Wow!
Are you always this serious, Mr. Zhao?
It rains hard over there.
We have to run fast.
Can I have a touch?
There, there.
It ran away with my carrot.
Wild Asian Elephants It ran away with my carrot.
Wild Asian Elephants
Hello, everyone.
We are on the bus
heading to Meng'a Town, Meng'a County, Xishuangbanna.
This time, I was honored to have been invited
by Tecent Charity and Tecent News
to join the SEE's Noah's Ark Project.
We come here to record the situation
of wild Asian elephants here in Xishuangbanna.
Recently, due to the destruction of living habitats
and the increasing conflicts between men and elephants,
people has done a lot to ensure elephants' living conditions.
This time,
we also invited Jiang Zhicheng to come with us.
Hello, my name is Jiang Zhicheng.
I am from Yunnan province.
I'm a coordinator of SEE's Southwest Center.
I'm responsible for recovering the habitats of Asian elephants.
OK, let's go and visit there together.
Sure.
We are in a village here in Meng'a Town.
Here are many traces left by elephants.
Let's wait for Mr. Zhao then.
Sure.
He is a monitor here.
He will go along with us.
Here we are.
Hello.
Thanks for coming.
We just talked with Mr. Zhao
to learn the basics.
He is a military veteran.
He has worked as the monitor of wild elephants
for more than a decade.
His daily job is to
get up at 5 o'clock
and look for any traces of wild elephants
in places where they might visit.
If so, he will send photos
as well as the locations of elephants
to the villages' Wechat groups.
These villages all have their own Wechat groups.
He will need to remind the villagers
of the wild elephants.
Are you always this serious, Mr. Zhao?
When we haven't found the elephants,
and when we have found them and watched them,
we are always very serious.
We can let our guards down
when we enter the safe zone.
We may also tell jokes then.
Here used to have a small hut.
It was used for raising chickens and ducks.
But it was destroyed by the elephants.
Mr. Zhao knows the place well.
He is leading us
to the area where the elephants had appeared.
These mango trees
were destroyed by the elephants.
Yes.
They used trunks to pull the trees apart.
These elephants come in groups.
They destroyed the trees.
Do elephants eat mangoes?
Yes.
But they eat ripe mangoes.
So they don't eat the raw ones?
Nope.
Half-ripen ones are sweet.
They eat ripe mangoes.
How about the corns?
Actually, elephants are very smart.
Their trunks
act like our hands.
They will pinch the corns like this
to see if they are ripe or not.
(Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020)
If it's ripe, it will eat the corn. (Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020)
(Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020)
Otherwise, it will not eat the corn at the moment (Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020)
(Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020)
and come back later (Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020)
and come back later
to find the corns.
What's the compensation policy
at the moment?
It's based on the acreage.
400 yuan for an acreage.
So, 400 yuan.
As for paddy fields, the price goes higher.
(Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020) As for paddy fields, the price goes higher.
(Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020)
As for the fruit trees, regardless of the years, (Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020)
(Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020)
it's 25 yuan for a tree. (Shot in Xishuagnbanna, 2020)
it's 25 yuan for a tree.
Got it.
Look at the photo.
It hides the corn between its teeth.
Two corns as you can see.
Two were grasped with its trunk.
Two were under its trunk.
Because it was still chewing.
The elephants are very smart.
This photo was taken over there.
These are all traces of elephants.
They will leave a wide path.
Look, these are all traces of elephants.
This was accidentally broken by the elephant
when it went down.
We can tell what the elephants have eaten
via their excretas.
You will know what their main foods are
during this time.
We can tell what it had eaten.
Sugarcane, right?
It's sugarcane.
Zhicheng, how long will it take the elephants
to produce excretas?
Generally speaking, for wild elephants,
since they move quite a lot every day,
it may take them less than 20 hours
to produce the excretas.
Therefore, the foods they have eaten
may not be completed digested, right?
A fungus growing on elephant excreta Yeah.
A fungus growing on elephant excreta
It has a simple digestive system. A fungus growing on elephant excreta
It suddenly rains hard half-way.
Now we are rushing back.
It rains hard over there.
It's now wet season in Xishuangbanna.
So it may rain hard
all of a sudden.
We have to run fast.
It rains so hard
that the roads are flooded.
Mr. Zhao went back earlier.
We are now heading to another village
in Meng'a Town,
and meet with the executive team
of Noah's Ark Project.
The rain stopped.
He told us the pick-up truck is 16 years old.
The middle meter shows
the vibration level of the truck.
What a road.
We have changed
another more powerful pick-up truck to go up the mountains.
We are going to collect data from infrared cameras
and change their batteries.
The road is hard to drive.
There's no mud on the road.
Yeah.
It's pretty good.
Otherwise,
it will be pretty hard to drive.
Wow, look at this.
Here we are.
The car cannot go in here,
so we have to walk.
These plants along the road
all belong to our food bases.
Here they have planted many
wild plantains and other plants for elephants.
Why do we plant the wild pantains, Mr. Yuan?
Because they grow very fast.
They are fast-growing plants.
Besides the plantains,
these plants
can also provide food to Asian elephants.
