"Broken nose family" transits through Kunming

  The drone monitors the position of the elephant group 24 hours a day and issues an early warning; 14 wild elephants have left Kunming, and the stray elephants have entered the woodland of Anning City, Kunming

  The "broken nose family" was tired, and the drone captured the moments when they were nestling in the forest.

  During the week of activity in Kunming, they are always walking, from mountain to mountain, from village to village.

Travel a few kilometers every day, even more than ten kilometers.

  Wherever the "broken nose family" went, the battle was huge.

The unmanned aerial vehicle reconnaissance team of the Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Fighting Corps is one of the three “air forces” in the “chasing elephants”. It monitors the position of the elephants 24 hours a day.

  Martial law is imposed across the warning area.

More than one hundred muck trucks, concrete trucks, and trucks formed a "car wall" to block them, and piled up corn, pineapple, straw and water every two to three meters in the village roads and mountain forests, trying to guide the elephants to the direction. West, south-there are sparsely populated mountains and forests.

  Every day, 14 drones, 115 large vehicles and hundreds of people are working hard to change the direction of migration of these 15 wild elephants to the north.

  Finally, the migration of the "broken nose family" gradually drifted to the northwest and southwest.

  At 23:15 on June 8, 14 wild elephants from the "broken nose family" left Kunming and traveled west to Shijie Township, Yimen County, Yuxi City. The stray elephant continued to move northward and entered the woodland of Anning City, Kunming.

The northward migration of these 15 wild elephants has taken 15 months and spanned nearly 500 kilometers.

  Wait for the elephant to come

  At noon on June 2, when the 15 wild elephants of the "broken nose family" were less than three kilometers away from the border of Shuanghe Township, Jinning District, Kunming City, the team to "greet" the wild elephants was already in place.

  At the junction of Kunming City and Yuxi City, a total of 675 Asian elephant monitors, police officers and emergency personnel on the ground were guarded in two locations.

  Traffic control began along the Baoxi Highway in Shuanghe Township, intercepting passing vehicles and pedestrians, and forbidding non-local villagers from entering.

Broadcasts in the villages along the way also reminded many times, "The elephant has arrived on the opposite mountain, and everyone who is outside must go home and stay in the brick house on the second floor."

  From time to time, muck trucks passed by, one after another, roaring.

The first batch of 18 muck trucks from a transportation company in Jinning District of Kunming arrived and stopped on the road southeast of Laojianghe Village.

The team leader Yang Jin introduced that a muck truck is nearly 8 meters long, more than 2 meters wide, and has a net weight of more than ten tons.

"Only a large car of this size can block the elephant and will not be overturned."

  Yang Jin saw at the scene that 62 muck trucks, concrete trucks and trucks of similar sizes were connected end to end to build a "car wall".

"As long as there is a way into the village, you must surround it with a car."

  Despite this, some villages are built on the mountain, and wild elephants may still shuttle from the mountains and bypass the checkpoints into the village.

  In the evening, the "broken nose family" appeared in Laoguangqing Village, Hongta District, Yuxi City, pacing in a large cornfield, separated from several villages in Shuanghe Township, Jinning District, Kunming City.

  The people in the village have long been evacuated and are placed in several buildings.

On the dirt road into the mountain to the south, a pile of corn is stacked one or two meters apart, trying to guide the elephant herd to the south.

  15 wild elephants stop and go.

Some elephants turned around and walked back. They ate for a while and followed the team. In the end, they walked along the village road to the northeast mountain. The mountains were densely wooded, and the elephant herd quickly disappeared from people's sight.

  "Chasing the Elephant" Team

  The sky darkened, and the drone hovered over the mountains and forests, following the elephants.

It is the unmanned aerial vehicle reconnaissance team of the Yunnan Forest Fire Fighting Corps that is monitoring the scene. They are one of the three "air forces" in the "chasing the elephant".

From May 27, this team has followed the elephant herd all the way to the north.

Most of them are responsible for 12 hours at night. There are 12 pilots in the team, working in groups of three.

  UAVs that take off at night are equipped with infrared thermal imaging cameras.

A series of "red dots" displayed on the remote control screen is the position of the elephant group.

The drone pilot Kuang Yuyu manipulated the handle to bring the drone closer to the forest, and then pulled it into focus until the fluttering trunk and the moving elephant legs were clearly visible.

Kuang Yuyu counted twice, "fifteen heads".

  Since "chasing the elephant", they have explored a set of methods for judging the activities of the elephant group based on thermal imaging images.

Drone pilot Zhang Xiong emphasized, "What I sum up is not necessarily correct."

  He pointed to the "red dots" on the thermal imaging screen and said, the "red dots" gathered together and moved very slowly. This was the rest time for the elephants.

On the screen, a baby elephant stopped and lay sideways on the ground, placed in an "F" shape, "looks like it is sleeping."

The wild elephants at the end of the team flicked their noses, "should be eating."

  Zhang Xiong discovered that during the day, the elephants were resting most of the time, especially from 8 or 9 in the morning to 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

When you wake up, you can do some small activities, eat while walking, eat for several hours, sometimes you will lie down on the ground and take a nap when you are tired.

At night, the elephant herd is much more active.

They are always walking, sometimes traveling more than ten kilometers in one night, sometimes wandering in place, or separated by a short distance from each other, looking for food.

But whenever the mother elephant always follows the baby elephant.

  Once the elephants line up and start to move, the drones have to quickly keep up.

The pilots worked hard to adjust the shooting focus of the drone from time to time, zoomed out, determined the position of the elephant group, marked it, and then zoomed in to observe the actions of each elephant.

Zhang Xiong said that after a while, you have to count the numbers. If you don't pay attention, the head and tail elephants may run far away.

  Every twenty minutes, the drone needs to fly back to replace the battery, and then immediately take off again to continue observation.

  At 21:55 on June 2nd, 15 wild elephants walked slowly among the mountains and forests, crossing the urban boundary planned by mankind, and stepping into Kunming.

  Two of the "red dots" left the team, and they seemed to be "searching the way."

Kuang Yuyu said that the head elephant’s actions are likely to affect the next direction of the elephant group. He marked the location and direction, and the data was sent back to the command post-"The elephant group is likely to descend from the north and enter Kunming Jinning. The village of Shuanghe Township in the district."

  The warning was issued again.

At the foot of the mountain to the north, Yang Jin and the drivers returned to their cars and locked the doors. The police, forest firefighters, and village cadres were all on duty. The signal was weak on the side of the mountain, and they had to use walkie-talkies to communicate.

  Within the "car wall", most of the villagers were resettled to the village committee, and a truck was parked horizontally in front of the village committee.

  This night, several villages in Shuanghe Township were brightly lit, and the whole line was on guard. Everyone was "waiting" for these wild elephants all the way north.

  Enter Kunming

  At 3 o'clock in the morning on June 3, along the Laojianghe Village, the drivers of the convoy were awakened by a rustling and crackling sound.

  Yang Jin recalled that it sounded like the sound of a tree branch breaking, and the sound grew louder from far to near.

They turned on their car lights one after another, and two elephants were walking on the mountainside opposite the village.

According to Yang Jin's visual observation, they were no more than 100 meters away from the highway.

  Or being illuminated by bright car lights, two elephants began to roar.

  "Aung Aung Aung, this way." Yang Jin imitated several times, shouting loudly.

Yang Jin said that the two elephants seemed to know that there were many people here, and they ran back to the forest in a while.

  Prior to this, the "broken nose family" had been "lost" in the mountains for three hours.

Before midnight on June 3, Kuang Yuyu located the elephant group for the last time and handed it over to another drone monitoring team on duty.

Kuang Yuyu's group was about to go to Shuanghe Township, where the elephant group might go, and was called back before they had gone far, "The elephant is lost."

