April 2020 | SMITHSONIAN 79away these elephants?” In some cases, wildlife de-
partments will relocate a particularly troublesome
individual. Chan recalls one “naughty” elephant in
Myanmar who just couldn’t be deterred. “He wasn’t
scared of anyone. So they relocated him about 30
miles north to some other park, but he got back to
his old spot in like a day.”Leimgruber isn’t surprised: “You take an animal,
you traumatize it, and then you release it, you just let
it go. Well, what would you do if that happened to you?
You’d start running, right?”
It might work better to relocate elephants in
groups, says Leimgruber. Elephants have strong
bonds with their relatives,After a night
of grazing in
the forest—and
possibly raiding
crop fi elds—a
bull elephant is
taken back to
camp at sunrise
by his mahout. CONTINUED ON PAGE 102