News Investigation丨Competition for food, human-elephant conflict...The small village in Yunnan that was plagued by wild elephants 25 years ago has now changed.
In May, the sunny dry season in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, ended, and the approaching thunder sounded foreshadowed the arrival of abundant rains.
Zhang Jie and Cai Mingfei are forest guards. They are skilled in controlling drones. They have flown several times this afternoon. The target they are searching for is wild Asian elephants.
According to Zhang Jie and Cai Mingfei, about 30 wild elephants were active in the vicinity during this period, and they were constantly conducting aerial monitoring.
But at this moment, the wild elephants have not yet appeared.
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Yang Lihai is a villager in Luojitang (Nature) Village, Jingne Township, Yunnan, and Yang Baorong is from Mengban (Administrative) Village. Both of these villages are located at the junction of Jinghong City and Pu'er City. They are also areas with frequent wild elephant activities recently. one.
Yang Lihai and Yang Baorong are now full-time elephant followers hired by the forestry department to track wild elephants on the ground.
Yang Lihai:
It is regular every afternoon, every afternoon at 4:30 at the earliest, and at the latest at 6:30, it will come out of the forest.
We go wherever there is an elephant and follow it.
Elephants look for food at night, but do not look for food during the day.
Yang Lihai and Yang Baorong said that wild elephants live in the forest for half of their time each day. While drones monitor from the air, they also need to track their movement on the ground by a follower who is familiar with the local terrain and has a good skill.
The two of them are responsible for covering the entire Jingne Township and there are 6 administrative villages.
Yang Lihai: Normally,
we are the lowest distance from elephants, not less than 200 meters, and the farthest is one kilometer.
Reporter: If
Lin Zimi is in sight, you may not be able to see it. How can you tell if it is still there?
Yang Lihai: It
depends on smell and sound. When it
moves
in the forest, it has to break the branches, the tree will make noise, it will itch, and the branches will move, it can be distinguished. This is an inevitable law.
I really can't find you to light a cigarette to smoke. The elephant starts to bark when it smells of the smoke, and you know the elephant is there.
How should I put it, this is the experience of following. If you don't follow, you can't find wild elephants.
Yang Lihai: The
elephant's nose is quite good.
Yang Baorong:
It can smell where the
bud
valley is, where you can eat it, where there is salt, and where the door is well closed.
Yang Lihai and Yang Baorong said that they have received many professional trainings so that they can continue to track wild elephants, report their positioning, and do a good job of early warning while ensuring their own safety.
Yang Lihai:
We report elephant location information like this one day, and basically two are sent to the monitoring and early warning group at the lowest level.
In most cases, if the elephant is in the estrus period, in that abnormal situation, sometimes four or five items a day will be sent, and they will be sent to the monitoring and early warning group.
Yang Lihai and the others said that after dealing with wild elephants for a long time, they can quickly identify different populations and individuals, and understand the behavior and habits of wild elephants that frequently haunt Jingne Township.
Yang Lihai: When an
elephant wants to attack a person, it first
raises
its ears, nose and tail.
You can't beat the elephant. If you want to avoid the elephant, you have to look at it face to face while you slowly back away.
The training was also talked about, and the experts also talked about it.
Reporter:
Experts tell you to do this?
Yang Lihai:
Yes, it is necessary.
We have only been with the elephant for a few years, and now we have basically figured out the experience.
Your own personal safety, at least you have to protect yourself before you can protect the people. This is to explore slowly, and you will gain more experience over time.
At about 5:30 in the afternoon, the wild elephant appeared in the drone's field of vision.
This group of wild elephants that love to eat watermelons are Asian elephants, and they are the largest wild animals living on land in Asia.
The Asian elephant is listed as a first-level protected animal in my country's "National Key Protected Wildlife List", and is listed as a species that is or may be affected by trade and is at risk of extinction in the "Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora". In addition, It is also listed as an endangered species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources.
25 years ago, the "News Investigation" column visited two villages in the Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve. At that time, the villagers were troubled by wild elephants.
Female villager in Zhongtianba Village: The
elephant came to eat, and it would be eaten in a few days, and it would eat a lot after it came.
Lu Zhengrong, Zhongtianba Village:
Elephants come to eat the crops in the ground, and they come to eat the
buds
.
In the past 25 years, my country's protection of wild Asian elephants within its territory has been continuously increasing, and the protection system has also been continuously improved and improved.
What is the situation in these two villages now?
