Man vs Nature

Villagers of Mengla county of Yunnan province check a banana field ruined by wild elephants. Li Yunsheng / for China Daily

Creatures of habitat

And the trampling death of a 45-year-old woman in July is the latest such incident.

Jin Baofeng and her husband Ren Ming-you were walking to their rice paddy in the forests outside Jinghong city when the herd charged.

Ren escaped. He found his wife's body when he returned to find her.

Police discovered the herd nearby. Forensic experts confirmed the giant mammals were responsible for her death.

The reserve's Asian elephant population has nearly doubled in the past decade because of improved ecological protection and the confiscation of locals' guns, Wild Elephant Valley's management bureau says.

But the animals have killed at least 20 people during those 10 years.

Another problem is that elephants love corn. Adults eat at least 150 kilograms of food a day and often feast on the crops in Mengla county's Nanping village.

Villagers complain they're not adequately compensated despite doing their part to protect the pachyderms. Compensation for a kilogram of rice eaten by elephants, for instance, is 1 yuan - less than a third of the market value.

Compensation has improved since 2006, when Xishuangbanna's government squeezed 570,000 yuan from its modest revenue to reimburse losses caused by elephants.

Since the following year, the central government has given the prefecture 5 million yuan annually to cover damage by elephants.

But the protected species devours more than 30 million yuan worth of crops a year, the government says. The disparity directs a preference for paying families whose relatives are trampled over those who lose crops.

Residents of northern Yunnan's Diqing Tibetan autonomous prefecture also grapple with losses incurred by protected species.

Black bears and wolves plunder livestock and crops, local forestry bureau senior technician Wu Zongsan says.

But villagers can't "fight back" or kill them.

The more than 700 patrol officers hired by the bureau are also occasionally attacked by wildlife, Wu says.

Related: Watching elephants raze a restaurant