In southwest China, a herd of elephants that escaped from a national park caused great damage by looting fields and barns.
the essentials in brief
- Pachyderms escaped from the national park have already covered around 500 kilometers.
As the state television broadcaster CCTV reported, the 15 Asian elephants drank empty a water tank and ate their fill in a corn field and in a barn. Since mid-April, the herd has also destroyed 56 hectares of grain fields, causing damage amounting to 6.8 million yuan (€ 872,000).
Asian elephants are under protection in China. Why the 15 pachyderms left the Xishuangbanna National Park is just as unclear as their destination. So far, the herd has covered around 500 kilometers – and is always under the surveillance of residents and authorities.
Hundreds of people are working to protect people from the herd of elephants. Some residents try to keep the animals away from their property with food and road blockades. On Tuesday, Yunnan Province authorities announced that the herd had arrived in a city just 20 kilometers from the provincial capital, Kunming.
According to the official Xinhua news agency, the population of wild elephants in Yunnan has grown from 193 in the 1980s to around 300 animals. In recent years there have been increasing reports of elephants invading villages and destroying crops. According to the local authorities, this is also due to the fact that more trees are being planted during reforestation that are not on the elephants’ menu.
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