'Canteens' for wildlife

To ease the tension, the provincial forestry department has built "canteens" in several natural reserves, reducing friction between villagers and wild elephants that had been eating their crops. In recent years, some of the canteens have been expanded.

In Xishuangbanna Natural Reserve's Mengyang section, the canteen set up in 2008 has since doubled in size to 67 hectares, Guo said.

In the first two months of this year, 12 cameras shot more than 12,000 pictures and nearly 1,300 videos showing wild Asian elephants, sambar deer and boar feeding at the canteen.

"It shows the canteen is welcomed by the elephants," Guo said. "After we provided the food source, the elephants paid many fewer visits to farmland, and their conflicts with farmers have been eased in recent years."

However, with investigations conducted by scientists indicating local people sometimes also feed elephants with crops grown in villages, such as corn, Yunnan University professor Chen said he worries the canteens may teach the elephants to want more of it.

"And their affection for this sweet-tasting crop will encourage more elephants to step into humans' territory," he said.

Chen said the most practical way to maintain harmony between elephants and humans is to separate human territory from the elephants' habitat.

With investment of more than 1 million yuan ($159,000), the country's first protective fence to separate people and wild elephants was built last year in Xiangyanqing village, Xishuangbanna.

The green, steel fence, 2.2 meters high and 800 meters in length, surrounds the village, which used to be visited by elephants about 40 times a year. It has proved to be effective and another fence, 550 meters long, is now under construction in another village in the prefecture.