-- In a rare migration, 15 wild elephants trudged 500 km in southwest China's Yunnan Province, passing through several counties and occasionally wandering into villages and towns to cause panic.

-- The herd is now approaching Kunming, the provincial capital. Wildlife authorities have established an on-site command center to monitor their movements 24 hours a day and prevent them from entering densely populated areas by creating barriers and using food as bait.

-- Experts said the wild elephant population has been growing in China thanks to enhanced protection, but expanding forests also reduced the food supply for the endangered mammals and increasingly drove them out of their habitats to search for food.