Photo courtesy of Spencer Manuelpillai
Today is World Habitat Day
Emeritus Professor Sarath Kotagama needs no introduction to any in the conservation community of Sri Lanka. Not always seeking populism but preferring pragmatism, whether one agrees with him or not there is no question of his wealth of experience and understanding of the wilderness and its wildlife. Former Head of the Department of Zoology at the University of Colombo, he is more than just an environmentalist and ornithologist. A former Director General of the Department of Wildlife Conservation and having served as a Consultant not only to the government but also to many other national and international conservation groups, he needs to be heeded.
In a presentation titled “The Fate of Nature in Sri Lanka: Forests, Trees, and Elephants in a Changing Landscape”, he highlighted the fact that the future of this country and of its people is strongly dependent on its natural habitats. If humans destroy them, then we are jeopardizing our futures and those of the generations to come; all of this exacerbated by the glowering clouds of climate change. If this destruction does not stop then humans, too, as a species, are in a self-propelled race to oblivion.
So far in 2024, 239 elephants and 57 humans have perished in the ongoing Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC). All of these deaths were gruesome in the extreme; people trampled and crushed and elephants falling victim to gunshots, jaw bombs, electrocutions, poisoning and road and rail accidents, among others. The majority of these deaths were of young animals – a gradual destruction of the future generations of this species. Add to this the lack of proactive conservation management within protected areas by those who should be doing it, habitat degradation and illegal encroachment are resulting in more and more wild animals seeking sustenance in human populated areas as they run out of food in their traditional ranges. Long term research by the Centre for Conservation and Research in Block I of the Ruhunu National Park (Yala) has found that 52 percent of elephant calves do not survive to adolescence. Mainly due to political pressure, the elephants of Block I have been severely restricted from their former ranges with the use of electric fences erected between Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) and Forest Department (FD) land, both with similar habitat. The political pressure to erect the electric fence between DWC and FD land, which is also declared as protected, is to surreptitiously allow illegal encroachment into FD land for cultivation. This seriously impinges on the elephants access to food, especially during the dry season. Mothers no longer produce sufficient milk to feed their babies and those who struggle through the process of weaning have little to feed on for their growing needs. They starve to death. This is a process of planned annihilation.
A sign of desperation
The same is happening at the Uda Walawe National Park. Once a haven for elephants, which attracted hundreds of them, especially during the season of drought when there was food and water still available for them, you would now be lucky to see 40 or 50 in a day. Infested with Invasive Alien Species (IAS) and with its ranges in and out of the park reduced to just two, this devastation has taken place within the past two decades. The situation is about to get even worse as a local temple, with political backing, is about to claim a few hundred acres from the last major elephant range. Soon the spreading scrubs that have now conquered the grasslands of the park that once teemed with wild elephants will host walking skeletons of the last of the species and the ghosts of what there once was. And who will suffer the final consequences of this? The local communities who derive employment and income from this and other protected areas. Visitation will reduce to a trickle. What then of the hundreds of safari jeep drivers and hotel and guest house owners and their employees?
It is not just elephants but others of Sri Lanka’s iconic species too that are coming into increasing conflict with humans, all due to destruction of their habitats; these same species that help attract millions of dollars’ worth of foreign revenue for this country. An increasing number of leopards are being killed each year, especially in the hills, as the mountain forests are being cut and encroached into. There are now reports of the critically endangered sloth bear, once so elusive and avoiding human contact at any cost, beginning to encroach into areas of human habitation. This is a sign of desperation.
Planned development
The excuse for all of this destruction is that the country needs more food production – which it does – to break the shackles of having to import rice from other countries at higher prices. The answer, however, is not to clear more and more forests but to increase the productivity of the present agricultural fields. This can be achieved using technology and science. Apart from the replacement of the water buffalo with the hand tractor and the uninformed use of chemicals, farmers still use methodologies that were in operation a thousand years ago. These were fine when the population of the country was much smaller, the farmer was a respected figure in society and the markets were not controlled by middle men and mill owners who purchase the product at a minimal price. They add their exaggerated commissions and pass it on to the consumer at a profit never dreamed of by the producer. Yet, even with these antiquated methodologies, there are frequent reports of surpluses remaining unsold by the farmers. It has been suggested that this is due to the mill owners having large storage spaces, far larger than any a farmer could have, and then controlling the supply of grain reaching the markets. The government has to rectify this not only with improving productivity and controlling the operations of the middle men but also in enhancing the societal positions of farmers so that they can see futures beyond just that of remaining at the bottom of the financial ladder. This will also encourage their children to follow in their parents footsteps. How ironic is it that the providers of the most important item for the survival of the human race – food – struggle to survive. As one sage is supposed to have said, “Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money” (alleged native American proverb).
