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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First successful artificial mating in endangered Asian elephants in China

Chinese researchers have for the first time used artificial breeding techniques to breed a baby Asian elephant.

The Asian elephant is a first-class national protected animal that inhabits Southwest China's Yunnan Province, where the cub was delivered.

A female elephant Weilai delivered the healthy 106-centimeter male cub on March 16 after 22 months' pregnancy, news portal chinanews.com reported Wednesday.

The birth was engineered by the Asian Elephant Breeding and Rescue Center in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture.

The cub is reported to be in stable health.

"Having delivered a cub in 2010 in natural breeding, Weilai never got pregnant again although she went into heat several times," Bao Mingwei, a veterinary from the center was qouted as saying by chinanews.com.

Bao said they detected Weilai's hormone level and chose the best timing for her to mate with a male elephant Pailun in 2015.

Over the past ten years, employees from the Asian Elephant Breeding and Rescue Center have successfully bred three Asian elephants through natural mating. The birth of this cub has opened a new era in breeding Asian elephants with the assistance of new technologies.

"We look forward to more artificially-aided breeding Asian elephant cubs with the assistance of the cutting-edge technologies," Bao said.

According to Bao, there are about 300 wild elephants inhabiting Xishuangbanna, Puer and Lincang in Yunnan.

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