How has the relationship between man and elephant changed?
Zhongtianba Village is located in the eastern part of Mengyangzi Reserve in Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve. It is one of the villages interviewed by News Investigation 25 years ago.
Zhang Jian is a villager in Zhongtianba Village, a forest ranger and an Asian elephant monitor.
He said that at about 7:30 in the morning, wild elephants were found near the village.
Zhang Jian:
There is an early warning device on the radio. When the Zhaizi early warning device is called, it will be displayed after turning on the mobile phone.
It will tell you where and in what direction the Asian elephant was photographed.
I am responsible for taking a screenshot of it, and then passing it to the stockade group.
All the people who played WeChat in the stockade pulled him in.
Around Zhongtianba Village, 40 infrared cameras are connected to the Xishuangbanna Asian Elephant Monitoring and Early Warning System, which monitors the whereabouts of wild Asian elephants 24 hours a day.
Guo Xianming:
We sent a total of eight warning messages today.
Guo Xianming is the deputy director of the Science Institute of Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve. He said that the Asian elephant monitoring and early warning system is connected to hundreds of infrared cameras, and the accuracy of the computer's recognition of captured Asian elephant images is about 96%.
Guo Xianming:
It mainly captured the elephant with an infrared camera, and then transmits the data to the background. After the background is identified, it may take more than ten seconds to transmit this information to the elephant activity area via smart broadcast. Let the people in those villages know where there is an elephant.
The front-end equipment installed in our system involves a total of 85 villages where Asian elephants are frequently active.
Because the activity of the Asian elephant is not only in the protected area, it actually has many activities outside the protected area.
Since the launch of our system, we have a total of 4950 warnings.
Reporter:
How long is that?
Guo Xianming:
This should be from the second half of last year.
In fact, when we talk about casualties, people and elephants are too close to each other, and everyone has no time to react. People are afraid of elephants, and elephants are also afraid of people.
If it feels that the two are too close, the elephant may also feel that it is threatened, and it will take the initiative to attack people.
After accumulating this data for a period of time, we can see in which area the elephant activity will be more frequent, which area the elephant activity will be relatively less, and then there is also the time period in which the elephant activity will be concentrated.
After we have this data, we can actually take some other measures.
It is understood that in these areas where Asian elephant activities are frequent, each village has also arranged villagers to serve as Asian elephant monitors. They are responsible for reminding villagers to pay attention to early warning information and stay away from places where wild elephants are infested.
Around 10 am, Zhang Jian made sure that the wild elephant had left, and took us into his contracted forest.
Zhang Jian said that the villagers in Zhongtianba have mastered the activity patterns of wild elephants. They usually pass by the village in the morning or evening. People and elephants seem to have reached a tacit understanding, and they are trying to avoid each other.
This is very different from what the News Investigation saw 25 years ago.
During the harvest season that year, the farmland of Zhongtianba Village would start a food "competition war" between humans and elephants.
He is the villager who grabbed food 25 years ago, his name is Lu Zhengrong.
Lu Zhengrong:
I used that firecracker to explode once or twice. It doesn't work for the wild elephant. It (the wild elephant) is not afraid.
In the past, our village used electric fences to enclose the rice fields.
The elephant is so smart, how can you eat rice?
The first time it came, it touched the electric fence, and the next time it pulled a tree from a branch next to it and pressed it on the electric fence, it went in, and it passed by one span.
You say it is so smart, you just take care of it in the first place, but later when it finds a way to crack it, you will fail.
Studies have shown that the brain of the Asian elephant is the largest of all land animals in existence, weighing 5 kilograms, which is 3 to 4 times the weight of the human brain.
Therefore, they have a certain degree of cognitive ability and strong memory, and can easily manufacture and use tools.
But even so, it is not too difficult for people to really want to deal with Asian elephants.
Every year, wild elephants are killed intentionally or unintentionally around the world.
However, in the past 25 years, the villagers of Zhongtianba have exercised restraint and have never really harmed the wild elephants.
Although in the past 25 years, due to the advancement of monitoring and early warning technology, the direct conflict between humans and elephants has decreased year by year, but the loss of crops is unavoidable.
According to statistics, from 1991 to 2004, wild animals, dominated by Asian elephants, caused 44,500 tons of food crops in Xishuangbanna, destroyed 2.28 million rubber trees and about 60,000 tons of sugar cane, and caused a direct economic loss of 149 million yuan. RMB.
