ENVIRONMENT BULLETIN-SRI LANKA: Fewer Elephants Are Able to Roam the Wild

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Jun 20 1998 (IPS) - At the turn of the century there were as many as 1,200 wild elephants in Sri Lanka’s forests. Two years short of the new millennium, that number has dwindled to one third.

Sri Lankan conservationists believe time is running out for the wild beasts who may end up surviving only as exhibits in zoos or for ceremonial purposes in the island’s Buddhist temples.

Many plans have been made in the past for the protection of the pachyderm, but little has been doe beyond “talking, writing and planning”, says Jayantha Jayawardene, well-known conservationist.

Trying to put elephant survival back on the national agenda, Jayawardene together with Professor Charles Santiapillai, another independent wildlife expert, organised a two-day meeting of 150 people last month, to discuss the situation.

Everyone present agreed there could be no quick-fix solutions, but that they made time to attend the first-ever national symposium on elephant management and conservation meant there is a sense of urgency.

Says Iranganie Serasinghe, a noted Sri Lankan conservationist: “It is remarkable that the organisers were able to bring together this group of experts — in spite of differences of opinion. This is the first courageous step towards saving the elephant from extinction.”

Even Jayawardene, and Santiapillai, an expert on the Asian Elephant and professor at Sri Lanka’s University of Peradeniya, were surprised by the response. “It was beyond our expectations,” Jayawardene said.

The conference discussed a wide range of issues including the roots of the human-elephant conflict, management and translocation of wild elephants, feeding wild elephants, breeding elephants in captivity and trends in elephant conservaton legislation.

While many suggestions and recommendations were made at the meeting, veteran elephant-watcher Lyn de Alwis’ plea for a “permanent task force to track and protect the elephant” was enthusiastically applauded by the audience and organisers said that the government should give serious consideration to the suggestion.

De Alwis is a former director of the government’s department of wildlife conservation and a former director of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group set up in 1980 to promote the conservation of the Asian elephant.

The fight to save the Sri Lankan elephant began in the 1950s when for the first time, with the population rising, villagers started encroaching on forest land. An estimated 1,163 elephants were wiped out between 1950 and 1970, 639 killed by farmers to safeguard their crops.

Fifty years ago, Sri Lanka had an estimated population of 7 million and half the island was forested. Today the population has zoomed to 18 million, and less than 20 percent of the island is under green cover.

“This is the crux of the human-elephant conflict. The needs of both humans and elephants must be addressed in areas where they compete for the limited resources of the land,” Santiapillai said, arguing that rural poor people should be included in elephant conservation programmes in their areas so tat they would be concerned about the survival of the species.

The elephant expert has suggested a two-fold approach to the problem – encouraging the adoption of land-use strategies that are compatible with elephant conservation, and in areas where elephants and humans overlap, make sure that people derive some tangible benefits from the presence of elephants.

One of the most widely used management techniques in Sri Lanka to mitigate the human-elephant conflict is moving elephants out of areas of conflict to national parks. There have been several “elephant drive” operations by government veterinarians.

But more often than not, elephants have returned to their original areas, for instance in the Mahaweli area.

Sri Lanka’s ambitious Mahaweli development project, which took six years to complete and brought water and power to the arid, western parts of the island in the late 1980s, played havoc with the environment.

Some 650,000 acres of mainly forest land were cleared by settlers, and elephant herds and other wildlife forced to move deeper into the receding jungle.

Jayawardene, who spent 15 years studying the problems faced by elephants in the Mahaweli area, say they continued to come back to their traditional haunts, and clashed with the new ettlers. “With time these conflicts increased in intensity and caused the death of a number of settlers and elephants,” he noted.

Now, conservationists say farmers should be given quick compensation for damaged crops, so the need to shoot animals will lessen with time.

Chula de Silva, a senior lawyer and conservationist, said that the government should change laws to include human-animal conflict. The government has said it will amend the Fauna and Flora Act, under which the elephant is a protected species.