Family members of a farmer who was believed to have been killed by wild elephants in mountains of southwest China's Yunnan Province are expecting compensation from a local insurance company.

Ma Jinyou, 67, died on Nov. 3 while harvesting chilis in mountains of Mengla County in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, a spokesman with the local government said Thursday.

Ma's body was found by his son in a nearby ditch the following day, with serious wounds on the head and all his ribs broken, the spokesman said.

Investigators from the local forestry department, police and an insurance company found many elephant footprints in the chili field and along the way to the ditch, and assumed Ma had been attacked by the animals, he said.

The Mengla Branch of China Pacific Insurance Co. was working on the case and compensation would be paid out in about a month, the spokesman said.

Ma was not the first to be trampled to death by wild elephants in Xishuangbanna, but his case was the first to be covered by commercial insurance, under a new compensation scheme introduced by the local government exactly a year ago.

Though the exact amount of compensation was not immediately known, Ma's family could expect a larger amount than victims of the past.

Victims in similar tragedies used to be compensated solely by local forestry department, which paid out 3 million to 10 million yuan (452,100 to 1.5 million U.S. dollars) annually for deaths, injuries and economic losses incurred by wild elephants.

The compensation was a heavy burden on the forestry department, which is reliant on funds allocated by the provincial finance bureau, and always fell below the expectations of the victims and their families.

In November 2009, the provincial government launched a pilot project in Xishuangbanna to allow private insurers to cover some of the farmers' losses.

Under an agreement between China Pacific Insurance Co. and the local government, valid from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2010, the insurer would pay up to 30 million yuan in compensation for wild elephants' attacks on humans.

The virgin rainforests of Xishuangbanna is home to more than 250 wild elephants, about 90 percent of China's total, thanks to its ideal ecology and effective protection.

Wild elephants have attacked more than 140 people and damaged 50,000 tonnes of grain in the past 20 years, according to the local forestry department.

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