Iwakhan: When
we went to film and collect evidence about the damage to the people, we were sad when some particles were not harvested.
The elephant went to the field. The farmer originally thought that there would be a bumper harvest tomorrow, and the whole ten acres of land would be harvested the day after tomorrow.
As a result, the elephant was eaten up in one night at most.
Liu Yangjun and Yan Yonghan are the staff of the insurance company responsible for wildlife public liability insurance. They said that in the early years, the government would subsidize farmers’ losses by distributing relief grains. Since 2010, they have been changed to government insurance and insurance companies responsible for claims settlement. the way.
Reporter:
What was the compensation standard in 2010?
Yan Yonghan:
In 2010, the standard was very low, 300 yuan per mu for corn and 400 yuan for rice. In fact, it is very little, but 500 yuan for sugarcane. Because sugarcane has a higher economic cost and higher value, other fruit trees are also very low.
According to statistics, from 2011 to 2015, compensation for losses of wild animals, mainly Asian elephants, in Xishuangbanna area was 63 million yuan.
With the passage of time, the compensation standard has been continuously improved. In 2020, the compensation will reach more than 24.4 million yuan.
At the same time, researchers found that the population of wild Asian elephants in my country is also increasing. The statistics in 1987 were 179, in 1999 it was 170 to 200, and recently it was 270 to 300.
In general, the more you discover later.
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Dahebian Village is another village interviewed by News Investigation 25 years ago. It is located in the western part of the Mengyangzi Reserve, a straight line distance of about dozens of kilometers from Zhongtianba Village.
At least two villagers in the village were injured by wild elephants, one named Huang Fushou and the other named Guo Xingfa.
Huang Fushou, a villager in Dahebian Village: He
had 7 broken ribs and was
trampled
by wild elephants. He went to the hospital for surgery.
Guo Xingfa, a villager of Dahebian Village: When
I ran, I hit a stone and broke my rib.
We first found Huang Fushou's home and learned that he died of illness in 2019.
The villagers said that the Huang family had four children, either working outside the home, or settled in the city.
In 2020, the Huang family demolished the old house and built a new one, but the closed door seems to tell us that the lives of the descendants of the Huang family have gradually moved away from the countryside and the wild elephants.
He is another villager Guo Xingfa interviewed by News Investigation 25 years ago.
Guo Xingfa is 71 years old this year and has four children. He said that his two daughters are teachers and his two sons work in government agencies and both live in the city.
Guo Xingfa said that although he did not leave the village, he was supported by children and he had not farmed for many years.
Guo Xingfa was injured by a wild elephant 25 years ago. Now, when he thinks back, he feels that it was not the wild elephant that intentionally attacked him.
Guo Xingfa: I
didn't see it at the time, it was too close, it stood still, and the grass was too deep to see clearly.
When we got too close we talked, it rushed out of the road.
Reporter: How
many elephants?
Guo Xingfa:
One.
Statistics show that in Xishuangbanna, there have always been incidents of casualties caused by wild Asian elephants.
From 2011 to 2015, wild elephants caused 10 deaths and 10 injuries.
However, Guo Xingfa said that no casualties occurred in Dahebian Village.
Geographically, Zhongtianba Village is located in the buffer zone of the Mengyangzi Reserve, and Dahebian Village is closer to the core area of the nature reserve.
It is understood that in the 1980s, relevant departments proposed to relocate the villages in the nature reserve.
Guo Xianming:
When we delineated the reserve in 1958, some villages lived in the core area of the reserve.
We have to respect a history. In fact, some villages may have lived for hundreds of years before the protection zone was designated. We cannot say that because we designated the protection zone, you have to move out of this village right away. Actually, we considered this one.
According to data, there are two types of villages in the Mengyangzi Nature Reserve, one is farms and the other is natural villages.
Both Dahebian and Zhongtianba are natural villages, and their parents may have lived in the depths of the forest centuries ago.
Li Daxiang is 68 years old and once served as a village cadre by the river.
He said that around 1985, in order to facilitate the relocation of Dahebian Village to rebuild their homes outside the reserve, the government provided a number of locations for the villagers to choose from.
Li Daxiang:
There is also a Big Pineapple Mountain called
Dadugang
Township. The government has also said that we have also visited it.
There are other places, Jingneba also talked about, but we haven't visited it.
After seeing it, the masses discussed it. We didn't want to come to that place and couldn't arrange relocation. We wanted to be in our place, so we said.
Reporter:
The reason why you were asked to relocate around 1985 was for the nature reserve.
