Development problematic elephant in room

Prince William's visit to Xishuangbanna of Yunnan province will attract widespread attention to China's protection of wild elephants. However, some Western media have chosen to criticize these efforts, despite the very difficult nature of this task.

In China, Asian wide elephants use habitats in the remaining fragmented seasonal rain forests and evergreen forests in southern Yunnan province that border Myanmar and Laos. It is estimated that the wild elephant population in China ranges from 221 to 245.

This distribution contrasts markedly with the large continuous range that elephants occupied in the 1970s and 1980s, and human activities have strongly impacted elephant behaviours, including movements and migration patterns.