  Zhang Xiong and Kuang Yuyu controlled two drones and searched north from where the elephant group last appeared.

They flew 9 sets of batteries, but still could not find the elephant herd.

  Zhang Xiong hurriedly sent an early warning to the headquarters, and the three villages at the foot of the mountain became nervous.

Ground monitors composed of villagers were dispatched. They raised their flashlights and looked for elephant footprints and feces along the edge of the village.

  Li Peng, a firefighter of the Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Brigade, stood on the roof of the first building and used infrared telescopes to detect.

In theory, in an open area, he can observe "living things" within 500 meters, and once a wild elephant protrudes out of the forest, he can spot it.

  When the three Kuang Yuyu received the news that wild elephants appeared near Laojianghe Village, they immediately put away their equipment and drove towards Laojianghe Village.

  In the mountains and forests southeast of Laojianghe Village, the drone quickly located the "broken nose family".

The three counted several times and confirmed that "the fifteen wild elephants are all there."

  The elephant group returned to the surveillance range of the drone, but no one could let go of the hanging heart.

Once the elephant group descends from the mountain, it will inevitably pass through Laojianghe Village, go north, and climb a few mountains to enter several densely populated large villages.

  After dawn, Yang Jin and experts from the headquarters went to the north of Laojianghe Village to inspect.

Between the mountains to the north of Laojianghe Village, there is a fire isolation belt at the ravine location, which runs east-west, and the dirt road more than three meters wide winds for nearly two kilometers.

This fire barrier is the only way for the elephants to go down the mountain and go north.

After passing here, the wild elephant can go all the way north to the central area of ​​Jinning District, Kunming.

  On the afternoon of June 3, more than 60 large vehicles were transferred here and parked on the fire isolation belt to block the elephants going north.

In village roads and mountain forests, some corn, pineapple, straw and water are stacked every two or three meters, trying to guide the elephant group to the west and south of the sparsely populated mountain forest.

  According to the "Yunnan Release" news, 106 emergency vehicles of various types were dispatched on this day in Jinning District of Kunming City, storing 15 tons of elephant food and 3.6 tons of food.

  On the evening of June 3, Xiao Yun, the driver of the muck truck, raised his head and saw a group of elephants walking north toward his car. The elephant walking in front was only 20 to 30 meters away from him.

  The muck truck driven by Xiao Yun is located at the end of the confined convoy on Baoxi Road, stopping between Laojianghe Village and Liucaoba Village, blocking the road horizontally.

This is a north-south highway. Once the "broken nose family" passes through the checkpoint here, it may pass through many villages, schools and urban centers all the way to the north. It is densely populated, and then to the northeast, it can travel less than 50 kilometers. Walk to Dianchi Lake and enter the center of Kunming.

  The elephant's panting sounded closer and closer, and Xiao Yun felt all the hair on his body stand up.

A low voice reminder from the police on duty came from the intercom, "Don't move, don't make any noise."

He slowly adjusted the seat back, and people lay back, afraid to look at the elephants.

  He heard the sound of heavy objects hitting the bumper of the scum truck several times, guessing that it was an elephant tapping it with its nose.

He moved his left hand to the door of the car a little bit, grasping the door handle tightly, thinking that if the elephant knocks on the window glass with his nose, he will drive the door and jump the car.

  Xiao Yun breathed a sigh of relief until news from the walkie-talkie that the elephant had turned to go south.

After getting out of the car, he saw 15 wild elephants turning right and stepping into a farmland. They followed the mountain col, passed the edge of Laojianghe Village again, stayed for a long time, and headed northwest into the mountain.

  Where the elephants pass by, there are leftover stalks everywhere.

The corn placed along the road tried to induce them to go south, but with little success.

  "The elephant herd has its own direction of travel." Shao Shan, a firefighter from the Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Brigade, observed wild elephants and found that these days, "They will follow the food placed along the road for a while, and when they are full, they will go In the other direction, even if there is food ahead, it will not follow the guided route completely."

