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History |
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Sri Lanka
is a small island of 65,000 square miles. It has a population of
20 million people. It is also home to a wild elephant (Elephas
maximus) population of approximately 4,500 to 5,000. The
man-elephant ratio is 5000:1. About 5 square km of land is
needed to support an elephant in its forest habitat. |
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This wild
population is declining. The increasing human population, with
its demand for jungle land for development from the elephants
habitat, is causing problems to the wild elephant population.
Reducing habitats and the resultant Human-Elephant Conflicts,
which records the deaths of both the humans and elephants, is
the greatest threat to Sri Lanka’s wild elephants population. |
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The Sri
Lankan people have had a long association with the elephants.
During the reign of the Sri Lankan kings over 2000 years ago,
elephants were caught, tamed and used in large numbers for the
large scale and massive construction works that they initiated.
Large palaces, temples and vast reservoirs have been built with
the aid of elephants. |
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Initially there were elephants all
over the country except in a few coastal areas and the Jaffna
peninsula. During the reign of the Kandyan Kings, who ruled in
the central hills, elephants were caught and tamed for many
uses. The Kings used them for war against invaders, ceremonial
occasions and religious occasions. They even exported them to
India, Burma and Egypt. The king was the only person who could
capture wild elephants. |
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With the
Portuguese capturing maritime provinces of the country, they
introduced the Kraal or Keddah method of capture practiced in
India. The Dutch and the British, who conquered and ruled the
country subsequently also continued the capture of elephants
mainly by kraaling. Though some of these elephants were used by
the rulers for domestic purposes, they were mainly exported
since there was a big demand abroad for Sri Lankan elephants. |
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With the
advent of the British, who subsequently ruled the whole country,
the elephant population was greatly reduced. The British
indulged in shooting elephants as a sport and as a result a
large number of elephants were destroyed. They declared the
elephant as an agricultural pest and armed the villagers with
guns to enable them to protect their crops from elephants. They
even paid a bounty for each elephant killed. British planters,
opening out jungles lands in the hill country to plant tea and
coffee, also shot elephants in the montane forests thereby
driving the remnant herds down to the lowlands. There are no
elephants in the hill country now except for a small herd that
migrates occasionally. |
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Elephant
population and distribution |
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Prior to the
large scale destruction of forests, elephants enjoyed a high
population and a wide distribution throughout the island. Today,
except for a small remnant population in the Peak Wilderness
area, elephants are restricted to the lowlands, especially in
the Dry Zone. Over the past 200 years, human land-use has forced
the elephants from the wet and fertile regions of the south-west
of the island to much drier regions. |
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With the
exception of Wilpattu and Ruhuna National Parks, all other
protected areas are less than 1,000 km2 in extent. Ten areas are
less than 50 km2 and hence may not be large enough to
accommodate the annual home ranges of the elephant populations.
This problem was overcome to a certain extent in the Mahaweli
Development area, by linking protected areas such as the
Wasgomuwa National Park, Flood Plains NP, Somawathiya NP, and
Trikonamadu resulting in an overall area of 117,194 ha (or 1,172
km2) of contiguous habitat for elephants. However elephants in
this country are not wont to use corridors designed by man.
About 70% of the elephants' range extends outside the protected
areas, into human settlements and agricultural areas. |
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The number of
elephants in Sri Lanka today is but a fraction of what existed
about a hundred years ago. From a population well over 10,000
elephants in 1796 the figure came crashing down to less than
2000 in the mid 20th century. Different figures were given by
different people on the number of wild elephants. |
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During the
first half of this century, Sri Lanka had some of the best, and
probably the most wildlife conservation areas in Asia. Most of
them were located in the low country Dry Zone, where human
pressure was not serious enough to prevent the recovery of
elephant numbers. The recovery was slow at first, but under the
management of the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), the
number of elephants seems to have picked up somewhat in the
sixties. McKay, in 1973, estimated a minimum population size of
between 1,600 and 2,200 animals, while Thilo Hoffmann, in 1977,
suggested a much higher total of 4,000. |
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Estimates of
elephant numbers in the wild in Sri Lanka vary and this
underlines the difficulty of counting even such large animals in
the dense and tangled vegetation of its habitat. The DWC carried
out a survey of elephants in much of the safe areas of the
island in June 1993, and arrived at a minimum of 2,000 elephants
in the wild in the five regions: North-western, Mahaweli,
Central, Eastern and Southern. |
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Today the
elephant population estimate is between 4,000 and 5,000 of which
between 2,000 and 2,870 occur largely in the protected areas.
All these estimates may turn out to be underestimates, given the
difficulty in counting elephants in the scrub forest. |
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The number of
elephants in captivity too has declined from about 670 in 1955
to anything between 140 and 150 today. The distribution of tamed
elephants is quite distinctive and does not overlap with that of
the wild elephants. They appear to be confined to 14 smaller
districts out of a total of 22, in the south-west quarter of the
island. |
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Elephant and mahout: the age old relationship |
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Human-Elephant Conflict
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With the
reduction of their habitats elephant populations have broken up
and some herds have got pocketed in small patches of jungle.
With their movement restricted, especially when food and water
resources are depleted, elephants wander into new cultivated
areas, which were their former habitat, in search of food.
Elephants find ready source of food in these cultivated areas,
but wild elephants are unwelcome neighbours in agricultural
areas. |
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With their
large size and equally large appetites, elephants can easily
destroy the entire cultivation of a peasant farmer in a single
night. Therefore the farmers look upon the elephant as a
dangerous pest and would rarely regret its disappearance from
their area. Elephants are incompatible with agriculture unless
the damage they cause is compensated the anger and
frustrations of the farmers will increase. Thus the conflict
between man and elephant has become the most serious
conservation problems facing the DWC in Sri Lanka, where a
combination of deforestation, agricultural expansion, and human
population growth has substantially reduced the habitat that was
once available to the elephant. |
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The ecological
and social costs of clearing forests to resettle
villagers have proved to be very high. Wild elephants
have lost so much of their range in Sri Lanka that they
are now forced to prey on the communities that have
displaced them. |
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This has often been viewed
as the crux of the human-elephant conflict. Since 1950, a
minimum of 4,200 elephants have perished in the wild as a direct
result of the conflict between man and elephant in Sri Lanka.
The conflict has escalated in the recent past. During the last
twelve years alone, a total of 1,464 elephants were killed, with
672 humans being killed by elephants. |
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An
elephant killed in Tissamaharama |
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The Department
of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) has identified several areas
where the elephant-human conflict has become serious. The DWC
has adopted certain conservation measures to mitigate the
human-elephant conflicts. They included the use of thunder
flashes, crackers, noise, etc but the elephants soon learn to
ignore these as bluffs. |
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When these
initial efforts failed, the DWC adopted other measures. They
were; |
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a) |
the
establishment of elephant corridors |
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b) |
increasing the
extent of protected areas |
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c) |
translocation
of troublesome elephants |
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d) |
driving
elephants to new locations |
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e)
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erection of
electric fencing |
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f)
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ex-situ
conservation |
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g) |
the
integration of elephant conservation with economic
development |
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Another
important action was the government formulating and adopting
National Policy for Elephant Management and Conservation. |
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A herd of
elephants in Udawalawe National Park |
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Documents to Read |
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