Losing the Way or Running Off? An Unprecedented Major Movement of Asian Elephants in Yunnan, China

Luguang Jiang (), Ye Liu and Haixia Xu
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Luguang Jiang: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Ye Liu: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China
Haixia Xu: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-10

Abstract: In 2021, an unprecedented major movement of Asian elephants in China aroused the curiosity of hundreds of millions of people around the world. For research objectives, we firstly reproduce the movement route of Asian elephants and reveal their geographical spatial characteristics and landscape characteristics using multisource data; secondly, we reveal the reason for this Asian elephant movement. We found Asian elephants went far beyond the northernmost movement boundary from past years. Most of the areas along the movement route fell within the higher accessibility to road traffic. Over the past 20 years, the rubber and tea areas of Xishuangbanna and Pu’er have increased by 91.1% and 120.1%, respectively, from 2005 to 2019. Asian elephants spent 18 days in areas with suitable food, but relatively low vegetation coverage. The 2021 movement was most likely a “purposeful” trip rather than a “detour”. The elephants chose the most rewarding way to move forward, which showed they are far smarter than we thought. They may have left to find food due to exhausted food supply. The expansion of rubber and tea plantations has caused the habitat of Asian elephants to shrink, which was one of the reasons for the northward movement of them.

Keywords: biodiversity; Asian elephants; geo-information; buffer grid analysis; land-use change; habitat protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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