11th May 1997

Jumbos to fly high

By Renuka Sadanandan

Some 11 elephants pocketed in a grassy val ley area in the upper Uva region will be the target of an ‘airlift operation’ currently being planned by the Wildlife Department.

The ambitious plan is the brainchild of the Department’s Deputy Director Dr Nandana Atapattu and envisages moving the elephants presently roaming the area around the villages and estates of Poonagala, Makaldeniya, Roseberry and Diyaluma to the Uda Walawe or Yala national parks, away from conflict with the villagers and estate labour. According to Upali Samaraweera, Opposition Leader of the Uva Provincial Council there have been eight deaths reported in the past few months from the Makaldeniya Estate and this has prompted the authorities to consider moving the elephants out.

The problem is not new. There have been elephants reported in this area in the past, even twenty years ago when a planter in the Poonagala estate wrote about a tusker in the tea estate. But the situation apparently has been aggravated in the past few years when during rainless months as the hilly grasslands become barren, the elephants then driven by hunger ascend the slopes, venture into the nearby villages under cover of nightfall, causing damage to crops and human beings.

"Earlier the elephants would move in and out of this upper Uva area from lower Uva, but now with increasing cultivation, there is no connecting jungle and the jumbos are pocketed here," says Dr Atapattu. The valley between Makaldeniya and Roseberry which earlier had perennial water, now no longer provides enough for the elephants, he says.

The Wildlife Department was called to the area by the politicians and estate officials in the vicinity who felt that the elephant problem was becoming too acute. Accordingly the Department on March 10, using some 25 of their men and aided by around 200 estate labourers attempted to move the elephants from the Roseberry area to Makaldeniya. The plan was to cross the Koslanda- Wellawaya main road to the Roseberry estate lower division and then drive the jumbos to Dimiyagolla, a jungle area about 30 km away where there is already a herd of 30 elephants.

These elephants, according to Dr Atapattu frequently migrate to the nearby Uda Walawe national park and his plan was to drive them all there ultimately and fence off the area to prevent them from returning. But their efforts were futile, mainly because of the hilly terrain which made it difficult for the trackers to follow the elephants, who also being loners, moved in different directions. After nine days, the drive was abandoned and the plan to airlift the elephants adopted.

Though the Wildlife Department has conducted elephant drives in the past, including the controversial Handapanagala drive which raised the ire of conservationists who questioned the futility of moving the elephants whom they felt would return in time to their old habitats, the proposed airlift goes a step further.

The elephants will be tranquilised, tied up then revived and then loaded onto a special container that will be lifted by helicopter to the roadway and then loaded on to a lorry that will transport it to the park.

Dr Atapattu who says he has successfully translocated 77 elephants thus far without any fatalities concedes that this operation is a risky one, and could result in some elephant deaths. But in his view there is no alternative. ‘There are about 11 elephants, most of them bull elephants and a small herd of three, of which one is a young elephant moving with the mother. One of these elephants is a rogue that has already killed some people. We cannot leave them there when they are clearly in direct confrontation with the villagers. Our best hope is to get them to Dimiyagolla and then to UdaWalawe." The villagers in these areas are unarmed and none of the elephants thus has any gunshot injuries, he adds.

Tranquilising an elephant in such a precipitous terrain is a major danger because the animal still moving after being darted could suffer an injury as it falls. Also the animal has to be reached quickly by the Wildlife men, tied up and then revived within a short period. Further loading the elephant on to a lorry, explains Dr Atapattu, cannot be done in this area because there are no roads for the vehicle. All this, he says, made the airlift the only option.

The plan then is to locate the animals on foot, drive them to a safer area, then tranquilise them, after which they will be tied up before being revived again. "Still after darting the elephant, it may climb a hill and fall down but that will be our bad luck," Dr Atapattu says. "It’s a chance we have to take." To reach the animal after tranquilising it, which ideally should be within 30-45 minutes, he plans to use a helicopter to save time. Then the animal will be carried via a modified container that will be airlifted by helicopter to the special lorry that will be on the main road.

