Trackers in bid to stop elephants wreaking havoc

KUNMING－Zhao Ping and his colleagues have been "chasing" a group of naughty giants these days as a herd of 14 wild Asian elephants is roaming around Menghai county, Southwest China's Yunnan province.

"They ran into residential houses in Menghai's Meng'a township for food, damaging roofs, doors and windows. Some even knocked over a jar of homemade spirits," Zhao says.

The 46-year-old was a forest ranger before 2011 when he was hired by the local government as part of the county's ground-monitoring team to avoid conflicts between humans and wild elephants, against a backdrop of a growing pachyderm population, mostly scattered in Yunnan, thanks to unremitted environmental and wildlife protection efforts.

"Our job is to track elephants, observe their activities and issue an early warning to surrounding villagers in advance," Zhao says.

The working experience with one of nature's most majestic creatures, however, is not easy.

With only bottles of water and a telescope in his bag, Zhao and his eight team members work around the clock these days. They can barely sleep three hours, following closely the 14 elephants that entered Meng'a on March 9 from another township about 40 kilometers away, mostly on foot.

"The wild Asian elephants basically only march through the woods or on paths off the beaten track where cars are not available. Also, we don't want to disturb the majesty of the natural surroundings, making our feet the most reliable and effective tools," he says.

"The herd, along with another three male elephants, which have frequented Menghai and its surroundings for a long time, remained in the forest until March 11 when they went downhill," says the tracker who is "under huge stress" fearing the villagers would stray into the animals' range due to his inadequate tracking.

"Toilsome and dangerous, elephant tracking is a holistic activity requiring comprehensive systematic training," says Long Yunhai, deputy head of the bureau of forestry and grassland of Menghai county.

The trackers need to gather data through all senses, listening to the sounds of elephants, observing their footprints and smelling their excrement to judge the situation and location of the giants.

The monitoring system in Menghai went high-tech in June 2016, when products including drones and infrared cameras were introduced to better monitor the activities of the elephants. This has helped avoid nearly 60 potential conflicts in three years, according to Long.

An early-warning monitoring center for wild Asian elephants has also been established in the county, publishing real-time information concerning the giants through mobile apps and China's popular social media platform WeChat, to protect the lives and property of local residents.

Wild Asian elephants, a flagship species in the rainforest, are under A-level state protection in China and are included in the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species as "endangered".

Enhanced protection has led to a rise in the number of the mammals in the country from more than 170 in the 1990s to about 300 currently.

"Villagers are now preparing for this year's spring plowing, so we have to tell them the specific locations of the giants before they start to work," Zhao says.

"After all these years of working in the wild, elephant tracking has been part of me. It's hard but worthwhile."

Xinhua