China and Laos will create cross-border elephant reserve

China and Laos have agreed to build a cross-border reserve to protect Asian elephants and other rare animals, state media reported on Monday. The reserve is to cover about 55,000 hectares of forest straddling the border, Tang Zhongming, deputy director of the Xishuangbanna Nature Reserve in south-western China's Yunnan province, told the official Xinhua news agency.

Protection of elephants and other rare animals, as well as the biodiversity of the area, faced "mounting pressure from economic and social development and increasing human mobility," Tang was quoted as saying.

"The cross-border nature reserve is a pioneering and also a necessary work," he said. Under the agreement, China and Laos will jointly train staff for the reserve and engage local residents to improve their awareness of ecological protection, the agency said.

The two sides plan to develop measures to reduce conflict between elephants and local farmers, and conduct joint patrols and surveys.

They are to create ecological protection corridors across the border to link and expand elephant habitats, Yang Songhai, the director of the Xishuangbanna reserve, was quoted as saying.

An estimated 250 Asian elephants live in Xishuangbanna, crossing frequently into Laos, the agency said.

After a survey in 1995, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) estimated that between 25,600 and 32,750 Asian elephants remained in the wild in countries including India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and China.

The WWF said elephant populations were believed to have fallen rapidly in many areas since 1995.