On the move
Kamal Lodaya, Bangalore

Fifty years ago, travelling from Guwahati to Jorhat on NH37, our bus broke down in Kaziranga National Park in the afternoon. The highway runs through the southern side of the Park, separating it from the hills of Karbi Anglong further south. The park is about 13 km from north to south.
We were terrified. In those days there was no traffic on the road in this region in the absence of daylight. The driver told us we had to leave the place. The reason was that the animals in Kaziranga migrate across the road-- Elephants, rhinoceroses, wild buffaloes, tigers, leopards-- in search of food.
Apparently elephants find the bamboo in the tea gardens on the hills more tasty. When it rains they prefer to move from the waterlogged northern side along the Brahmaputra river to the drier south. But if they are thirsty they are more likely to find water in the north.
Well, nothing dramatic happened. Another bus came along. At our driver's request, everybody from our bus (including the crew) were accommodated on the other bus and taken to Jorhat. The mechanics came to repair our abandoned bus the next day.

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From the late 1990s onwards, elephant herds, said to be displaced by the Subansiri dam project in Arunachal Pradesh, appeared on the fertile {chaporis} (islands) of the Brahmaputra river (Majuli is the biggest), where crops like sugarcane were grown. This was the first time that elephants were found swimming across a river to forage for food. The numbers grew to nearly 150 since the herd seemed to accept new members, unlike most herds seen so far. A determined effort was made to drive them to Kaziranga National Park, but some of the elephants broke away and returned to the islands, whose crops they seemed to enjoy more. I lost track of what happened to them, but some of the herd still moved across the northern bank of the Brahmaputra two years ago.

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I was reminded of my childhood memory when I read of the wandering elephants of Xishuangbanna, a bio reserve in southwest China. The Mekong river runs from Tibet through Yunnan and Xishuangbanna to Laos. Xishuangbanna (or Sibsong panna) means "twelve districts", more precisely "twelve township rice-fields", in the Thai (Dai) language of the Lao (Lyu) people living in this region. It is a prefecture in the province of Yunnan in China. Yunnan is the only Chinese province where elephants are found in the wild.
A Chinese prefecture is like a district, a province would be like a state. China also has city-prefectures which are cities with surounding rural areas. Xishuangbanna prefecture is about the size of the Indian state of Mizoram with a similar population. Yunnan is a mountainous province the size of all seven of India's northeastern states, Sikkim, Bhutan and West Bengal put together, at around the same latitudes. Its population density is similar to that of Manipur or Mizoram, so it has as many people as Odisha which only has 40 per cent of its area.
Humans and elephants have lived in India and China for a long time. For example, remains of our early ancestor {Homo erectus} have been found in Yunnan (dated to 17 lakh years ago) and in Madhya Pradesh (dated to 5 lakh years ago). The Xishuangbanna elephants belong to the same species as the Indian elephant, also found in Southeast Asia. Chinese elephant remains in Yunnan seem to be from a different species of Asian elephant, now extinct.

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In March 2020 a herd of 15 elephants (six adult females, three adult males and juveniles) started marching north from Xishuangbanna, no one knows why. When they came near human habitations, they raided crops, wandered down streets, and broke into kitchens. In April two elephants decided to turn back home. Another male strayed in June, and officials eventually tranquilised and transported him home as they were worried that he would not survive alone.
More than a year later, in June 2021 they had travelled 500 kilometres northwards and were within a few days' walk of the city-prefecture of Kunming, capital of Yunnan, with the population of Bengaluru or Chennai.
Chinese authorities were terrified of what the elephants might do if they reached a major city. They focussed on trying to lure them back south using food bait and physical barriers. Bamboo, maize, pineapples, bananas and sugarcane have been used, in case you wondered. Lines of trucks have been used as roadblocks. Their tactics worked, they turned back and by mid-July were being diverted around Yuxi, a smaller city-prefecture with the population of Indore or Bhopal. The Red river runs from Tibet through Yunnan and Yuxi to Vietnam. By the beginning of August, they had crossed the bridge over the Yuanjiang river and were about 200 km from home.
One cannot let wild elephants become too dependent on human-provided food. The elephants also need to feel safe, it is not only food that matters to them. If they feel unsafe they may become aggressive.
Experts like Becky Shu Chen of the London Zoo and Raman Sukumar of Bangalore feel it is unrealistic to expect that the elephants will walk back all the way to Xishuangbanna, and a "holding area" should be found where they have food and security, while a new habitat plan is chalked out. One young male who broke away from the herd was tranquillized and transported back to the reserve. Trying to tranquillize a herd is dangerous, it is not clear what the rest will do if one of them falls down.
To monitor the elephants, the Chinese have used drone cameras. Their pictures and movies have gone viral all over the world. In China tracking the wandering elephants is among the most popular items on social media. 
One picture of the entire herd sleeping is very unusual, they must have been really exhausted. Because elephant herds don't all lie down and go to sleep as seen in the picture. This makes them too vulnerable to danger, for an elephant to get up and stand upright takes time. At least some adults doze as they lean against a tree or an anthill.
But even if they return to the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, there is no guarantee that they will not wander again. The big question this situation raises is how to handle the conflict between growing human needs and the needs of wildlife. Send your ideas to {Jantar Mantar}. If you come up with a clever plan we will send it to the authorities in China.