Why the elephants began their trek remains a puzzle. Media are kept away from the animals on safety grounds. The Asian elephant is a wild beast and we have to keep a safe distance," Chen said. The fatality appears not to have been reported. Two of them who earlier broke for home trampled a villager to death in March, said Chen Mingyong, a Yunnan University elephant-behaviour expert attached to the task force. "Before this, we only saw elephants in the zoo or on television," he said.įorestry firefighters use drones to help them shepherd the elephants safely home.īut the elephants, which can weigh up to four tons and sprint as fast as Usain Bolt, are also extremely dangerous, particularly if they sense a threat to their young. It's the furthest north that China's wild Asian elephants have travelled in recorded times, said Yang Xiangyu, a task force leader. Jumbo taskīut it's a jumbo task for the three dozen Yunnan forestry firefighters charged with shepherding the elephants safely home-tracking night-moving animals that can disappear into thick forest and trek up to 30 kilometres (18 miles) a day. The Chinese public has delighted in the elephants' antics, including parading down city streets, guzzling grain alcohol and dozing en masse in a field.
The group left its home range far south near the Laos border 16 months ago for a grand food tour across rich farmland bursting with corn, sugarcane, bananas and dragon-fruit in southeastern Yunnan province. So goes the routine welcome ceremony for China's wayward herd of 14 wild elephants, whose wandering ways have sparked an unusual operation aimed at steering them home across steep, winding, and often populated terrain.