  Block and sparse

  On June 4, the "broken nose family" bypassed the enclosed vehicles parked along the highway and at the entrance of the village and went down the mountain.

At the foot of the mountain is a contiguous piece of farmland. If you go southwest, you can enter Fagudian Village, Shuanghe Township.

  In the live aerial video provided by the Yunnan Provincial Forest Fire Brigade, an elephant surrounds a well by the farmland and stretches its nose in. The baby elephant follows and learns to reach into the well.

Before entering the woods, 15 elephants gathered together, rolled up the dry soil with their noses, and lifted them towards themselves.

A firefighter explained, "It may be to prevent mosquito bites."

  In the evening, when Zhang Xiong brought the drone to hand over, six drones were hovering over the forest near Fagudian Village, including photographers who had entered the village for aerial photography.

When the coordination was completed, the other drones descended, and when their drones flew up, the elephant herd had disappeared and hid among the mountains.

  Zhang Xiong searched the hills one by one, and finally found the elephant herd on the hill southwest of Fagudian.

Throughout the evening, the "broken nose family" stopped and went all the way to the southwest, walking from Shuanghe Township to Xiyang Township, Jinning District, approaching Yuxi City.

  Luxi New Village in Xiyang Township received an early warning, and the elephant herd was rushing.

Village cadres used loudspeakers to inform along the road, and organized villagers to hide in village committees or brick houses with their children.

  In the early morning of June 5, the elephant group went down the mountain, walked through the farmland of Luxi New Village, Xiyang Township, and walked west along the grass in the ravine outside the village road.

The villager He Guixiang (pseudonym) looked out of the glass window. The dogs in the village were so frightened that they were silent. She counted several times and only had fourteen.

  The elephants fell out of the line and followed far behind.

At about one o'clock in the morning, the tail elephant slowly set foot on the route the elephant herd had walked, and also went west.

  The drone followed the trailing tail elephant all the way into the mountain, and quickly found the team, again showing 15 small red blocks on the screen.

  In the early morning of June 5, Liu Bowei (a pseudonym), a concrete truck driver in Hetaoyuan Village, received a notice that the convoy rushed to the vicinity of Xiyang Township, where the elephant group is located, to block the village and prevent the wild elephants from entering the village.

  Three days ago, Liu Bowei drove a concrete truck and drove from a construction site in Anning City, Kunming.

I have been driving a concrete truck for more than a decade, but it was the first time I drove a car to contain animals.

  When the motorcade drove along the Baoxi Highway in Xiyang Township, at a "Y"-shaped intersection, Liu Bowei saw five or six elephants pacing ahead.

He slammed on the brakes, and the roar of elephants came from the mountain on the right, and several elephants were walking down the mountain.

  The drivers of several concrete trucks who followed also noticed the abnormality, and quickly reversed while honking the whistle. The elephant group stopped amid the harsh whistle sound.

Liu Bowei fell to a place a hundred meters away from the intersection. The car and the whistle stopped, and the elephant herd on the village road ran down, met with the five or six elephants on the road, and fleeed into the forest on the south side of the road. ".

  This is not the first time that vehicles have been blocked to drive away elephants with the sound of whistle.

Wu Zhaolu, a professor at the School of Ecology and Environment of Yunnan University, believes that it is a better way to set up checkpoints in some important and key places to keep wild elephants from passing by, but close enclosures and long-term horns may not be effective. it is good.

"This is purely frightening the elephants. It will scare the elephants and they will walk more blindly."

  The "fleeing" elephant herd ran into the forest in the northwest.

According to the data reported by the Yunnan Forestry and Grass Bureau, as of 15:10 on June 5, the elephant group moved 12.1 kilometers to the southwest and then to the northwest.

