News
The sad fate of our majestic elephants
View(s):Changes in land-usage patterns have resulted in a continuous contraction of the habitat available to the elephant. Today there is little room for the animals to roam.
Story and pix by Kanchana Kumara Ariyadasa and Hiran Priyankara.
Today, the rising elephant population and the continuously shrinking of land availability, has led to food scarcity among the growing numbers of beasts. The food scarcity has led herds roaming in villages and destroying crops.
At locations where vegetable refuse is dumped, the hungry beasts often rush to tractors bringing in loads of vegetable garbage
This has forced the workers to barricade the area before dumping the vegetable waste and remove the barriers once the tractors leave the location.
Elsewhere villagers pointed to jak trees and other crops damaged by elephants in their search for food.
The growing elephant population is leading to a rising number of clashes between man and beast.
It is time the authorities acted to bring the situation under control.
This picture of elephants at a garbage dump at Digampathaka speaks volumes
A tractor, its driver and a wild elephant
Workers now enclose areas with barbed wire before tractors dump their loads of garbage
The once lords of our forests now reduced to raiding garbage dumps
Hungry elephants rush in, to grab tit bits from tractors dumping vegetable garbage, as an anxious driver looks on
A farmer views the destruction left by a herd of elephants at his farm in Anamaduwa