo said.

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