After getting stuck in an abandoned water pit for hours, a weary adult Asian elephant was helped out by rescuers in southwest China, Global Times reported.
Residents of the village in Yunnan created the water pit, which is nearly 2 meters deep. Those who found the elephant believed she’d been foraging for food when she fell in. The size of the pit made it impossible for her to turn around, let alone climb out. Observers noticed her plight and formed a rescue group to get her out.
“Using an excavator, they created a gap for the exhausted elephant to escape,” CGTN Europe posted on Instagram, along with a video of her rescue.
View this post on Instagram
In the video, the elephant curiously watches as the excavator scrapes the dirt around the hole just enough for her to find her footing and pull herself out. After pausing to stare at her liberators, she lumbers off.
The rescue group observed her for the next 30 minutes as she rejoined her herd in the wild.
Asian elephants are endangered. While poaching is a constant threat, the addition of human expansion and agriculture has also caused their habitats to grow smaller and the species to become more scattered. There are a little more than 300 Asian elephants remaining in China, which makes it all the more critical that bystanders saved this elephant.
Lady Freethinker applauds the residents of the Jinghong village, who saw an animal in distress and did what they could to rescue her.
