Sunday Times 2
End of the road for Govirajas and Sacred Beasts of Rajarata
View(s):Taken off the paddies and washed off the mud, the Rajarata farmer is fit to be placed on a throne to be a king, ‘Goviraja’, the saying went. He was the producer of rice, the staple food of the Lankans since time immemorial.
The elephant has been a sacred animal to Buddhists and has been associated with Buddhist ceremonies for eons. The Sri Lankan elephant, bigger and darker than the Indian species has the generic name: Elephas Maximus — Maximus meaning bigger and bigger.
The two have been brought into conflict for the past many decades being put together into a habitat too small and in resources few, for either species.
Media reports, more particularly TV Channels, show the pathetic plight which this farming community spread across the Northern and Eastern provinces — Dry Zone or Rajarata as they are called — has been reduced to. TV dramatically exposes their pitiable plight.
Farmers, whose only livelihood is the cultivation of rice, vegetables and fruits have their crops destroyed daily by marauding and hungry elephants in search of food. Their homes are destroyed in no time by the jumbos who by instinct are aware that paddy is stocked in houses and stores of farmers. Daily, both parties sustain severe injuries and even death.
Recent reports say that elephants are camped on the outskirts of villages and villagers risk their lives on venturing out. Children go to school risking their lives and some have been killed.
It is hard to imagine that in this 21st century, there are isolated communities where a member of a family has to rest on a tree perch all night to sound an alarm about approaching wild elephants for residents at home.
But don’t blame the elephants. Most of these cultivators are occupying their traditional homelands. Forest Department records indicate that the country’s forest cover decreased from 70 percent in the 1920s to around 16 percent today. And the majestic beasts had roamed from the jungles in the deep south to the north and east including the hill country before that.
However, the population of the entire island was less than five million then, and today the cleared lands have enabled the country to be self-sufficient in rice — for a population of over 20 million.
Despite the Sri Lankan elephant being declared an endangered species by the World Wildlife Fund in 1986, the latest available death tolls are alarming. In 2022, the number of elephants killed was 433 and humans 145.
The year before, in 2021, the death toll was 375 elephants and 145 humans. In 2019, it was 407 elephants and 122 humans.
The elephant population has been estimated to be between 2500 and 4000 by most wildlife authorities although the ever-cheerful minister overseeing Wildlife and Agriculture, Mahinda Amaraweera, recently almost doubled the elephant population, citing an unnamed survey.
There is enough historical evidence that these lords of our jungles had the patronage of the monarchy and received protection even in regard to export. They are still considered a national treasure by the majority of the people. But they appear to be doomed despite the existing law providing the death penalty for killing an elephant.
Despite the public outcry, tears — genuine and crocodile — being shed on TV for them, and the human victims of the conflict, the massacre continues unabated and the so-called ‘authorities’ appear to be spectators. The Govirajas and the Sacred Beast are doomed.
A strategy deployed to protect farmers has been the construction of electric fences in the vicinity of villages.
There are videos of elephants destroying posts to which the electric wires are fixed and walking over into protected fields in search of food while destroying houses. Electric fences are meant to provide a sufficient shock to the animals who come into contact with them and scare them away but these fences are reported to have recently electrocuted 23 elephants. It is said that unscrupulous individuals have illegally connected these fences to power lines. Hakka Pattas — jaw bombs — are said to blast away the trunks and mouths of elephants who pick them up.
Are these acts of desperation of people trying to protect themselves and their families from beasts or acts of sheer perversity?
However, the humaneness of the peasant farmers emerges when an elephant has fallen into a deep well with the calf bleating for help or the elephant is stuck in a marsh. The villagers collectively rescue their marauders with Wildlife officials and are delighted to see the freed animals bolting into the surrounding jungle.
The talk of elephant corridors for herds to move through thick jungles to more spacious habitats has been heard since the 1970s. How effective have they been?
Some years ago, Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya, a well-known wildlife expert who had worked for many international organisations, had volunteered to serve in the Wildlife Department and was welcomed by many officials who knew about his professional expertise. Dr. Pilapitiya is described as an elephant ethnologist. But the minister’s son who was throwing his weight about in the ministry appeared to resent Dr. Pilapitiya’s presence and soon the expert was out of government service.
Dr. Pilapitiya has now been appointed to head a committee on the elephant-human conflict but it is reported that the government is unable to make sufficient budgetary allocations for upscaling and implementing the plan.
No money to save the people who for generations had toiled in the fields to feed the nation and no money to save the animal which has always been a part of the country’s cultural heritage. Can we imagine Sri Lanka sans elephants?
Perhaps, some will say we can do it without all this mumbo-jumbo by becoming another Singapore.
Finally a quotation from a research paper presented by three engineers of the Department of Civil Engineering with an academic from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. (They had studied the impact of those displaced from their hill country villages following the construction of Mahaweli reservoirs and their resettlement in the newly opened up Mahaweli lands.
“The planners of elephant corridors forgot that elephants live for 70 years and carry a 70-year memory. The fact that project planners should consider the time scales of nature is emphasised.”
(The writer is a former editor of The Sunday Island, The Island and consultant editor of the Sunday Leader. He could be contacted at gamma.weerakoon@gmail.com)