The Watcher of Elephants

By Yao Jun & Li Renpei

After leaving Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, in March 2020, a herd of 17 Asian elephants wandered northward, lingered in Pu'er city for about nine months and eventually entered Yuxi city in April 2021. The hulking animals quickly became social media stars, with their epic northbound journey captivating the whole world.

The moment the herd arrived in Eshan county, Yuxi city, on May 25, 2021, the municipal public security bureau responded to instructions from the provincial command center and formed a drone operation team of four Party members selected from the Special Police Patrol Detachment. This team was the first of its kind to use drones to track and monitor the herd. From their departure of Yuxi to their entrance to Honghe prefecture, Shiping county, the team worked for 44 days, covering over 7,000 kilometers of terrain across eleven townships and four counties. With their drones dubbed "eyes in the sky", the team used the technology to "protect both the elephants and the local people along the herd's migrating route within Yuxi" and performed outstandingly well with "zero crashes" and "zero errors" throughout the operation.

A Responsive Aerial Monitoring Mission

The mission, in essence, was about ecological and environmental protection, with the goal of "protecting both the elephants and the local people" as instructed by the command center.

Packing light, team-leader Luo Jiaquan and his comrades immediately set about their aerial monitoring task. "We often use drones to track down criminal suspects or find evidence, but we have never tracked and monitored elephants with drones..." Luo said at the time. Luo and his team knew the mission would be "a demanding challenge", but they refused to be intimidated and rapidly settled into their mission.

The mission involved much unpredictability: Flying their drones meant dealing with unexpected and challenging conditions: if flown too low or too close to the elephants, the devices could either crash in the jungle or disturb the herd's migration route. The team weren't fully aware of the magnitude of the difficulties until they arrived at the scene and confronted the mountainous, forested, high-altitude landscape.

On May 27, a drone from another monitoring organization crashed during its operations and Luo Jiaquan and his team helped retrieve it from the forest. On June 20, a similar mishap affected another police unit and Luo's team stepped in again to help recover the wrecked drone as well as the deformed battery, preventing the battery's potential spontaneous ignition.

On top of the monitoring mission, the team also launched training sessions for seven police officers from the local public security department to hone their skills during a real-life mission. The whole operation lasted 44 days, with the team taking just a three-day break from June 3 when the elephants left the Yuxi's Hongta district and roamed into Kunming city. On June 7 when the giant mammals wandered back into Yuxi's Yimen county, the team immediately resumed their mission and didn't have another day off until July 9 when the herd finally strolled into Shiping county, Honghe prefecture. Over the 44 days, the team launched 1,125 drone flights for a total of 348 hours and collected and sent GPS coordinates 2,026 times.

Having a Tough Time

The deep river valleys of the herd's migrating route were extremely hot and humid, with the temperature sometimes reaching above 35℃. Faced with such conditions Luo and his colleagues could only drink plenty of water to stave off dehydration and try to cool down by frequently splashing their faces with cold water. Mosquito bites in the river valleys were another trying issue. The team members all covered themselves with layer upon layer of mosquito spray and even tied boxes of mosquito repellent to their waists, but still found themselves at the mercy of the bloodsuckers, which left their bodies covered in bites and scars.

On one occasion, after many attempts the team finally secured a stable GPS signal and located the herd in the mountains. But the mischievous pachyderm seemed intent on playing hide-and-seek with the officers and always managed to avoid their sight. To address this, the team hovered the drones at low altitude, scanning across mountain streams and river valleys. A thick fog made it difficult to pick the elephants out, though, so the officers flew the drones lower still, dipping them beneath the foggy air.

This aroused immediate anxiety in team member Li Renpei: "110, 100, 95, 90, 80... Captain Luo, our drone is only 80 meters above the ground. It is about to crash into the trees."

"Steady! Keep lowering it despite the risk. We must push to the lowest altitude we can," Luo responded gravely.

When the drone dove to a height of just 70m above ground, the team finally got a clear view of the herd wandering at the bottom of the valley. That night, they all felt too excited to sleep—it's rare to locate a target on the first day on duty. Normally, drones can only reach as high as 500m above ground, but this mission often required them to surmount mountains as high as 600m. The team had to operate the devices through risky maneuvers and make sure they steered clear of not just mountains but also the vegetation.

Officer Li Renpei explains: "I had to drive with one hand steering, the other holding my phone high in the air to find better signal reception. It's so hot and damp in the mountain that I broke out in a rash, itching terribly. The mosquitos here are formidable, they can bite through layers of clothing."

The 44-day tracking mission posed a multitude of challenges to the officers. Since it's impossible to predict the herd's migrating route, all the team members worked shifts longer than 12 hours, sometimes even as long as 24 hours. The team was short-staffed, so the four members came to each other's aide and took on around-the-clock operations. The herd of elephants took an epic journey across Eshan, Hongta district, Yimen and back to Eshan again before they got into Shiping county, Honghe prefecture, via Xinpin. To track and monitor them, the drone team covered over 7,000km in 44 days, travelling 10km to 15km for every 1km the herd moved. From June 17 to 21, the elephants shuttled back and forth between Yimen and Eshan, sleeping in the mountains around midday, foraging at lower spots in the evening and doubling back to the mountain top to sleep at midnight. Throughout the whole process, the officers had to fight with fatigue and follow their targets up and down winding mountain roads.

