by Ifham Nizam

The government is still foot dragging on implementing a solution to the Human-elephant conflict (HEC) although there is a comprehensive action plan in hand, says one of the policy makers and a researcher on Sri Lankan elephants.Biodiversity Conservation and Research Circle Convener, Supun Lahiru Prakash, told the Sunday Island that after deciding to stop digging trenches as a preventive measure, the Secretary to the Ministry of Wildlife and Forest Resources Conservation stated that the ministry will develop and implement appropriate measures to control this problem in accordance with international standards and locally identified strategies as well as strategies to be identified.”Therefore, it is clear that the government is still wasting time while hundreds of human and elephant lives are being lost each year,” says Prakash.The National Action Plan for the Mitigation of Human-Elephant Conflict prepared under the direction of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was pigeonholed by the authorities for more than a year now, he said.The Action plan has been prepared by a multi-stakeholder committee chaired by eminent Asian Elephant researcher and expert, Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando, and handed over to the government on December 17, 2020.

“After more than a year, nothing has been done as recommended there while the problem grows countrywide. The Secretary does not even have a sense of the action plan and he says that they will develop and implement appropriate measures in the future. This is nonsense.”I should highlight that while the authorities sat on this plan 375 elephants and 142 humans were killed during 2021,” he added.”Officials need to understand that HEC mitigation should be an integrated effort that is beneficial for both humans and elephants because both must be protected. Different actors have different roles to play to make this effort a success. Without considering this reality the authorities rely on physical barriers in order to mitigate the conflict.”Firstly they erected electric fences wasting billions of rupees. Then they tried to dig trenches as an alternative. We have evidence many of these efforts are useless. Wildlife conservation and management as well as human-wildlife conflict management is a scientific matter but all this is above the heads of the concerned authorities including the Department of Wildlife Conservation. That is why they repeat the same mistakes and waste public funds.”The researcher strongly believes that if the lessons of the past have been properly learned, it could be easily realized that physical barriers are unable to confine bull elephants to the assigned area and they manage to cross these barriers one way or another.Some of these bull elephants are the problem and they endanger human life and property. It is clear that these trenches are unable to address the problem. They confine herds of females and calves to a part of their home range, depleting the food supply and eventually starving them. This weakens the national conservation effort.

The President has received a good action plan prepared by a group of experts in the field who believe that it will be able to minimize the conflict significantly.It has short, medium, and long term recommendations that can convert conflict to co-existence. However, the authorities have not even looked at it so far and it has been set aside for more than one year. What is being attempted is a mere waste of public money.”Our studies found that this is a huge socio-economic problem affecting the public in more than 130 Divisional Secretariat divisions in 19 districts of Sri Lanka. I think the general public should understand this reality and present a common front against these useless attempts to combat the problem,” he added.