Photo courtesy of WNPS
The Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) has, through pressure from the government, commenced large scale elephant drives once more. They are trying to drive approximately 150 elephants from an area of high Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC), the Kurunegala and Anuradhapura Districts, to the Wilpattu National Park. Currently, some of these elephants have taken refuge in the National Livestock Development Board farm at Oyamaduwa and others have gone into locations that didn’t have elephants. With no ready sources of food, they are starving and greatly stressed. This will only increase HEC in those areas.
Even if the drive is successful in sending whatever numbers survive into Wilpattu, their prospects there are not much better. The carrying capacity in the park is insufficient for more elephants to survive inside. Lacking large grasslands, the major diet of elephants, Wilpattu has never been a place of elephants. Some travel to its Eastern border during the wet season where the open plains of the area are covered in lush grasses. However, for most of the year there are very few even in these areas and hardly any within the park.
HEC is not new. It has been around for several decades now, ever since the Mahaweli Development Scheme when areas of previous elephant habitat were taken for development projects and the wildlife driven from those areas to make room for them. Elephants were the only species large enough to show some resistance, for which they have paid a heavy price. Between 2010 and 2023, according to DWC data, more than 4,000 elephants died and almost another 400 in 2024 alone. A survey in 2011 determined that there were approximately 6,000 left in Sri Lanka, give or take 10 percent. An elephant’s gestation period is 18 months to give birth to a calf. Generally, elephants only give birth to one calf. Therefore, taking the numbers killed and the survey done in 2011, the writing is on the wall for the extinction of this magnificent species. A recent survey in August 2024, the results of which are awaited, will no doubt determine that they have increased in number after all it is politically advantageous to do so. However, logically, there cannot be an increase in numbers with the numbers of deaths being reported since 2011 unless the survey results in 2011 was incorrect. To emphasise – 6,000 in 2011, over 4,000 killed since 2011, takes 18 months for a elephant calf to be born, remaining elephants from the 6,000 excluding the calves born 2,000.
So why has HEC increased over this time with no real solution to mitigate the situation? The two main reasons are political interference resulting in land encroachment and deforestation creating habitat loss and the lack of resources that the DWC must have to implement a scientific based strategy according to the National Action Plan (NAP) that has been developed with all relevant people. Almost 70 percent of our elephants live outside national parks with about 44 percent of our landmass have elephants and humans living together.
Previous drives conducted in the past have resulted in absolute carnage to the elephants and with no expected result achieved.
- They had a very low success rate with many elephants either returning to where they were driven from or perishing in the trauma of the drive.
- Every national park has a carrying capacity for the number of elephants it can host. If this number is exceeded the food species for these large animals soon depletes and they will seek to leave the park or die of starvation.
- Elephant drives increase the aggression of elephants, particularly of the males. Often deafened and sometimes blinded by the firecrackers used for the drive, they become immune to these deterrents and more antagonistic of humans leading to the increase in HEC.
- The main cause of HEC is the often politically sponsored encroachment of people into protected areas and other elephant habitats.
And yet the government has begun another of its drives against its previous judgement, the learned views of academics and researchers and the results of bitter experience.
Hopes dashed?
It was hoped that the election of the new government with an overwhelming mandate would result in a change of political attitude. This was especially so since it gave an undertaking to make decisions based on science and knowledge and not on political expediency. Alas, as afar as elephant conservation is concerned, that does not seem to be the case.
It must never be forgotten that there are human lives lost, too, in this conflict (over 1,000 between 2010 and 2023); lives that could be saved without irredeemable damage to wildlife and the long term economic prosperity of this country. There is a solution that has been tried and tested and only awaits implementation; it is not a knee-jerk, politically motivated solution but one that is well thought out with science as a base, with the involvement of all stakeholders including the agricultural sector and local government officials.
National Action Plan
A committee was established by a previous president inclusive of all stakeholders – elephant researchers; the ministries and departments of Wildlife, Forestry, Mahaweli and Agriculture; local government; and NGOs – to determine a long term solution to the conflict. A comprehensive National Action Plan was formulated with the agreement of all for addressing and reducing the conflict. This has never been implemented in full and much of what is taking place now could have been averted had it been.
The focus of the plan is keeping humans safe while allowing elephants to roam in areas that will support and sustain them. Fundamental to this is the erection of community and agricultural fencing protecting people and their cultivation. This has been tried and tested in over 70 villages in the North Central and North East Provinces with a very high success rate. Currently, the DWC has erected enough fencing to go around this island over twice yet HEC has progressively increased. This is because they are mostly in the wrong places, with elephant habitat on either side. Driven to desperation, elephants will find ways to break even electric fences. Of course, in the DWC’s defense, many of these fences have come up due to political insistence.
In keeping with the undertaking of the government prior to election, please let science and understanding lead the way in policy formulation. Please stop these destructive elephant drives and other illegal encroachment into elephant habitat and stop these needless deaths of both species. Please constitute an advisory committee for the implementation of the National Action Plan as soon as possible. Please stop this senseless killing of elephants and the deaths of people. There are no quick solutions to a conflict of decades but when the knowledge determines action, then resolution is possible.
Unless elephant drives are halted, the conflict will continue until there are no elephants remaining in the wild. After all, elephants and other wildlife are one of the major attractions for foreign visitors and a major source of revenue for the country and local communities. About 30 percent of our foreign visitors choose to come to Sri Lanka to see our wildlife. How will the world look on us if we drive elephants into extinction? Will they still come to gaze on barren wastes that were once teeming with wildlife?