Point of view

In a poignant article entitled, "Enter the jumbo", that was published in The Sunday Times (December1998), Tharuka Dissanaike highlights the horror of the people living in the Macaldeniya estate who are forced to deal with a dozen marauding elephants, with no relief in sight. One estate labourer has already been killed and several others have had a narrow escape. Unfortunately, in Sri Lanka, there are far too many groups of people (conservationists, animal rights activists, clergy, poachers, politicians etc) interested in elephants, and each sees the animal differently.

But for those poor people of the Macaldeniya estate, who bear the brunt of elephant depredations regularly, the elephants are both a bloody curse and a liability. There seems to be no advantage at all to them of having the elephants around. Understandably, the people are angry and helpless. Most of them, being Hindus, worship the elephant-headed God, Ganesha, as a remover of all obstacles, and today must wish that he would remove the elephants sooner than later. None of them will ever regret the disappearance of the elephants from their neighbourhood.

Their patience is running out, and if nothing is done to safeguard their lives and property against marauding elephants, the animals themselves are unlikely to survive for long. For, all the evidence points to the fact that where there is intense competition between elephants and people, with whom they share the land, human interests inevitably prevail. Sooner or later, these animals will join the 1,425 wild elephants that have already been killed in the escalating conflict between man and elephant in Sri Lanka since 1950. In the recent past, most of the elephants have been killed as they interfered with agriculture, and not for their ivory alone. The human-elephant conflict seems to have replaced poaching in Sri Lanka. Many people still mistakenly believe that poaching is the one and only cause for the disappearance of wildlife, and if it were controlled, all would be well and good. Although poaching is a serious conservation issue, it is often the misuse of land that is responsible for the depletion of game animals.

To the preservationist or animal rights activist, who has not experienced the hardships that many people suffer in sharing their land with the elephant, the animal is seen as one of nature's magnificent creations, that evokes powerful emotions. But to the people of the Macaldeniya estate, the destruction caused by the elephant can be traumatic.

The people of the Macaldeniya estate in Koslanda have had a raw deal for a long time. A small group of elephants (numbering perhaps 12 animals) have destroyed their crops and at times even killed people. The intemperate appetite of the elephants coupled with their sheer size means that people and elephants cannot live together in agricultural areas, unless their economic losses can be properly and promptly compensated. But when the elephants begin killing people, they are essentially doomed in that area, and we therefore suggest that the small group of elephants in the Macaldeniya estate be captured, domesticated and used in forestry, eco-tourism, agriculture, irrigation, construction, or sold to Buddhist temples or private individuals capable of looking after these animals. The revenue accruing from such operations must then be used to improve the livelihood of the people in the Macaldeniya estate. If such a removal can improve the prosperity of even a few families, and at the same time ensure the survival of these animals, then it need not conflict with the management objectives of the Department of Wildlife Conservation. The revenue from the sale of these captured elephants can then be used to build dispensaries, grinding mills, supply clean water, or even manufacture paper out of elephant dung! It is both unfair and unjust to expect only a certain segment of our society to bear the entire cost of marauding elephants while some live in cosy and secure surroundings.

There has also been another suggestion to preserve the Macaldeniya area itself as an elephant reserve, and allow the people to reap the benefits. If this can eliminate the human-elephant conflict in the area, it is indeed a most sensible option, but containing the elephants within any reserve is not possible if the land-use outside is attractive to them. The government too can have only limited control over how people use the land outside the reserves. Besides, rural people generally lack the knowledge to break into the tourism market and thus benefit from eco-tourism. The big companies are more likely to be the principal beneficiaries from eco-tourism.

In the words of the one time Warden of the Department of Wild Life (1950-1956), and famous epigraphist on the inscriptions of the 3rd-5th century A.D period in Sri Lanka, Dr. C.W. Nicholas: "The ancestors of the Sinhalese, brought with them to a new and undeveloped land in which the wild elephant was found, their inherited skill in the domestication of the animal.

And it may be surmised that they began from the earliest days of their advent to capture and tame the Ceylon elephant and employ it in the service of man." Capture and use of elephants in the service of man are far more sensible than doing nothing and seeing them being decimated by angry farmers and poachers.

The human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka is real and it seems to lead in just one direction: the destruction and eventual elimination of elephants, unless innovative measures are taken now, to address the concerns of farmers and mitigate the problems faced by the rural poor.

Most of the elephant drives carried out in the recent past have not been successful. The capture of elephants from areas that were to be developed for agriculture was suggested by the senior author in 1964 and 1965.

The ex-President of the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society in Sri Lanka, Thilo Hoffmann too recognised the need to capture, over a few decades, as many as 1,000 elephants or more from areas outside the protected reserves, and highlighted the fact that every elephant that was killed represented a great financial loss to the country, both in terms of local revenue as well as foreign exchange.

This year alone, at least 138 elephants have been killed in Sri Lanka. The central theme of our argument is that for wild elephants and protected areas to survive on a significant scale in Sri Lanka in the years to come, they must be both ecologically and economically viable. Wildlife conservation must be looked upon as an alternative form of land use that can compete economically with agriculture and forestry.

The last elephant kraal by the Dutch was in 1795, at Hanwella just 18 miles east of Colombo. The first elephant kraal by the British was in 1802 in Negombo, only 23 miles north of Colombo. No one but a rank idealist will mourn the disappearance of the elephant from Colombo, Negombo or even Hanwella today.

Somewhere a reserve ends, and the com munity begins. So conflict between peo ple and elephants is inevitable. Total preservation of elephants is a luxury many poor countries, including Sri Lanka cannot afford in the face of the legitimate aspirations of the poor for a better standard of living. While fishermen are allowed to profit from their catches, farmers are prohibited from obtaining some tangible benefit from the wildlife that competes with them for the resources of their land, yet in both instances, wild populations are involved.

Therefore, harvesting wild populations, whether on land or in the sea, represents the resource-use of consequence, when carried out in a sustainable manner.

But the acceptance and adoption of such a policy would require a change of attitude from large sections of the population. Development must be a process that ensures that people have access to basic needs.

Their prosperity must therefore depend on the prudent exploitation of their forests, wildlife and the limited areas of good agricultural soils. Wildlife must pay its way, if it is to survive outside designated conservation areas in Sri Lanka.

Wildlife conservation in Sri Lanka has everything to gain from the people living in the rural areas, if they have a direct stake in ensuring the wellbeing and abundance of the wild animals of their neighbourhood. As Clive Stockill, one of the people who helped start the CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Management Programme For Indigenous Resources) scheme in Zimbabwe points out, "The message is simple - if wild animals benefit the community, they will not become extinct."

Christy S. Wickremasinghe
Divisional Game Ranger (Retd.)
Department of Wildlife Conservation,
Sri Lanka

Charles Santiapillai
Department of Zoology,
University of Peradeniya

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