Li Daxiang:
Yes, in order to do a good job in protecting animals, this place is vacated so that wild animals have a place to survive, and we are invited out.
Reporter:
Did you think this was bad at the time?
Li Daxiang: Fortunately
, it's just that after looking at other locations, the land is small and thin (not fertile), so I
am
afraid that I will not be full.
So the masses are reluctant to leave.
It is understood that in addition to Dahebian Village, the government also mobilized other villages to move out of the reserve.
Guo Xianming also participated in related work at that time.
Guo Xianming:
Some villages have been
relocated
, but after some have moved, he may feel that his life is still
unsuitable and unused
.
For example, we have a village. According to the needs of the relocation at that time, we achieved the "three connections and one leveling". In fact, we invested a lot of water, electricity, and roads, and the homestead was leveled.
When the people from the village came out to see it at the end, they felt that the place where he lived before would be better.
Later, only a few households were relocated.
The relocation plan that year was not fully implemented, and Dahebian Village stayed in the reserve.
Li Daxiang:
That’s why we started to engage in various construction projects in 1995, as well as planting cash crops, pulling electricity, pulling water (tap water), and building roads. That’s the situation.
Villagers who have dealt with wild elephants for many years say that there are probably two ways for wild elephants to "organize". One is group elephant collective action, because they want to protect the group of young elephants, they tend to avoid direct contact with people as much as possible.
The other is that the male elephants act alone, and their behavior is more "willful and bold", even daring to break into the town alone.
On a winter night in 2019, a huge figure appeared in the farmers market in Jingne Township, which borders Pu'er City.
Reporter:
How did you find the elephant came in?
Yang Yongde:
Because some of us are following and doing early warning, it means where the elephant has reached.
Reporter:
What time?
Yang Yongde: In the
early morning, it should be around one to two o'clock.
At that time, the people we followed informed the elephant that it might be entering the market, so I hurried over.
Then I also notify the police station to come and help together to maintain order.
Reporter: When
you got here, where was the position of the elephant?
Yang Yongde:
In the market.
Maybe it smelled that breath.
Reporter:
For example, when we look at this fruit stand now, do people put it away at night?
Yang Yongde: It's
just covered with that shade net, it won't be accepted.
So when it (wild elephant) came in, it took away the shading net, and it took something to eat.
Then it came in. Look at this place, and it broke the rolling door at that time.
Pulled away, then poke a few holes.
Reporter:
Poke a few holes, do you use your teeth?
Yang Yongde:
Teeth (incisors).
Then I went into the market where the vegetables were sold and went around, took a few bites and went out.
Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve is one of the earliest nature reserves established in my country and the second largest tropical rain forest in China.
There are hills, wide valleys and flat dams, as well as a densely distributed water system, not to mention a wide variety of plants. It was once the only habitat for wild Asian elephants in our country.
But in recent years, some wild elephants have gradually stepped out of nature reserves, or become "troublemakers", or get into trouble for various reasons. How will they be treated?
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Every morning, the "residents" of the Asian Elephant Provenance Breeding and Rescue Center in Xishuangbanna will walk out of the "dormitory" and roam in the forest.
Before coming here, they all lived in the wild.
Chen Jiming:
Our elephant's name is A Bao, I prefer to call it Brother Wucheng.
Because one day in 2018, it was in a rebellious period like us, and was driven out by the elephant group.
It was particularly upset. It was walking and playing, and one day it accidentally ran into our Pu'er City and ran to the long-distance bus station in Pu'er City.
The second stop was the Rural Credit Cooperative, and the third stop was the Civil Affairs Bureau. In the end, because it was rather mischievous, it often went to areas with frequent people, which had seriously affected the daily property safety of local people and caused panic among local people. We were eventually taken into the rescue center.
Interviewer:
What are the plans for this elephant in the future?
It has been in the containment center?
Chen Jiming:
We have also considered this, even after being guided correctly by Dad Elephant, we also hope that it will return to nature.
Going back to nature, I hope that it will not go to densely populated areas, but to villages, and just eat freely in the big forest.
It is understood that for those wild elephants similar to Abao that have repeatedly "trespassed" in towns, relevant departments have adopted "containment" measures, and adopted appropriate "captive breeding" to protect the double safety of the elephants.
In the rescue center, there is also a baby elephant named "Sheep Niu", which also has its own "legendary".
