Human-Elephant conflict in Sri Lanka

by Aathmika Mahasenan

A dwindling number of elephants, the largest land mammals on Earth are dying due to expanding human habitats into the pachyderm's natural habitat as the media portrays, or is this considered just a media hype to gain attention.

In recent years, media outlets covered stories on "human-elephant conflict". Why is it gaining so much attention this time?

The Department of Wildlife Conservative said there are currently about 6000 elephants. From 2010-to 2021, there have been 3338 elephant deaths. In 2020, 327 wild elephants were killed and the figure grew up to 369 in 2021.

Many of the elephant deaths last year were due to ‘Hakkapatas’ explosives, killing 68 creatures, while 65 elephants were killed by electrocution, 45 by gunfire, and 40 by toxic chemicals.

Publicity officer of the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) Hasini Sarthchandra told that human-elephant conflict is still rising which led to a decrease in elephants. She further said that the DWC has taken legal action against the persecutors.

Elephant population

?Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya former wildlife director comments that the last elephant population survey was done in 2011 by Dr. Charles Santiapilai and Dr. Wijeyamohan and other environmentalists scientists. He further says that it is very difficult to count elephants because of the thick forests in Sri Lanka unlike the grasslands in countries like Africa where you can do aerial count.

“People only think that thick forest is a good habitat for elephants, but good elephant habitat should be bigger than forests like scrub jungles and grasslands"

Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya states to check whether the elephant population in Sri Lanka has changed, you have to do another census.

"The department planned to do the census which is called the waterhole count, but they couldn’t due to weather…,” states Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya.

Dr. S Wijeyamohan, Zoologist and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Vavuniya assume there are probably 7000 elephants or even more than that since "it’s a strongly growing population".

Dr. Shanmugasundaram Wijeyamohan is a zoologist graduated from University of Peradeniya in 1994. He specializes in Wildlife Management and Conservation and studied aspects of elephant population dynamics and human-elephant conflict along with his guru Dr. Charles Santiapillai a world-renowned wildlife conservation expert and elephant conservation expert.

"If the population of elephants is increasing; deaths of elephants will increase as well. In the early 90s, there were 2000 to 3000 elephants. But today no survey was carried out in Sri Lanka. In 2021, 400 elephants have died of human-elephant conflict, but that’s what they say. We don’t know the actual numbers"

Dr. S Wijeyamohan reprimanded that this is not a conflict, but a mere 'interaction' between two species, humans and animals.

Many recommended it as “human-elephant coexistence model,” one that aims to reduce conflict by protecting villages and cultivations with barriers such as electric fences stated from a online news platform MongaBay

"Human-elephant conflict means one species is interacting in the interest of other species"

" 'Human-Elephant conflict' is just hype because talking about it will get a lot of attraction. There are a lot of people who exaggerate the number to create awareness that elephants are decreasing"

When asked about Dr. Wijeyamohan’s statement on human-elephant, Dri Pilapitiya said there is a conflict, however, it’s the strategy and the model they are using to protect elephants

"We have a conflict, but I do agree with him on one point, this conflict has been created because of bad planning and wrong strategy to deal with the human-elephant conflict. I wouldn’t call it an interaction”

Dr. Pilapitiya said the perception of the country can say there is an increase, which can be wrong. If the perception does show there is an increase, this is because large-scale development projects open out to forests that are in the elephant habitat, and those elephants go to other areas.

Solutions to mitigate human-elephant conflict

For many years, many have implemented solutions to stop elephant deaths, but the number of deaths is still on the rise.

The Sri Lanka research organization, Conservation, and Research Centre, headed by environmental scientist Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando through the subsidies, piloted an electric fence project with the cooperation of villagers who are faced with the wild elephant threat.

Dr. Pilapitiya said we are not trying to fence elephants into wildlife-protected areas, but only on the ecological boundaries when there are adequate contiguous forests.

Dr. Pilapitiya added we have been using the same model with different variations of it for the last 60 years and if it doesn’t produce good results, then the model is increasing the conflict.

"Then it is high time to check whether this model is right or wrong. We try to chase the elephants into these protected areas and put electric fences to keep them in and using this strategy if you look at the elephant distribution today, only 70% of the elephants are outside the wildlife department protected areas…."

Almost 99% of the wildlife department protected areas are surrounded by forest department protected areas.

Complicating matters further, the two departments of wildlife and forest have overlapping subjects that come in their purveyance.

"The wildlife department protected areas are surrounded by forest department protected areas and on the border, we erect an electric fence,” Dr. Pilapitiya stated.

"The strategy is wrong because if you put the electric fence on the forest and development, the elephant would enter where there is human activity. Elephants are risk-averse, the probability of elephants breaking the fence and going out is limited"

"The model has to be changed from putting fences where the ecological boundary is."

Dr. Pilapitiya further said that there are many forest patches due to bad development planning and it is too small for elephants to be in.

There have been news articles on elephants entering and destroying rural villages in parts of Sri Lanka and Dr. Pilapitiya said that we erect electric fences around villages and large paddy lands instead of the forest.

