Conflict escalates between humans and elephants

It is so hot during the day in the subtropical area that locals work on their rubber plantations at night. Wu chose to rest outside the village to avoid disturbing those who sleep in the day. When he entered the village in the evening, he was welcomed enthusiastically by the residents, with many of them inviting him to their homes for tea.

The rogue elephant munched on unripe sugarcane, rice and banana trees in a field near the Nanha community. "It is very picky about food. It only eats the center part of a banana tree, which is the most tender," he said, adding that villagers will be compensated for the damage the animal caused.

Since 2014, the Yunnan provincial government has taken out insurance coverage against damage caused by wild animals.

Yunnan has also established 11 nature reserves with a total area of about 510,000 hectares. Xiang Ruwu, head of the wildlife protection division of the Yunnan Forestry and Grassland Administration, said, "They have become important shelters for Asian elephants."

Nanha lies next to the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, which includes seven subreserves that cover a total of more than 240,000 hectares.

However, Chen Mingyong, a professor with the Asian Elephant Research Center at Yunnan University, said about two-thirds of the wild elephants are now living outside the reserves because the increasing forest canopy density has resulted in food shortages.

This has meant that plant distribution has changed. Woodland plants have been gradually taking over territory previously shared by wild banana trees and Thysanolaena maxima, a perennial grass plant.

Chen said, "Once they can't get their fill, some elephants will seek food outside the reserves, and conflicts are unavoidable when their activity overlaps with that of humans.

"In the past two decades, large areas of fallow land outside the reserves have been reclaimed to grow rubber, tea and coffee," Chen said. "Infrastructure projects such as highways and dams have also intensified conflicts between humans and elephants."

Along the road connecting Nanha to the outside world, rubber trees can be seen in many places, with the villagers mainly relying on the commodity for a living.

When Wu set up his monitoring equipment, this quiet rural area became a little busier. Villagers, some of them holding children, surrounded him, their eyes fixed on a screen showing real-time footage from the drone.

Many said they were concerned about the whereabouts of the animal that had been plaguing the area, as their habit of working at night meant it was difficult to notice approaching elephants in sufficient time.

Wu said the early-warning monitoring system would help him to tell the rangers if any elephants had entered the areas they were responsible for, and if this was the case, he would alert residents through WeChat messaging.

The rogue elephant was found in the evening on Aug 10 entering a field about 100 meters from the community to eat sugarcane. However, at about 11 pm, dogs suddenly began barking, breaking the silence in the mountain-ringed community, and the elephant was soon heard crashing around.

With the help of the drone's heat-sensor camera, Wu discovered that the animal had crossed the road and entered an area with many corn fields.

Many of the villagers were already asleep, as they had to work in the middle of the night, but even so, the noise from the drone soon attracted a group of more than 10.