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No more chasing of non-problem elephants into Wilpattu: Experts
A pair of happy Wilpattu elephants enjoying a frolic in a lake. They too will suffer if more elephants get driven into the park. Pic by Namal Kamalgoda
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s offer of driving elephants away from a village area into the Wilpattu National Park has been cried down by prominent conservationists who say such drives have achieved nothing and the government should use its own science-based action plan, lying in limbo since last December.
At a recent meeting with villagers of Karuwalagaswewa in the Puttalam District, the president was heard instructing officials to look at the possibility of driving elephants out of the area into Wilpattu and fencing them off.
The meeting was the 11th in the series of “Gama Samaga Pilisandara” (Dialogue with Villages) discussions initiated by Mr. Rajapaksa. It was held on February 20 in the village of Karuwalagaswewa. About 1533 people live in the area, and their livelihoods mainly depend on paddy and chena cultivation.
One of the main demands put to the president was that elephants be chased away from the village and that an electric fence be erected to keep the animals out of homes and farms.
A young elephant dying of starvation after being driven and fenced into a park. Pix courtesy Biodiversity Conservation and Research Circle of Sri Lanka
“We cannot even step out of our homes after 6 p.m. as elephants roam in the area. What we cultivate is also often destroyed by the elephants,” one villager complained.
President Rajapaksa expressed sympathy for the villagers’ plight, saying they suffered from an endless tug-of-war between officials, their respective institutions and local elected officials and that human-elephant conflict needed a permanent solution. He was afterwards heard asking his officials to consider driving the animals out of the area.
Elephant experts said large-scale elephant drives would not work and begged the government to follow the recommendations of the Human-Elephant Conflict Mitigation Action Plan submitted by a government-appointed presidential committee last December.
“Elephant drives are not a successful solution,” the convener of Biodiversity Conservation and Research Circle of Sri Lanka, Supun Lahiru Prakash, said. “The government would just waste public money for solutions proved to be a failure.”
Lone male elephants are the main crop raiders, he explained, but it was mainly the herds, consisting of females and young animals, that were targeted in drives.
“So, the trouble-makers stay in the area and the others become trapped in the wilderness, starving, as there is a limit to what an ecosystem can support,” Mr. Prakash said.
An infamous drive chasing herds into the Lunugamwehera National Park in 2006
While it is a large sanctuary, the habitat of Wilpattu National Park is not suited to supporting a high density of elephants, Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya, the former director-general of the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) pointed out.
“Studies done in Sri Lanka and India show that the density of elephants in primary and secondary forests such as Wilpattu is in the range of 0.2-0.3 elephants per square kilometre, while the density of elephants in scrub jungle and savannah grasslands is around three elephants per square kilometer,” Dr. Pilapitiya said.
“There have been many attempts to drive elephants into Wilpattu over the last 40 years, and fences have been erected to keep the elephants in the park. Had these drives and fences been successful we should not have any elephants outside Wilpattu,” he remarked.
Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando of the Centre for Conservation and Research (CCRSL), who has conducted extensive research on Asian elephants, pointed out that an elephant drive was carried out in the same area as recently as November-December 2020.
“Going by the results of that and all the previous drives that have been done there and elsewhere, we can only expect the same results,” he said.
No drive has been able to eliminate elephants from a drive area, but as a result of being driven the elephants that remain (or return) become much more aggressive towards people and, therefore, conflict increases,” according to Dr. Fernando’s research.
“If large numbers of elephants are driven out of their home ranges and fenced into protected areas the herds, invariably composed of non-problem-causing females and young, could starve to death inside the protected area,” he said.
An elephant starves after being driven into habitat without sufficient food
In addition, the herds that used to be entirely inside the protected area, also starve to death because the ‘carrying capacity’ is exceeded by the forced influx of elephants.
“If the elephants seem to be a problem to village communities and agriculture, then without trying to confine elephants to Wilpattu National Park, which is tried, tested and failed solution, why not fence the villages and agriculture?” Dr. Pilapitiya queried.
“This has been successfully pilot tested in the Anuradhapura and Kurunegala districts by CCRSL for more than eight years, so in my opinion, community-based village and seasonal agricultural fences should be erected to solve the problem faced by communities in the Karuwalagaswewa area,” he added.
“The government has the option of trying a successfully demonstrated model or trying a tried, tested and failed model. It is unfortunate that the government appears to be choosing the tried, tested and failed model of elephant drives into Wilpattu National Park,” the former DWC chief said.
He said even if the government still believed – without foundation – that drives were the solution, the least it could do was monitor the translocated elephants by fitting radio collars on some males and females in herds to ascertain the success of the project.
He referred to the presidential committee report on the best ways of resolving the issue, pointing out that the report had been initiated by this government and that the committee had comprised many stakeholders.
“The committee’s suggestions include constructing community-based electric fences such as village and paddy field fences to prevent elephants entering and causing damage to settlements and crop fields,” Dr. Pilapitiya said.
“A roadmap for addressing human-elephant conflict comprehensively has been given to the government by experts.
“Based on my experience of working on human-elephant conflict issues in Sri Lanka and in many Asian and African elephant range countries, I think that this Action Plan is among the best and most practical plans I have seen.
“If the government does implement this plan fully, even on a district-by-district basis, I am very confident that we can get the conflict under control in a few years, and farmers and their crops would be protected,” Dr. Pilapitiya emphasised.