Elephants in Sri Lanka

By Karen J. Coates

In late afternoon, elephants emerge from Sri Lankan forests to graze in the open. They come in small herds, mothers and offspring, collecting at watering holes. A lone male pursues a female, grabbing her tail, nuzzling her trunk, chasing her across the field. She plays hard to get. “See, she crossed her legs!” says Ravi Corea, president of the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society. But the bull keeps trying, and she keeps denying him. “This is romance at its best,” Corea says. “There is sex, there is love. It’s like a Hindi movie.”

Corea never tires of watching elephants, the emblem of the organization he established in the USA to protect wildlife in Sri Lanka. But he knows this magnificent spectacle may not last. Wherever humans and elephants intersect, there is conflict. Across Asia, elephants raid farmers’ crops and trample the land in search of food. Farmers fight back with firecrackers, poison, spikes, or guns. All too often, conflict ends in death. That’s why the SLWCS is training local youth to monitor elephant activities in a project to help Sri Lankans fence the elephants out of their villages. It is Corea’s mission to protect those living on both sides of the fence.

Sri Lanka’s elephants were once royal property, and killing them was forbidden. Today, they are dressed in embroidered cloth and golden masks to partake in Buddhist parades. At temples, visitors pay to walk beneath an elephant's trunk for good luck. All around Sri Lanka, elephants are carved, woven, painted and pictured in tapestries, clothing, statues, and shrines.

Wild elephants inhabit 13 Asian countries, and Sri Lanka is one of the most important for their conservation, says Simon Hedges, who coordinates Asian elephant projects for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). According to some estimates, 10,000 elephants once roamed the island. Today, there is no reliable census of Sri Lankan elephants, though estimates range from 2,500 to 6,000.

What is certain: Human-elephant conflict is rising as human populations expand and habitat disappears. In recent years, an average of 51 people and 115 elephants have died annually in Sri Lanka, though Corea says those numbers are low. Not all elephants are found and counted when they die. Often, that death is painful and gruesome.

That’s why Corea thought it was time to start building  fences.

By the roadside near Wasgamuwa National Park in the center of the island, Corea points to a six-mile fence surrounding Pussalayaya, a village of 300 people. A few miles away, another fence encircles Weheragala village. Fences run on solar-power and produce low-amplitude currents that lightly shock the elephants, keeping them out of village yards and away from farmers’ crops. In the past, these villages suffered attacks from bull elephants connected to a nearby herd. Since the first fence was built nine years ago, human-elephant conflict has dropped dramatically.

Corea shows us coils of wire looped low around the fence posts—an innovation the villagers designed to keep elephants from uprooting the posts with their toenails. “There is nothing much out there that can stop a determined elephant,” Corea says.

When a fence is damaged, villagers share the burden.

Has the fencing solved the problem?

The answer to this question is complicated. When elephant attacks decrease, Corea explains, “Out of sight out of mind.” Villagers stop keeping up the fence, so his field staff frequently patrols the fence lines. Also, persistent elephants can cause villagers to give up. Corea says this is a critical time to help them figure out why the fence is weak. “This is when it’s really important to rally around them.”

Economics are imperative for elephant conservation to work. “The key is to care for the plight of the people who share the land with elephants,” says Charles Santiapillai, a Sri Lankan elephant expert. “It is only through caring for such, often poor, people that we can achieve success in conservation.”

That’s why SLWCS is investigating alternative crops as “economic buffers” if elephants do destroy rice fields. So far, citrus seems to be this ideal crop, Corea says. It fetches a high price and Sri Lankan elephants don’t seem to fancy citrus.

And for now, all is peaceful in Wasgamuwa National Park. Dusk is falling. A tourist jeep is stalled on the lone road out, a bull elephant, ten feet tall and solid, blocks the road.

Everyone is quiet, admiring this massive animal. It is a symbol and living artifact of Sri Lanka’s culture, religion and biodiversity. It is his survival that Corea and so many others work passionately for; it is his behavior they at times work passionately against. It is Sri Lanka’s grand paradox.