I Have a Safari Park

Lin Hao looked at the exhibition card and was extremely shocked.

He had never heard of so many people being trampled to death by elephants.

I thought tigers, bears and other carnivorous beasts might be more dangerous, but it seems that the accident happened in circuses and zoos. Now I have never heard of anyone being killed by tigers in the wild. Instead, it is the impression of elephants. The docile giant has such a cruel side.

Put yourself in his shoes and think about it, a wall near his house can't stop it, and a behemoth that can flatten people with one foot swings around. He often comes to the fields to see if there is anything to eat, and he probably has to worry about going to bed at night.

Why is the conflict between elephants and people so fierce, it can even be described as tragic? Is it because there are too many elephants and not enough food to eat crops grown by humans? Is there any solution?

With this question in mind, keep reading!

At that meeting in 1999, Professor Zhang, an authority on elephant research in China, just started to do domestic elephant surveys to study their numbers, distribution and habits.

The number of elephants is hard to count!

They have no concept of borders. They may eat in the country in the morning and go to Laos in the afternoon. Researchers cannot cross the border at will. They can only use stupid methods to go to the village to inquire about the situation, and make statistics on a village-by-village basis.

Ask if there are 5 elephants in this village, and then go to a village one or two kilometers away and ask if there are 10 elephants. The number of elephants cannot be simply superimposed, and it is still unclear how many elephants there are. Later, according to the outline of the elephant's ears, the shape of the ivory, and the identification of individuals, each elephant was named, and the families of different elephants were distinguished.

I have traveled to all the places where elephants have been distributed in history. In this way, after 20 years of hard work, I gradually counted the number of elephants.

The number of wild Asian elephants in China is less than 250!

In domestic zoos, there are 300 Asian elephants in captivity.

Lin Hao's eyes widened: "Shocked!"

The number of African elephants is recorded in hundreds of thousands. I thought that there are thousands of elephants in China, not just tens of thousands, right?

I really don’t understand. There are only 200 elephants. Yunnan is also the place with the best environment and the densest forests in China, so what’s not enough for such a large forest? Why are there so many conflicts with people?

The number of casualties and economic losses caused by elephants each year has increased in recent years.

The cause of the conflict is habitat compression.

Although from the sky it looks like the trees are lush and lush, and even the forest coverage is increasing, in fact, many of them are rubber forests.

As an important industrial raw material, rubber has been introduced into China since the 1960s and planted from scratch. Refer to the "Statistical Bulletin of National Economic and Social Development of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture" and "Yunnan Statistical Yearbook", 1990, 2000, 2000, In 2010 and 2014, the official statistical area of ​​rubber forest in Xishuangbanna was 8.50, 13.20, 27.13 and 337.2 thousand hectares respectively, while the remote sensing monitoring area in 2014 was larger than the statistics, reaching 37.66 hectares.

The area of ​​Xishuangbanna is only 191 hectares, and one-fourth of the area is planted with rubber forests.

Although rubber forests are also trees, elephants do not like to eat them, nor do other animals like them. The same tropical rain forest may contain hundreds of species of plants. Rubber forests are just one type of plant, so they are also called green deserts. The light looks green, and there is no species diversity.

Not only rubber forests, but also cash crops such as tea and bananas, as well as cultivated fields, have gradually increased in area.

Pu'er City was originally called Simao, but it was later renamed Pu'er because the Pu'er tea it produced was so famous.

After 2000, the price of rubber skyrocketed, and people basically planted rubber wherever they could.

Planting rubber trees, even breaking through areas suitable for rubber growth. The suitable altitude for the growth of rubber is 900 meters, and at that time, it was planted at an altitude of 1500 meters.

After ten years of growth, the rubber is still a small tree, and the rubber cannot be cut, and a large area of ​​tropical and subtropical vegetation has been destroyed.

At an altitude of 900 meters, which is suitable for rubber growth, it is also an area where Asian elephants like to move.

At present, Xishuangbanna is the most suitable habitat for Asian elephants, with an area of ​​less than 5%.

It was not until 15 years ago that people stopped growing rubber because of the excessive planting and the rapid decline in the price of raw materials.

However, in recent years, because the price of tea has risen sharply, the tree species of tea has been cut down again.

The government started to control it after 13 years, and can't just cut down trees. However, the common people also have a coup. They can cut off the bark, or use toxic chemicals, and when the original forest trees "naturally" die, they can grow commercial crops.

There is money to grow cash crops, but there is no money to protect the environment.

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.

Planting crops will be destroyed by elephants. Planting rubber elephants do not like to eat them, and they make money.

In the words of the local people, people who use iPhones in the city have no right to accuse themselves of watching TV.

In the eyes of elephants, whether it is wild plantains or crops grown by humans, they are all born to grow, and nothing belongs to anyone, only the difference between what they can eat and what they cannot eat.

The crops that human beings have worked hard to grow are just food for them to eat.

When there is less and less vegetation suitable for living in the habitat, elephants will naturally choose to go to villages and eat crops, and people want to defend their property, and conflicts will naturally arise.

After reading the reason behind the conflict, Lin Hao couldn't say what he wanted to say, and finally sighed dejectedly!

The issue of human-elephant conflict is still very complicated.

To accuse the people over there of destroying the environment, they are suffering from elephants, and is it wrong to pursue a better life? Is it wrong to want to watch TV?

Is it wrong for elephants to eat crops? The cash crops are all grown, but you don't have to eat the crops.

Is there any solution?

Another story was told on the sign.

There are two stockades in the area, one is called Shangzhai and the other is called Bo'e.

The villagers in Shangzhai are traditional villages of the Dai nationality, and the people regard elephants as mascots.

After the elephants arrived at Shangzhai, they would not be disturbed by any disturbance, and could easily walk through the village on the ridge road.

The villagers in Bo'e are not ethnic minorities. As soon as the elephants arrive, people are very nervous and beat the gongs and drums to drive the elephants away. The elephants were also afraid and ran around in the rice fields, trampling the fields.

It's not that elephants have the spirit to know who likes them and who hates them.

Elephants originally have their own migratory passages, and as long as no one interferes, they will go their own way. Instead, scare it, causing even greater losses.

How people treat elephants also affects how elephants treat people.