“A few elephants used to come foraging for food at nighttime, but now herds of 10 to 15 are coming during the day,” said a local farmer from Kyauk Pyin Tha village.

Some 20 homes have been damaged or destroyed by the pachyderms in that town alone, he said. Last year, residents say, three farmers were killed when some elephants went on a rampage.

Some of the villages that are targets of the hungry elephants, such as the town of Chaung Sauk, are situated 30 miles from the forest, locals said.

Several villagers said that they have contacted the township administrator and requested protection, but the security guards they sent in only worked at night and left the villages exposed by day.

Villagers said they have since taken to lighting campfires around their properties in an attempt to ward off the elephants.

Kyaw Naing Win, the regional chairperson of the National League of Democracy in Chaung Sauk, said that 20 acres of paddy fields in five villages have been destroyed in the last three months by the marauding elephants.

“Deforestation is going on all around, and the elephants do not have enough pasture,” he said. “So they migrate and destroy everything in their way. They are getting used to encountering villagers and becoming more daring and less afraid. They will undoubtedly come back again and again.’

A forestry officer from the nearby Myain Hay Wun Elephant Camp said that the forestry and timber departments are working together to solve the problem.

Officials said that some elephants have been known to migrate as far as Bangladesh and Thailand.

The Myanmar government has laid down plans to establish four “natural zones” for wild elephants: one in Tha Peik Kyin Township, Mandalay; two in the Rakhine Mountain Range; and one in Thayarwaddy District, Bago Division.