In certain instances, this operation has been done in South Africa using nets and belts but mortality has been high, says Dr. Atapattu which is why he is opting for a container.

The helicopter will thus have to carry a four to five ton elephant in a container weighing three tons and Dr. Atapattu is exploring the possibility of hiring one that could take this load. A smaller helicopter will also be needed for the Wildlife Dept men to get to the elephant, he says. All this is necessarily a high cost operation. Uva Provincial Council Opposition Leader Upali Samaraweera who assisted in the first drive has offered to help to raise the necessary funding for the operation from foreign agencies. The estimates range from his figure of Rs 3 million to Dr Atapattu’s figure of 7 million.

The airlift is being planned for June or July to give time for the arrangements to be finalised but Dr Atapattu adds that he is open to ideas on how the elephants can be moved in alternate ways.

Tinker, tailor with a flavourBy Roshan Peiris

Executive Chef of Taj Samudra M.A. Ra-sheed spends his day tasting a variety of dishes. It may be the odd cutlet, Punjabi samosa, salad, assorted curries, lassi, fruit salad or any other dessert.

Lanky and pleasant with good public relations Rasheed wears a chef’s cap and ten tiny black buttons on his coat like "tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor." He supervises ninety-five cooks and smiles when he talks of catering for three thousand guests at a function as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

It is a sort of daily routine to be geared to cater to the many guests who look forward to the Taj Samudra’s well known hospitality.

"Excited? Well one can’t afford to be," said this man from Kerala with seventeen years of experience in the hospitality industry and with a gruelling training at Bombay at the parent Taj Hotel.

"There you see the bakery," he pointed out, "It is an almost twenty-four hour service and the chefs were all busy with rolls, bread rolls, slicing bread with an unnerving exactitude and kneading dough.

In 1989 Rasheed started the Navaratna restaurant. Each restaurant at the Taj has its own kitchen apart from the main kitchen where one gazes with amazement at the boxes of vegetables, eggs and dough. Over five hundred kilos of meat pass through Ra-sheed’s various kitchens daily.

When there are banquets there is much more.

Rasheed is fastidious. He was keen to know whether the sweet lassi he offered us was just right.

"I go around daily tasting food at random. If there are minor mistakes I try to correct them and for bigger ones, I don’t mete out punishment but explain where the chef has gone wrong.

"Maintaining good relations with my chefs is a must. So daily, I have lunch with them where we freely discuss any nagging problems we have.

"I am at work by seven after a brief breakfast at the coffee shop.

"Every morning the different kitchens log books are brought to me at my office so that I know what takes place. Also I am told about the requirements for the day ranging from the butchery to fruits, vegetables and all the other assorted food items which go to make a hotel’s food palatable for its guests.

I also have daily conferences with the general manager.

"I share a rice and curry meal with my chefs for lunch, but for dinner I take a very light meal. In the evenings I swim some times but until I go to sleep my mind is busy with planning on a daily basis.

"There is no holiday as such. Our guests are of paramount importance. It has been the credo of the Taj Samudra honoured through the years. There are 400 rooms and often most of them are full. The hotel business is very competitive and hence one cannot afford to relax."

The steamy hot kitchens with huge cauldrons (boiling whatever is confined in them,) are awe inspiring and give out a rather suffocating feeling. But the smiling chefs busy making samosa or spring rolls, bread or salad make it very pleasant.

I am sorry to add a jarring note but when I asked the unsmiling public relations lady whether she could inform the executive chef that I had come, she pointed to a telephone on the next desk and with barely a minimum of courtesy said ‘use that phone and dial nine.’ I did and could not refrain from asking her whether it was not her job. "I was busy," was her laconic reply and she a public relations officer!!

Rasheed made up for it with his unfailing courtesy as did all his smiling chefs.

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