  After several days of dredging and blocking, coupled with the whistle driving, the "broken nose family"'s migration to the north was finally forcibly reversed, all the way to the northwest and southwest.

  Go west

  On June 6, the "broken nose family" marched to the northwest. In this direction, Muxun Village and Mujulang Village in Xiyang Township received warning messages one after another.

At night, the doors were closed from house to house, and several entrances into Mulu Village were blocked by trucks.

  The torrential rain fell all night, and the elephant herd did not come to the village.

  On June 7, the 14 wild elephants of the "broken nose family" stopped traveling and stopped to rest.

They only went down the mountain in the evening, walked around in Gaoliangdi Village, ate some crops, "knocked" on the door of a house, and went up the mountain again.

  A wild elephant strayed silently again and lost its whereabouts.

On the afternoon of June 7, Tao Yongming, a drone pilot from the Yunnan Forest Fire Fighting Corps, told reporters that when he found it, it had traveled about 4 kilometers to the north alone.

  "Chasing the elephant" all the way from Yuxi City to Kunming, Zhang Xiong often encountered wild elephants out of the crowd.

Head elephants and tail elephants can easily leave the team and "escape" out of the drone's monitoring range.

The tail elephants are the most "greedy". When Zhang Xiong often finds the tail elephants that are left behind, they go shopping around the village, but the tail elephants that are left behind will soon catch up with the team.

  But in the daytime on June 8, the stray wild elephant did not follow up. It walked in the opposite direction and continued to the northeast, entering the woodland in Anning City, Kunming.

  In the evening, 14 wild elephants descended from the mountain and came near the small village of the Yi nationality.

It is located on the border between Kunming and Yuxi City. A little bit west you will enter Yimen County, Yuxi City, and Eshan Yi Autonomous County of Yuxi City to the south.

  At 23:15 on June 8, 14 wild elephants traveled westward into Shijie Township, Yimen County, Yuxi City.

At 11 o'clock the next day, the straight-line distance between the outlier and the elephant group was 12 kilometers.

  In Kunming, the drivers of the muck truck that contained the wild elephants stopped in place.

Yang Jin said that they will guard the day when all 15 wild elephants leave Kunming.

  The drone pilots will continue to follow the elephants until they settle down in their habitat.

  Since the "broken nose family" left Pu'er and moved northward, drones flew over them almost 24 hours a day.

Wu Junhui, an Asian elephant monitor of the Jinghong Forestry and Grass Bureau, does not approve such full-time monitoring.

When he first "followed the image", he basically monitored it 24 hours a day, with multiple sets of batteries flying in rotation.

But he has seen elephants sticking up their noses and even rolling up branches, trying to hit the drone on many occasions. This is a disturbing response.

  But it seems that there is no better monitoring method for the time being.

During Zhang Xiong's "chasing the elephant" for half a month, the "broken nose family" seemed to have become accustomed, often falling asleep amidst the roar of drones.

  No one knows where the "broken nose family" should move next.

  Experts also have their own opinions.

Some experts suggested that the elephants should be persuaded to return to Xishuangbanna, and some experts suggested that some manual intervention can be used to find a proper place for them.

  "Returning may not be the first option." Zhou Jinfeng, vice chairman and secretary-general of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, mentioned in an interview with a reporter from the Beijing News that you can find suitable habitats for Asian elephants along the way and let the elephants Group try to stay.

"Feed them with food, observe them, as well as a series of measures such as early warning and evacuation, setting up fences, etc., so that people and elephants are not harmed."

  Zhou Jinfeng suggested that the existing national, provincial, and municipal protected areas in Yunnan should be turned into a large national park system.

  Zhang Li, professor of ecology at Beijing Normal University, also believes that we should seize the opportunity of the construction of national parks and build ecological corridors in the main distribution areas of Asian elephants to connect these fragmented nature reserves and the fragmented habitats. , So that elephants can migrate along the corridor.

  Beijing News reporter Xiao Weiwei and intern Shang Qianyu