Gaurs spotted by smart phone in south Yunnan

Liu Xiaochang, a ranger with the Naban River nature reserve in south Yunnan, captured a herd of wild gaurs, or Indian bisons, with his mobile phone on May 17.  

With an estimated total of 10 members, the gaur group was photographed near the Da’an village of Mengsong Township in Menghai County, south Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture.

“To better protect the Indian bisons, local forest police have patrolled and monitored the reserve area more frequently in recent years,” said Li, an officer at the Naban-River police station, the Xishuangbanna Forest Security Bureau. 

Li added that the Naban River nature reserve is the prefecture’s major habitat for Indian bisons, and now the area is patrolled more than 20 times each month.

Data collected in 2013 and 2014 show that the number of Indian bisons in Xishuangbanna dropped to around 160 from around 600 in the 1980s. Since then, local protection efforts to the endangered species have increased. 

The gaur is the largest extant bovine. This species is native to the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and China’s Yunnan Province. It has been listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 1986.

Source: Yunnan Net; trans-editing Wang Shixue