I have a wildlife zoo

Lin Hao stared at the display board, shock coursing through him.

So many people had been crushed to death by elephants, something he had never heard of before.

He had thought that carnivorous predators like tigers and bears might be more dangerous but those incidents seemed to occur only in the circus or zoo settings. He had never really heard of anyone being killed by a tiger in the wild. Instead, it was the seemingly gentle giants, the elephants, that had such a brutal side to them.

Putting himself in the shoes of those living near these creatures, a wall couldn't stop them, a single stomp could flatten a person, and they wandered around looking for food in the fields, he figured he would be constantly on edge, even losing sleep at night.

Why was the conflict between elephants and humans so intense, even to the point of being described as tragic? Was it because there were too many elephants, or was it a lack of food that drove them to raid crops? Was there any solution?

With this question in mind, he continued reading.

Back in '99, Professor Zhang, a leading authority on domestic elephant research, had just begun surveying elephants in the country, studying their numbers, distribution, and habits.

It was incredibly challenging to count the number of elephants!

They had no concept of national borders; they might be eating within the country in the morning and by afternoon, they could have crossed over into Laos. Researchers couldn't simply cross international borders at will, so they had to adopt the cumbersome method of visiting villages and conducting a count, one village at a time.

Asking one village about their elephants might reveal five, then a couple of kilometers away another village might report ten. The numbers obtained couldn't be simply added together; it was still unclear how many there actually were. Later, using the unique contours of their ears and the shape of their tusks, researchers began identifying each elephant individually, naming each one and distinguishing the different families they belonged to.

After traversing all the areas historically inhabited by elephants, it took 20 years of hard work to gradually estimate the size of the elephant populations.

It turned out that there were less than 250 wild Asiatic elephants in China!

Meanwhile, in domestic zoos, the number of captive Asiatic elephants was around 300.

Lin Hao's eyes widened in surprise: "Shocking!"

African elephant populations are counted in the hundreds of thousands. He had assumed there were at least a few thousand, if not tens of thousands, of elephants domestically.

He couldn't understand why—with only 200 elephants and Yunnan being one of the regions with the best environmental conditions and densest forests in the country—there wasn't enough space in all that forest. Why was there still so much conflict with humans?

In recent years, the number of injuries and economic losses caused by elephants has been on the rise.

The reason for the conflict lies in the shrinking of their habitats.

Even though the forest looks lush and vibrant from above, and the rate of forest coverage seems to be increasing, many of these forests are actually rubber plantations.

As an important industrial material, rubber was introduced in China in the 1960s, starting from scratch. According to the "Xishuangbanna Dai Ethnic Group Autonomous Prefecture National Economy and Social Development Statistical Report" and the "Yunnan Statistical Yearbook," the official statistics for the area covered by rubber plantations in Xishuangbanna for the years 1990, 2000, 2000, 2010, and 2014 were 8.50, 13.20, 27.13, 33.72 hundred thousand hectares respectively, while remote sensing monitoring in 2014 showed an even larger area, 37.66 hectares.

The total area of Xishuangbanna is only 191 hectares; four-fifths of it is planted with rubber trees.

Although rubber plantations are forests, elephants don't like to eat the rubber trees, nor do other animals; a typical tropical rainforest might contain hundreds of plant species, but a rubber plantation has only one. Therefore, it's been called a green desert. It looks green, but lacks biodiversity.

It's not just rubber plantations that have been increasing in size—other economic crops, such as tea and bananas, as well as farmland, are also expanding.

Pu'er City was actually called Simao before, but due to the fame of Pu'er tea, its name was changed to Pu'er.

After the year 2000, the price of rubber skyrocketed, and people planted rubber trees on every bit of land they could find.

Even the suitable altitude limit for growing rubber was ignored. Rubber trees thrive below 900 meters above sea level, but they were planted at elevations up to 1500 meters.

Rubber trees take ten years to grow and still remain small, unable to yield latex, and large areas of tropical and subtropical vegetation are destroyed.

Moreover, areas below an altitude of 900 meters, which are suitable for the growth of rubber trees, are also regions where Asiatic elephants like to roam.

Now in Xishuangbanna, less than 5% of the habitat is suitable for the survival of Asiatic elephants.

It wasn't until 2015, when the planting became excessive and the prices of raw materials plummeted, that the people stopped planting rubber.

However, in recent years, because the price of tea has risen sharply again, they've started cutting down trees to plant tea leaves.

The government began to regulate in 2013, prohibiting arbitrary deforestation. However, the people had their cunning ways, either by girdling the trees or using toxic chemicals, waiting for the original forest to "naturally" die off, and then they could plant cash crops.

Growing cash crops is profitable, while protecting the environment brings no financial gain.

In 2002, the per capita income of farmers in the reserve was 1,306 yuan, while the national per capita disposable income was 6,110 yuan that year.

Crops could be destroyed by elephants, but elephants don't like to eat rubber trees, which are also profitable.

In the words of the local people, those using iPhones in the cities have no right to criticize them for wanting to watch TV.

In the eyes of elephants, whether it is wild banana plants or human-cultivated crops, everything naturally grows without any ownership; the only distinction is between what can be eaten and what cannot.

To humans, crops are the result of laborious cultivation, but to the elephants, they're just something edible.

As suitable vegetation for habitation dwindles, elephants naturally make more frequent trips to the villages to eat the crops, and when the people try to defend their property, conflict inevitably arises.

After understanding the reasons behind the conflicts, Lin Hao wanted to say something but found himself at a loss for words and finally heaved a sigh of frustration!

The problem of human-elephant conflict is indeed very complex.

To blame the locals for environmental destruction seems unfair when they have suffered at the hands of elephants and are simply pursuing a better life. Is it wrong to desire watching television? Is it wrong for elephants to feed on crops? When all that's grown are cash crops, they have no choice but to eat them.

Is there a solution?

The exhibition panel told another story.

There were two stockade villages in the area, one called Shangzhai and the other called Bo'e.

The villagers of Shangzhai are from the traditional Dai ethnic group, who see elephants as auspicious creatures.

When elephants visit Shangzhai, they encounter no disturbances and leisurely pass through the village on the ridges between fields.

The villagers of Bo'e are not from an ethnic minority, and they become very anxious at the arrival of elephants, banging gongs and drums to drive them away. The frightened elephants run amok in the rice paddies, ruining the fields.

It's not that elephants have the wisdom to discern who likes or dislikes them.

Elephants originally have their migration paths, and as long as they are not disturbed, they will stick to their routes. Scaring them instead causes greater damage.

The attitude of people towards elephants also affects how elephants behave towards humans.