Experts Call for China to Create National Parks to Protect Wild Elephants

Chinese experts have called for the establishment of national parks for wild Asian elephants, with special consideration given to the animals’ eating habits, migration patterns and other seasonal activities.

A research team led by Zhang Li, a professor of ecology at Beijing Normal University, made the call in an opinion piece published in the British scientific journal Nature on Tuesday, after 15 Asian elephants trekking more than 500 kilometers in Southwest China’s Yunnan province captivated the world and raised questions over how they could be guided back home.

A day later, local authorities said that a runaway young male elephant, who was part of the herd, had been captured and sent back to his natural habitat in Xishuangbanna, the southern-most prefecture in Yunnan. The elephant left his herd on June 6 when others began heading south.

The herd of 14 wild Asian elephants remains moving, although they are hanging around counties in Yuxi, a city about 90 kilometers (56 miles) south of the provincial capital of Kunming, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Chen Mingyong, professor at the School of Ecology and Environmental Science of Yunnan University, was quoted by Xinhua as saying that the incident was the furthest migration of wild elephants ever recorded in China.

“Their epic journey is widely considered to be a quest for better resources — almost 40% of the animals’ habitat in Xishuangbanna has been lost to commercial development over the past 20 years,” said the research team in the Nature article.

Zhang previously told Caixin that the area of tropical rainforests in Xishuangbanna fell by 4,355 square kilometers from 1975 to 2014, and the total habitat area that sustains the Asian elephants in the prefecture decreased by 1,600 square kilometers from 2000 to 2018.

The researchers said the destruction of their habitat increased conflicts between humans and elephants. In the last year alone, the Chinese government paid about 22 million yuan ($3.39 million) in compensation for damages caused by elephants.

They have suggested the government reconnect, restore and expand existing habitats to reduce the cost of such conflicts. They have also called for establishment of national parks for the elephants, without elaborating.

Late last month, Wang Hongxin, another professor at Beijing Normal University, told Caixin that creating such parks can help “systematically” protect the wild Asian elephants and reduce human-elephant conflict.

China will officially establish its first group of national parks this year following the launch of a pilot national park system in 2015. As the parks don’t include one for the elephants, multiple experts have called for their inclusion in the next group, expected to be launched by 2025.

Contact reporter Wang Xintong (xintongwang@caixin.com) and editor Lu Zhenhua (zhenhualu@caixin.com)

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