An elephant herd tore down a stone fence while searching for food in a Thai village.

The group of eight jumbos wandered out from woodland in Kanchanaburi province and entered homes in the nearby community on July 18.

Paitoon Indharabut, chief of the Salak Phra Wildlife Sanctuary, received a report of the animals wreaking havoc and dispatched a team to drive them back into the forest.

The team arrived at the scene and found a section of the sanctuary's fence broken down. Behind it, four banana trees and one mango tree had been flattened and stripped of fruit.

CCTV footage also showed the pachyderms walking into a residential area after demolishing a homeowner's wall.

The local official said wild elephants had lately been frequenting the community foraging for food. More staff will be hired to drive the creatures back into the woods as the damaged electric fences in the sanctuary had not yet been restored, he said.

He said: 'If the budget is considered to build a fence for the elephants, it will help reduce the problem of elephant appearances to a certain extent. There are eight elephants in this group, sometimes three or five in different places, some difficult to control.'

Residents held a meeting with authorities to discuss how to address the elephant encroachment.

As of 2023, there are an estimated 3,084-3,500 wild elephants in Thailand. The population has been increasing in recent years, but it is still a fraction of the estimated 300,000 wild elephants that lived in Thailand at the beginning of the 20th century. The main threats to wild elephants in Thailand are habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching, and conflict with humans.