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Chinese villagers coexist uneasily with resurgent, hungry elephants
- Conservation efforts have helped elephant population to recover, but their shrinking habitat brings them into conflict with humans
- Elephant raids on fruit and vegetable farms, and even fatal attacks on local people, have raised the idea of a national park to allow them to thrive
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Ma Mingliang rarely encountered wild elephants while growing up in southwestern China, after centuries of hunting and deforestation nearly eradicated them. Today, the 42-year-old village chief barricades his community to keep them out.
A wandering herd of Asian elephants has captivated China for more than a year with a remarkable trek northwards through farms and cities hundreds of kilometres from their normal range in Yunnan province.
But an elephant in the street is now a common sight for residents of the animals’ home territory on the Myanmar-Laos border, where a recovering elephant population is being squeezed into ever-shrinking habitat, leading to more conflict with humans.
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The tension is immediately apparent in Ma’s village in Xishuangbanna, a subtropical prefecture the size of a small country where China’s elephant population congregates.
01:28
China’s famous herd of wandering elephants heads home after months-long trek
China’s famous herd of wandering elephants heads home after months-long trek
The neatly ordered homes of the little community, called Xiangyanqing, climb up a gently sloping hillside, dotted by signs promoting human-elephant “harmony” and encircled by a steel fence separating it from adjacent jungle.
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