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Resettlement in the north: Be mindful of human elephant conflict
View(s):The talk of the town these days is the UN’s Human Rights report mainly discussing the plight of the victims of the war in northern Sri Lanka. But if development and resettlement efforts in the Northern Province is carried out in a haphazard way, the people in the area will have to face another intensified conflict that will cost lives of elephants as well as people, warns Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando.
Many villages and cultivation areas in northern and eastern Sri Lanka were abandoned at the height of the war.
Some of them were not inhabited for decades, making them ideal habitats for elephants that would have profited by the optimal habitat and flourished in the area. So people who return to their villages may have to deal with jumbos who now consider it their birthright to be there.
There are many new resettlement programmes too currently underway. “It is possible to establish these new settlements in a way to reduce the conflict between man and beast, so this opportunity should not be wasted,” urged Dr. Fernando.
Instead of settling along roads, which leads to ‘ribbon development’ with elephants going through, one could cluster the houses together – so that the communities could erect electric fences protecting their settlements, suggests Dr. Fernando.
Not only would it make it easier to protect such settlements from elephants, such clusters would also greatly facilitate provision of common facilities, leading to more cohesive communities.