Sri Lanka needs development, desperately so, but it has to be planned. In terms of conservation, there is a tool being used in parts of Africa and the US termed Land-Use Conflict Identification Strategy (LUCIS). This involves the planners meeting with the stakeholders of the area under consideration from agriculture, conservation and urban space to establish their values and opinions. From these discussions goals, objectives and sub-objectives are established. From the conservation point of view this will be based on the existing ecological value of the area and of its potential value. There are several steps to this process but the ultimate aim is for establishing regions where development and conservation can happen without harm to either humans or wildlife; human-wildlife coexistence. Drs. Jess Isden and Tempe Adams are using LUCIS in Botswana in the hope of resolving the conflicts there. It is also encouraging to learn that Dr. Chathura De Silva, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Town and Country Planning at the University of Moratuwa, is advocating the use of LUCIS in Sri Lanka and is studying its application in the local context with his students.
There is a further irony that similar stakeholder discussions as advocated with LUCIS were used when formulating an action plan to mitigate HEC by a committee specially set up specifically for this purpose by the president. This was an excellent plan that was practical and, if implemented, could have achieved its desired result of replacing conflict with coexistence. Sadly while the government appointed a committee to facilitate and oversee the implementation of the national action plan, no budgetary funds were allocated for its implementation. So, along with the previously formulated national policy for the conservation of the wild elephant, on which the plan was based, it lies gathering dust on a ministerial shelf without funding for full implementation. The DWC has selectively paid lip service to some aspects of it but it will not work unless enforced in the full. Sri Lanka has some of the foremost researchers on the Asian elephant who were responsible for the formulation of both the policy and action plan. It is sad that their expertise is used by other countries and not in their own country where they are shunned rather than listened to.
A betrayal of the people
As for the DWC, the statutory guardians of Sri Lanka’s wilderness and wildlife, whereas the field staff work tirelessly and with barely adequate resources to perform the tasks they are dedicated to, the hierarchy have long abrogated their roles as the organization of conservation. They would rather pander to political expediency even becoming mini politicians themselves. In its promised clean up of the system of government, it is hoped that the new president pays attention to the civil service too and takes appropriate steps to root out political appointees and replace them with those from within the service who have earned their positions through merit, hard work and strict adherence to the principles of the organizations they represent.
The DWC has completed a fresh census of the wild elephants, a vital count if performed scientifically and correctly and with plenty of time. Unlike Africa and its open savannas, Sri Lanka is dotted with forest cover making it difficult to conduct aerial counts. Instead it has to be done on the ground by professionals who can identify individual elephants, remember them and not count them twice. The count was conducted over three days with the use of enthusiastic amateurs and to ensure greater coverage, as these were moonlit nights, they were conducted then as well. This not only demonstrates the haste of the DWC to prove a predetermined figure of 7,000 as openly stated by several politicians before the census but also its ignorance of the wilderness for even hunters of old never did so on moonlit nights as not only did the animals see them and retreat but also the shadows created by the bright moonlight made it difficult to focus clearly on an animal. A grey elephant turns into a black, featureless silhouette.
Act now before it is too late
We seem to celebrate that Sri Lanka is a biodiversity hotspot without realizing that it is termed a hotspot because Sri Lanka’s biodiversity is threatened. Ultimately, if Sri Lanka is to continue to enjoy its precious position as a location with the highest biodiversity per unit area in Asia and visitors to it, especially from overseas, are to continue to flock to the island to see them, then the remaining natural habitats must be preserved and those damaged repaired, to conserve these areas and their habitats for posterity. As Professor Kotagama concluded, “…the time to act is now”.