Shen Qingzhong, director of the Asian Elephant Rescue Center in Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, has been committed to the work of combining the protection of animals and plants with popular science education and tourism development for many years.
Shen Qingzhong:
It is 5 and a half years old now. It was just born for about a week. In the end, it was ulcerated because of the umbilical cord infection. Its mother couldn't help it. He brought it to one of our villages and left.
Finally, let the common people discover it, and finally implement a rescue to it after coming to our relevant competent department to report it.
Reporter:
Why is it called Yang Niu?
Shen Qingzhong:
He was born in 2015 and belongs to sheep.
In addition, experts at the time came together to study this elephant because it did not have breast milk, so at that time we specially bought goats and milked goats to feed it.
In order for the Yang Niu to grow up healthily, the nurses have taken great pains.
This elephant near Yangniu is an adult female elephant named Yinen. It has her own daughter Yishuang.
For the Yang Niu raised by humans, Yinen is not enthusiastic, and Yang Niu herself prefers to stick to the childcare staff rather than to her own kind.
The nurses had to observe Yinen's feeding habits in the wild first, and then teach Yang Niu how to identify edible plants.
It is these close observations that provide people with more convenience for understanding the habits of Asian elephants.
Zhou Fangyi, born in 1994, got a master's degree from the School of Biology, Beijing Normal University, and then came to the rescue center to work as a childcare worker.
Zhou Fangyi:
Only by being an "Elephant Dad" can I say that I really come into contact with this elephant, and what I get is first-hand. In this way, I feel that the data or observation records are more real.
You are like me carrying a camera at all times to take pictures of the plants it eats.
There are hundreds of plants that elephants can eat in the literature. We observe by ourselves, and then follow the existing literature to compare.
If there is a difference, it is a new discovery.
In research, it is composed of many small aspects. Our understanding of elephants must be continuously increased. Only by accumulating little by little can we solve these problems little by little.
The understanding of the feeding habits of wild Asian elephants stems from the observation and accumulation of generations of researchers over the years.
It has been found that an adult Asian elephant has a daily feed intake of up to 200 kilograms. Although they can eat hundreds of plants in the wild, they actually eat only 55 kinds of basic food. Among them, bamboo, bamboo, etc. Grasses such as elephant grass are the main species.
Guo Xianming:
Asian elephants eat food. They are more picky. Unlike cows, they can eat whole grass.
Some of the things that Asian elephants eat, some only eat the tip, and some only eat the root.
Researchers have found that wild Asian elephants eat too much, but they also eat too much.
For example, when eating its favorite small fruit wild banana, the Asian elephant will break the banana tree, peel off the skin, and eat only the pith of the stem; when eating the palm tree, it will only eat a small section of the middle; for bamboo shoots, also As long as the tip of the bamboo shoots.
As a result, in the wild, Asian elephants spend seventeen or eight hours a day searching for food in order to feed themselves.
据郭贤明介绍，从2003年开始他们进行了亚洲象食物源基地的探索，也就是在保护区内野生亚洲象经常出没的区域人工种植它们喜爱的禾本植物，试图吸引它们回到森林中觅食，并能够更长时间地在森林里逗留。也有观点提出，应该在互相分割的子保护区之间专门辟出生态廊道，减少野象迁移中人为的阻碍，让它们自由流动。
沈庆仲：整个大自然人也在生存，大象也在生存，怎么相处的问题。
沈庆仲：我们只能说它空间重叠，逐步重叠得比较多了。现在是人统治世界，所以觉得你大象侵犯我了。作为大象来讲，地球也是我的家园，我哪儿不能去啊？但作为人类，毕竟它们是低等动物，我们既然主宰这个世界，我们就要让这个世界和谐，所以我们要更多的来解决冲突问题。
在中田坝村，陆正荣正在他的茶园里采摘最后一批春茶，他说随着雨季的到来，茶叶产量增加但是价格也将受到影响了。
这几年中田坝村坚持只出产生态茶，并受到了市场的认可。据说这里茶叶的价格是全乡镇卖得最高的，每公斤干茶在200元人民币左右，已经成为村民们主要的经济来源之一。
从5月开始，西双版纳进入了长达半年的雨季。人们希望在雨水的滋润下，森林中的草木能快速地生长，为野象提供更多的食物，吸引它们回到真正的栖息地。
制片人丨王同业 胡劲草
编导丨李冰
解说丨姚宇军
摄像丨郭悦 董海林
剪辑丨张小美 钱子琦
责编丨吕亚楠