Before Nanbanghe village is fully awake, Bai Xiao is already looking for elephants.
His work begins between 6 am and 6:30 am on days when the animals are nearby. As a ground monitor, he follows footprints, broken branches and fresh traces until he finds where the elephants have gone. Sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes it takes two or three.
Once he locates them, Bai sends warnings to villagers through WeChat groups and stays near the area to keep people away. He reminds villagers not to hurt the elephants, and also tells them to protect themselves and their property.
Bai has several roles: villager, elephant monitor, forest ranger, insurance claims assistant and coffee farmer. On days when elephants are active, his schedule follows theirs.
From morning to around 10 am, he tracks their movement. Between 10 am and 4 pm, when elephants often enter the forest and become less active, he may rest, eat his first meal around noon, do farm work or handle forest patrol duties. After 4 pm, he resumes monitoring. If the elephants are far from the village after 8 pm, he can go home. If they remain near houses or roads, he may stay out until midnight or even the next morning.
The work can become dangerous suddenly. Bai once drove a pickup truck with his wife in the passenger seat while tracking elephants. As the vehicle turned a corner, they came face to face with 18 elephants. He stopped immediately. The herd eventually moved away.
He believes the reason the herd just moved on was that local people usually let the animals eat crops rather than making them feel threatened.
In Jiangcheng Hani and Yi autonomous county, which is overseen by Pu'er, Diao Faxing leads a 25-member Asian elephant monitoring team. He began working as a monitor at the end of 2015.
A normal day starts at 5:30 am, with monitoring beginning around 6 am. In foggy winter weather, the team starts even earlier because visibility may be better before the fog thickens.
Once elephants are found, Diao assigns team members to different groups of animals and sends warnings to residents. In addition to the Pu'er Asian elephant warning app, villages have several WeChat groups covering people who work outside. If a herd moves only slightly, warnings may be updated once an hour. If the animals move frequently, the information is sent immediately.
When villagers may not check their phones in time, the team uses loudspeakers mounted on drones to broadcast warnings.
Drones have changed the work, but they have not made it easy. Diao said a drone may need to be charged 10 to 20 times a day. Batteries are consumed quickly and may need to be replaced every two or three months, at a cost of nearly 1,000 yuan ($150) each. In fog or rain, when drones are less useful or cannot fly, monitors rely on handheld night-vision devices.
Monitoring is always done by at least two people. When one person is focused on flying a drone, the other watches the surroundings in case elephants approach from behind. If a herd is considered dangerous or is moving near roads and villages, more people are assigned. Sometimes more than 10 monitors follow one group.
The monitors also count the elephants, watch their health and report unusual conditions to forestry authorities.
Diao remembers one night several years ago when six elephants appeared on a rural road. Monitors blocked the road and set up warning signs, but a vehicle from outside the area rushed through. The elephants surrounded and overturned it.
After receiving the call, he drove to the scene, directed team members to fly a drone to check the situation and helped drive the elephants away. When the herd moved slightly, he rushed to the overturned vehicle and rescued the two people inside.
In another case during Spring Festival in 2023, a drunk villager stood near elephants and shouted at them. The animals were already agitated. Diao rushed forward and dragged the man away. Moments later, an elephant reached the spot where the man had been standing.
For Yang Zhongping, a Nanbanghe villager who mainly handles drone monitoring, the job is also a test of patience and nerve. On ordinary days, he starts flying the drone around 7 am. In foggy weather, he may begin before dawn. Monitoring can continue until after midnight.
Years earlier, before drones were available, Yang followed the footprints of five elephants in heavy fog. At one point, he was only about five meters away. A female elephant charged. He escaped by rolling into a nearby ditch.
"If you stay where you are, you may be trampled," he said.
The income is modest. Bai said he earns 100 yuan a day as a monitor when elephants are present, 50 yuan a day as a forest ranger and 30 yuan for each insurance claim case. Fuel and vehicle costs may fall on the monitors themselves. Yang said his village has only one drone, which is not always enough.
Yet the monitors remain the front line of coexistence. Food source bases, insurance and loans all matter, but they depend on people who know where the elephants are and when villagers must stay away. Warning messages, drone flights and footprints followed through fog help keep a conservation success from becoming a human tragedy.
