Growing up in China's subtropical southwest, Ma Mingliang rarely encountered the area's indigenous elephants, which had been heavily depleted by hunting and deforestation. Now, the 42-year-old village chief barricades his community at night to keep out them out. A wandering herd of elephants has captured domestic and international attention for months with an unusual trek far from their normal range and into heavily populated areas. But the spectacle of the world's largest land animal barging into town is nothing new for the humans who inhabit the elephant's home region along the Myanmar-Laos border, where an unusal confluence of growing elephant numbers and shrinking natural habitat are bringing the two species are coming into growing conflict. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES