Human-centric approach to HEC mitigation is not the way
Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya in the field in Habarana
They have no voice…….they are peppered with oozing gun-shot wounds, they are noosed causing grievous and agonizing injury and they are fed with tasty food with hakka-patas hidden within which blow off part of their jaws.
We, Sri Lankans, trumpet about our wild elephants, how they are beloved to us, but the ground reality is tragic beyond words.
The perennial question is: Why?
Why has Sri Lanka paid only lip service to mitigating the Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC)?
The answers which we have been discussing at high-level conferences have proved futile and what a handful of dedicated elephant researchers and conservationists have shouted from the rooftops backed by solid research has gone unheeded.
However, the conservationists will not be silenced and once again on August 15, the former Director General of the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya, will raise his voice on behalf of the voiceless elephants. He is an Environmental Scientist and Elephant Ethologist who has left the comforts of Colombo to relocate to Yodakandiya in southern Tissamaharama, all for the love of Sri Lanka’s majestic elephant.
Sharing the podium with him at the monthly lecture of the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society (WNPS) at 6 p.m. at the Jasmine Hall of the BMICH in Colombo will be Botswana elephant expert Dr. Tempe Adams. This is while World Elephant Day will be celebrated tomorrow (August 12). The lecture is titled ‘Co-existing with Wild Elephants: A Comparison between Botswana and Sri Lanka’.
A community-based village fence in the Galgamuwa area. Pic courtesy CCR
Botswana has 130,000 elephants and 2.7 million people, with about 350-400 elephants being killed annually and the number of human casualties usually in single figures. Sri Lanka, as per an official census of 2011, had 5,879 elephants and around 22 million people. In 2023 (last year), 476 elephants and 169 people lost their lives to the HEC.
Dr. Pilapitiya zeroes in on Sri Lanka’s failure to mitigate the HEC. The model for mitigation is outdated, based on a 1959 (65 years ago) Master Plan.
The crux of the matter, he says, is that Sri Lanka is trying to confine elephants to DWC Protected Areas (PAs). HEC mitigation is being attempted from a human-centric approach, without taking into consideration elephant biology, ranging patterns and behaviour.
The analogy of trying to drive all elephants outside PAs into PAs, is like pouring a jug of water into a glass that is already full.
“It cannot be done,” he says, stressing that the way of confining elephants to DWC PAs is by erecting electric fences on their (PA) boundaries, as of now amounting to about 4,500 km of fencing. He has taken data meticulously collected by the Centre for Conservation and Research (CCR) headed by die-hard researcher Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando.
Looking at the lay of the land, Dr. Pilapitiya points out that the DWC PAs are surrounded by Forest Department PAs and Other State Forests (OSFs). Do elephants understand administrative boundaries, with over 60% of fences being inside forests, with elephants on both sides of that fencing.
The obvious conclusion is that fences constructed inside forests cannot protect people, crops and settlements, while elephants which lose access to part of their range because of such fences have to find new resources to survive. Hence such fences, tragically, drive them to raiding.
Common sense and a workable solution to the HEC, according to Dr. Pilapitiya would be a fence being where the protection is needed – at the boundary of developed areas.
With 44% of Sri Lanka seeing humans and elephants sharing the same landscape, he urges that the way forward from conflict to co-existence is clear. An electric fence should not be a boundary demarcation, but one that keeps humans and elephants separate. These fences should be on ecological boundaries and support from the people, politicians and other government agencies is essential for the DWC to implement this workable answer to the HEC.
He suggests ‘community-based fences’ and ‘seasonal agricultural fences’, while reiterating that currently there are around 70 villages that are thus protected and co-exist with elephants in relative harmony, largely supported by CCR and also DWC. This model has been tried, tested and perfected over 15 years by CCR.
Elaborating on ‘seasonal paddy field fencing’, he says after the harvest is gathered, transported and stored till the next season, the fences around the paddy fields come off, allowing the elephants to feed on the crop residue which is of no use to the farmer. Currently, there are around 25 paddy tracts or more thus protected and there is human-elephant co-existence.
“Living with elephants or co-existence is achievable, if we all work towards it,” adds Dr. Pilapitiya.
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