He further said if farmers want to protect their cultivated land from elephants, they have to put up electric fences around large paddy areas and once cultivation is over they have to remove it and re-erect it, once cultivation begins

The community/village-based agricultural paddy field census show there are about 50 -60 villages in the north-western and north-central province of Sri Lanka with 40 paddy tracks with electric fences which have been operating for the last 15 years.

"This is the model we are going for, not trying to fence elephants into wildlife protected areas, but only on the ecological boundaries when there are adequate contiguous forests, this problem can be minimized to a large extent."

Electric Fences

Department of Wildlife Conservation told that 65 elephants have been killed by electric fences or electrocution.

Dr. Pilapitiya argues that the electric fences do not kill an elephant but give a tiny shock.

“The fences have a high voltage with a very low ampere range.”

In addition, there is enough evidence now as one of the most intelligent animals, elephants learn how to break through the electric fence.

“This approach has been incorporated into the National Policy for Elephant Conservation and Management in Sri Lanka but is yet to be fully implemented," quoted from MongaBay

“The reason why some of the elephants die of electric fences is that people illegally connect their household or their main electricity to a fence. The main electricity is low voltage and high ampere range…"

"These specifically designed fences for elephants run on solar power through the energizer it is called high voltage very low ampere range."

Media

Media outlets in Sri Lanka vastly covered the "human-elephant conflict" in 2021.

Tharuka Dissanaike, policy specialist at UNDP and former wildlife and environment journalist said that Sri Lanka has large national parks for elephants, but those national parks are not in a condition or ecologically conducive for the elephant to live. So these elephants prefer to live amongst humans because of the cultivation and the home gardens.

Tharuka Dissanaike elucidated that a lot of people are with smartphones and they can record these attacks and publish them via social media.

"Back then, reporters used to go to national parks and villages to get stories done on elephants…now anyone can become reporters because everyone has a smartphone and access to social media/internet…"

She expressed clearly that this conflict is not causing a decline in the elephant population, however, it’s causing a threat to the elephants.

Dr. S Wijeyamohan stated that if you say the death of an elephant is because of human-elephant conflict, then it is the "deliberate killing of the elephant to protect the property".

The National Action Plan for the Mitigation of Human-Elephant Conflict proposed in 2020 on the directive of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and handed to the government was scrapped.

Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya said that the committee is upset that the government has not implemented the Mitigation of Human-Elephant Conflict and they are doing the same tried, tested, and failed methods.

Dr. Wijeyamohan told that most of the facts are not highlighted in articles, they wanted to show if the elephants are facing problems…

“They portray almost all incidents as human-elephant conflict he said.

Change in elephant habitat

Dr. Wijeyamohan also pointed out the fact that how the human population positively turns forests into grassland to become a good feeding ground for large herbivores like the elephants.

"It’s a good habitat for elephants to increase their population because grasslands have lush grass and are highly nutritious with water provided by the Mahaveli river…"

"This is a conversion of elephant habitat into an enhanced habitat. Not of deforestation and elephants are dying. When you clear the forest the elephant numbers tend to increase…so that it is easy to protect them," he stated.

Dr. Pilapitiya mentioned that Chena Cultivations is another way to create an ideal elephant habitat.

In Sri Lankan history Chena Cultivation is regarded as the oldest form of cultivation dating 5,000 years and it is still used among Sri Lankan today as well. Chena cultivation is a traditional practice and ancient Sri Lankans ensured that the environment was unharmed in the process. Once land becomes infertile it is abandoned by the farmers.

During the period of the Chena Cultivation, the leftover vegetation from the harvest provides a good source of food for elephants who flock in great numbers to consume it as soon as people leave.

Endangerment of Asian elephants and the laws

IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) shows that Asian elephants, in general, are endangered and laws have been only implemented in certain countries.

"Enforcement is weak," Dr. Pilapitiya stated.

He further states that DWC needs more staff for enforcement.

"The bigger problem for poor enforcement is political interference which did not allow any public service to do their job properly. They interfere."

Dr. Pilapitiya said that laws have to be applied across the board equally to everybody. Laws are there, but it's not being enforced because of a lack of manpower and financial resources to do enforcement and finally political interference which is stopping proper enforcement.

According to International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Asian elephant or Elephas Maximus is considered to be endangered. There are now only about 48,000-50,000 Asian Elephants found in 13 range states. More than 60% of the wild population exists in India alone. Only four other countries - Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka have more than 2,000 wild elephants.?A recent study suggested that almost 42% of the presently available habitat will be lost due to the combined effects of human pressure and climate change.

Related: https://www.iucn.org/news/species-survival-commission/202108/shrinking-spaces-worlds-largest-land-animal

When asked about the endangerment of Sri Lankan elephants, Dr. S Wijeyamohan stated that globally Asian Elephants are endangered, but based on what criteria, whether it is on their genetic pool and their diversity and how large the population should be.

He said if the human population increases, this will reach into all the habitats of all species which will cause endangerment to those species.

To this day, the human-elephant conflict has been rising and the media has been capturing and creating awareness of the human-elephant conflict.