Yunnan village prospers, naturally

Locals in Daotangqing village, located on the edge of the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve, Southwest China's Yunnan province, have turned to keeping bees and growing eco-friendly fruit trees to improve income and strengthen resilience to damage caused by elephant grazing and a fall in the price of rubber, once their primary cash crop.

According to Yunnan Daily, in 1992, a wild elephant entered the Simao district of Pu'er city, around 100 kilometers north of the reserve, marking the first time in 16 years that wild Asian elephants had been spotted there. Later in 1995, a herd of five elephants arrived in the area and made it home — the herd has not left since 1996.

The appearance of the wild Asian elephants surprised people. Local residents went to see and feed the elephants as if they were attending a festival.

Until the 1990s, elephant herds and humans lived together in harmony. The Xishuangbanna herd initially kept to land that had been left vacant to recover after a round of planting, feeding on freely-growing herbs on the ground.

However, it didn't take long for people to realize that the appearance of elephants was not always a blessing.

With the reduction of wasteland following increases in agricultural efficiency, some elephant herds moved closer to human areas and started to feed on crops such as maize, rice and sugar cane. Over time, the amount and range of crops they ate increased.

The elephant presence became an issue. The mammoth creatures invaded paddy fields, orchards and households, destroying property, causing financial losses and even injuring people.

New efforts

The conflict intensified as humans and elephants competed for food and living space.

Cao Dafan, who works for the International Fund for Animal Welfare on its Asian Elephant Protection project, recalls that when Asian elephant conservationists visited the Yunnan village to explain animal protection laws and regulations to locals, they were often surrounded by people arguing that the regulations failed to address the economic loss caused by elephants eating their crops.

Gradually the organization staff realized it was meaningless to continue to try to popularize the laws and educate people on the value of the elephants who intruded on their living space if there was no solution provided.

Since 2009, in order to alleviate the conflict, Yunnan's Xishuangbanna Dai autonomous prefecture has been trying to induce commercial insurance companies to offer more support for claims of damage caused by Asian elephants. In 2010, wildlife accident public liability insurance was introduced to Yunnan province, mainly for covering the damage caused by wild Asian elephants.

According to Cao, the direct economic loss caused by wild Asian elephants in Xishuangbanna and Pu'er alone has exceeded 20 million yuan ($2.9 million) per year.

In June 2020, IFAW, the Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve and the Xishuangbanna Tropical Rain Forest Conservation Foundation jointly launched the Community Livelihood Development program that aims to reorient village economies in the area to guard them against elephant damage.

Daotangqing village, administered by Mengyang town, was set to be the first field of experimentation. It is sitting close to the core activity area of wild Asian elephant, with at least 20 of them living within a radius of 5 km.

The villagers' livelihoods used to mainly rely on rubber farming, which generated a relatively low annual per capita income of around 7,000 yuan. Wang Shaokuan, 23, a villager from Daotangqing, recalls that he needed to go into the rubber forests at midnight to reap the crop, and then go back at 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning to collect it; and all his work could be ruined by bad weather, such as a sudden rain.

Besides these hazards, there was also the problem of market saturation.

According to IFAW, the area under rubber cultivation in Yunnan province has grown rapidly since 2000, once a viable strategy for development as the price of dry rubber exceeded 30,000 yuan per metric ton; however, many Southeast Asian countries have also engaged in the large-scale planting of rubber, causing an oversupply in recent years.

Last August, the price of natural rubber in Yunnan fell to around 12,000 yuan per ton.

The IFAW's program attempted to address these issues by encouraging villagers to cultivate beehives, which are profitable and resilient to market fluctuations and the elephants.

The first 100 beehives were distributed to 10 local households in 2020. Since then, villagers have gradually switched their focus from rubber farming to beekeeping to reduce the risk of encountering elephants.

The bees also serve multiple secondary functions, such as helping to pollinate plants in the reserve, contributing to the conservation of biodiversity in the core habitat of the Asian elephant.

Economic benefits

The labor input of beekeeping is relatively low compared to other farming projects. Each household only needs to cultivate a limited number of hives, and beekeepers only need to maintain them two or three times every 10 days, for two hours at a time.

Luo Baolin, 70, claims that his body no longer supports heavy, long-duration physical labor, such as traditional farming work; beekeeping, on the other hand, requires a lower investment of time and effort while still returning a relatively acceptable income.

Last year, in his third year of beekeeping, Luo collected 100 kilograms of honey in a single harvest.

When Zhang Jiangmei, 39, was first introduced to beekeeping, she waved her hands quickly in rejection, explaining: "I don't want to keep bees as I am so afraid of getting stung!"

However, Zhang is now capable of managing all aspects of beekeeping on her own. As one of the women who have been leading the beekeeping project, Zhang's positive attitude and courage have also encouraged other females to join in.

"Some thought that feeding bees could be difficult and exhausting, but in fact, my pace of life has slowed down instead. The income from beekeeping is satisfying enough so that I don't have to find another job elsewhere to support my family, which allows me to spend more time enjoying myself."

Zhang claims that if she worked in a bigger city for a better salary, she would not be able to take care of the elderly and children at home, and the elderly would have to manage the fields and rubber forests on their own.

The project, which provided free beekeeping training and connected cultivators to mature distribution channels, has allowed her to make money at home.

Wang used to work in another city nearby, but returned to his hometown as the family was short of workers after his father injured his hand. He decided to stay in the village to participate in the beekeeping project.

"Young people need to do something meaningful and learn about new things. All the experiences will turn into good stories to tell their children in the future," Wang says.

Wang plans to try to sell the collected honey through online platforms himself, such as Taobao and Douyin, and make videos to show people how beautiful the village is, the story of the beekeeping project, and the importance of elephant conservation.

Since the beekeeping project began in 2020, it has increased the income of participants by nearly 90,000 yuan in total. The average household income will also continue to increase in the future as villagers' farming skills improve.

The beekeeping project is not the only one active in the village. Another, named Carbon Reduction Estate, was introduced in August 2021 with the support of Swire Coca-Cola (China) Co Ltd.

The project includes measures such as planting eco-friendly fruit and nut orchards as a substitute for rubber, and setting up photovoltaic power equipment. They are designed to transform the neighborhood into a center of biodiversity conservation, energy saving and rural vitalization.

Zhang Xiyan, vice-president and secretary-general of the Xishuangbanna Tropical Rain Forest Conservation Foundation, describes rubber tree forests as "green deserts". He explains that because of the plants' extreme water demand, which causes soil erosion, other plants can barely survive around them.

The rubber tree undermines the diversity of the rainforest, which serves the important wider ecological function of absorbing carbon dioxide. Replacing rubber trees with fruit trees allows villagers to diversify the region's floral profile and stockpile more forest resources to soak up emissions.

The project offers villagers economic opportunity while at the same time planting the concept of environmental protection into the underlying logic of rural development.

During the 12th Philanthropy Festival, which was held in December in Shanghai, the Asian Elephant Protection project won the 2022 Project of the Year Award. IFAW was selected as Organization of the Year for helping animals and people thrive together.