The jungles of Yunnan are increasingly under pressure. New roads crisscross the tiny remnant forests, the infrastructure needed for trade, industry and increasingly tourism. It’s a meeting of two very different worlds. That elephants still exist in China is remarkable, considering the immense pressures in the world’s most highly populated country. The 250 or so wild elephants which still live here are now strictly protected. And each year young are born to the small herds. If elephants were to survive anywhere in China, it could only have been here, in Yunnan. The same mountains, which guide the monsoon rains north, and which made Joseph Rock’s journeys so treacherous, also guarded Yunnan’s forests and its wildlife.

 

For the moment, the mountains are still carpeted in a rich green, deceptive in its simplicity. Below the canopy lies perhaps China’s richest natural treasure, delicate and unique, a complex world of intricate relationships between animals, plants and people beneath the clouds.