Lying ahead of the team were more difficulties though, including the short battery life of the drone, weak signals for their cellphones, and poor accommodation for the officers themselves. The herd trudged in mountains and forded across streams; places with no cellphone signal at all. The team had to strain up high mountains either by car or on foot to get in touch with their command center and upload coordinates and photos of the herd. They often found their cellphones overheated due to overuse, so they decided to use them alternately and keep them cool with wet towels if necessary.

A Safe Journey Under Devoted Protectors

"Our drones often had to operate under challenging conditions, and often got into areas with no signals at all. The remote control wouldn't work and we couldn't access images. We had to chase after our drones, which, on quite a few occasions, just barely escaped crashing..." explained Officer Li Jingyu.

The team had not only to protect the elephants and the local people, but also ensure the safety of the drones. After all, only through the "eyes in the sky" could they relay reliable first-hand data to the command center in a consistent and timely manner.

That's why the officers would perform each flight in strict accordance with operation rules. On June 24, they noticed in the video images a slight and sustained tremor before they performed an emergency landing, and found it was caused by a broken shock-absorbing ball connecting the drone to its camera. Without this critical discovery the drone might easily have crashed.

After several flights, the team came up with a set of methods for tracking and monitoring their animal targets in complex environments. At 9 pm on July 7, they observed the herd for a few minutes via video images, before they soon lost sight again. The officers conducted more than 40 flights for nearly 3 hours afterward, but still couldn't locate the herd. After analyzing the elephants' possible routes based on their previous coordinates, they determined that the herd would come out for food in the dim light of the night. So, if they kept watch over all the entrances to nearby villages, the herd would emerge in their images again. They flew out three drones simultaneously, with one heading east, one west, and one north, and, to their relief, they finally recovered sight of the herd in a crop field four hours later at 1:10 am, July 8.

At 1:30 am, however, when the officers drove toward the village where the elephants were last seen, the herd set out again. The team members monitoring the herd from the mountain saw on their screen that the herd getting too close to their colleagues in the chasing car, but it was too late to call them and sound an alarm. The car confronted the herd at distance of only 10m. The officer at the wheel immediately stepped on the brakes and then slowly reversed the car before the herd was disturbed. Not until they were 100m away from the big animals did they dare to make a U-turn and their colleagues on the mountain could breathe a sigh of relief.

At twilight, the herd was seen via a drone camera to have deserted the forest and gone foraging in the crop fields near a village.

During the herd's northward journey, some illegitimate drones and their owners also tried to get in on the act and the monitoring team introduced some preemptive devices to either remove them directly or give instructions to the staff on the ground as to how to locate the illegal pilots. Thanks to their joint efforts, two illegal drones were grounded and seized before they could cause any disturbance to the herd and the unauthorized pilot was taken into custody. Besides, the team also provided support to the local security bureau in their campaign to publicize relevant laws and regulations during their monitoring operation.

With such dedication and patience, the team with the Yuxi Public Security Bureau became the only one to have delivered perfect performance in the monitoring mission, registering "zero crashes" and "zero errors".

An unforgettable photo taken during the emission emerged of Luo Jiaquan cradling a two-year-old toddler in his arms. The little girl had never seen elephants before and saw the animals for the first time via the images transmitted back from the team's drones. Luo told her, "These are elephants. They have big ears and a long trunk. They like bananas and are good friends with human beings."

The officers all keep pleasant memories of the huge animals: how they enjoyed basking in the mud, snarfing down distiller's grains and playing hide-and-seek with the team. They also remembered how the team narrowly escaped danger, how the drones sent back photos capturing the picturesque landscapes and how they and the elephants gradually built trust with each other. They remember how the local farmers showed remarkable tolerance to the elephants, saying things like: "It's no big deal that the giants have eaten some of our crops. If forced to leave on empty stomachs, they might never come back again."

The team completed their 44-day mission with flying colors. They provided data for the command center to make decisions on raising alarms, providing food to the animals, and evacuating people in their path; they lived up to the commitment of "protecting both the elephants and the local people"; they facilitated live news broadcasts by China Central Television by ensuring transmission reception and supplying video materials; they presented to the online world an "adventure of the Asian elephants."

The mission reshaped all the team members' idea of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. In some ways, they learned, local peace and stability is dependent upon human beings' commitment to ecological conservation.

The team ended their 44-day mission with the herd crossing the Yuanjiang Bridge, but China will continue to press ahead with environmental protection, harmonious development between men and nature, and ecological progress. The elephants' epic migration opened a window for the world to see both China's achievements in wildlife protection and its commitment to a new philosophy of innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development. ■