There are many fiddleheads in the forest.
Here we can see a pretty thick sprout.
Here are some mushrooms
inside the tree hole.
They are pink and not ediable.
Here is an artificial saltpeter pond.
It is designed to provide minerals to Asian elephants.
So we decided to build this saltpeter pond.
We need to check these cameras
once in a while.
See the Asian elephant?
You can see clearly from the photo
that it was an adult
male elephant. Look at its tusks.
This was covered by the leaves.
Oh.
So we need to check on the cameras once in a while.
How long shall we change the batteries?
About two months.
Let me put the storage card in.
What's its capacity?
16 G.
Its light flashes for several times
and then stops flashing.
Now it is working properly.
Now it's working.
Now it works.
Mr. Yuan, could you introduce
your responsibility
in the project?
We are responsible for the last module.
We will deploy some devices
in a scientific way
to monitor if Asian elephants
eat in our food bases
or if they appear in the area.
Then we will evaluate the project,
the performance of the food bases.
There is a lot of sugarcane behind us.
Mr. Yuan told us
that the elephants are pretty smart
when eating sugarcane.
It will pick
the sweet and crunchy sugarcane to eat.
Those sugarcane that was left behind
is more stiff and hard to eat.
These are all sugarcane.
Mr. Zhao just found some collybia albuminosa.
It was in the tea field.
He didn't told us.
Otherwise, we would go and shoot some footage.
Sorry for that.
Nope, not at all.
We are at the north gate of wild elephant valley.
We are near the wild elephant valley.
It belongs to our conservation zone.
Here we have built
a breeding and rescue center of Chinese Asian elephants.
We will visit the Elephant Daddy
to take our baby elephant
to go and have the re-wilding training.
Let's go check it out.
Here is our girl, Yang Niu.
Yang Niu.
(Security staff is involved while filming.) (Dangerous Action! Do not imitate.)
Can I have a touch? (Security staff is involved while filming.) (Dangerous Action! Do not imitate.)
(Security staff is involved while filming.) (Dangerous Action! Do not imitate.)
Can I have a touch?
There, there.
We are going after Yang Niu.
Zhicheng told us that
the front legs of elephants are longer than the back legs.
So it's easy for them to go up,
but hard to go down.
Why her name is Yang Niu?
Because we rescued her in the year of sheep.
There, there.
She grew up drinking goat milk.
Got it.
It's my first time
to see the skins of an elephant.
It's very hard.
Look at its tail.
How thick her front leg is.
She's starting to eat the grass.
Drama Queen
That's it. No need to toss.
Enjoy your meal.
After eating the tender grass,
she will toss the less tender over her head.
We just learnt from Daddy Elephant
that Yang Niu is five years old.
She now weight 1.3 ton.
Every day, they will give her
4 to 5 hours of re-wilding training.
Currently, she can identify
more than 20 edible plants herself.
Are these excreta of Yang Niu?
They belong to a larger elephant.
Oh.
Zhicheng told us
a new information just now.
In the wild, they can tell the age of an elephant
based on the size
of their excreta.
Yang Niu was taken back to the base.
Yang Niu.
She wants some carrots.
She ran away with my carrot.
I have no carrots now.
Is it the dorm of Yang Niu?
Wow, her room is so pretty.
Yang Niu is the youngest elephant
rescued in our country.
Good girl.
We will also recording here daily activities,
including her temperature, eating conditions and excreta.
It used to be
the bathtub for Yang Niu.
Now she's grown too big to use it.
Security staff is involved while filming. Dangerous Action! Do not imitate.
(Security staff is involved while filming.) (Dangerous Action! Do not imitate.)
He has teeth. (Security staff is involved while filming.) (Dangerous Action! Do not imitate.)
He wants to drink. (Security staff is involved while filming.) (Dangerous Action! Do not imitate.)
He wants to drink.
Oh, he wants to drink.
(Thank you.) Nice and clean.
(Thank you.)
Do we need to bath him everyday? (Thank you.)
(Thank you.)
I bath him every morining. (Thank you.)
I bath him every morining.
Everyday?
I just bathed the youngest elephant
in the rescue center. His name is Yi Shuang.
I showered him with cool water.
It was my first time
to bath an elephant. I'm so excited.
It's already dark outside.
We are on our way back.
We will say goodbye to Zhicheng
once we arrive our destination.
I'd like to thank Zhicheng
for accompanying us to visit the habitats of wild elephants,
as well as the rescue center here.
I've learned much about wild Asian elephants.
Zhicheng, do you want to say something to the audience?
I hope that you guys
can follow SEE
and our Southwest Project Center.
Please come and protect the wild animals and plants
together with us.
Let's protect the biodiversity of China.
I sincerely hope that one day
we can achieve,
truly achieve our vision that there are
birds in the woods, fish in the water and animals on the ground.
Let's build and protect a harmonious homeland together.
At last,
I do hope that our vision can come true some day.
Let's contribute together to the protection
of wild Asian elephants.
Let's work together.
Sure.
There are lots of wild animals and plants here in Yunnan.
Wish you guys like Yunnan
and its biodiversity.
That's all for today.
Bye-bye!