Hail-induced mortality of Asian Openbill () in Southern Tropical China.

Hailstorms has been reported to cause mortality of mammals or birds around the world, but the effect of hailstorms on tropical avian species has seldomly been documented. In April 2020, a hailstorm hit Xishuangbanna in south China and was reported to kill 45 Asian Openbills. We estimated the effect of hail by doing fieldwork and interviews.

Conflict between conservation and development: cash forest encroachment in Asian elephant distributions.

Over the last 4 decades, China has undergone major economic development, resulting in considerable impacts on its wildlife populations and habitats. It is essential to quantify the conflict between development and conservation to assist with policy-making because forestry policies and market trends affected indirectly the distribution of Asian elephants. Here, we mapped the historical distribution of elephants versus human land use.

Asian elephants in China: estimating population size and evaluating habitat suitability.

We monitored the last remaining Asian elephant populations in China over the past decade. Using DNA tools and repeat genotyping, we estimated the population sizes from 654 dung samples collected from various areas. Combined with morphological individual identifications from over 6,300 elephant photographs taken in the wild, we estimated that the total Asian elephant population size in China is between 221 and 245.

Corridor use by Asian elephants.

There are 18 km of Kunming-Bangkok Highway passing through the Mengyang Nature Reserve of Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve in Yunnan Province, China. From September 2005 to September 2006 the impact of this highway on movement of wild Asian elephants between the eastern and western part of the nature reserve was studied using track transecting, rural surveys and direct monitoring. Our results showed that the number of crossroad corridors used by Asian elephants diminished from 28 to 23 following the construction of the highway.