By Ifham Nizam

More than 55 elephants had been illegally captured from the wild between January 2008 and December 2018, but the law enforcement had failed to bring the culprits to justice, researcher T. G. Supun Lahiru Prakash of Biodiversity Conservation and Research Circle said yesterday.

Prakash is part of a team that studied the illegal trade of elephants in Sri Lanka.

He said: “We collected data from case records maintained by the country’s court system, where the suspects of illegal elephant trade were prosecuted in addition to information gathered by archives and interviews with various stakeholders. We documented 55 cases where elephants were illegally traded.

This is probably an underestimate due to the high mortality rate of elephants during capture operations and challenges in collecting data on this highly organised illicit trade.”

Out of these, 33 elephants had been registered, while 17 were not registered, he said. Prakash said three were under government letters of patent, and no information was available of two elephants.

“We found records of 55 cases of suspected smuggled elephants. Forty-six of those elephants had an identity reported with a name. Twenty-four elephants were females and 23 were males, while the sex of eight elephants was not reported. Two elephants were identified as calves, 14 as juveniles (2 – 5 years old), 29 as sub-adults (6 – 10 years old), four as adults and six were not aged.”

They had identified a major gap between the reported age in the registration documents and the estimated age of elephants by the veterinarians of the Department of Wildlife, Prakash said. The average reported age in the registration documents of elephants according to their licenses was higher than the estimated age by the veterinarians; the difference was statistically significant, he said.

“Significantly, more elephants were found to be seized in 2014–2015 than in other time periods combined. We found evidence of the illegal capture of wild elephants from wildlife protected areas and state forests. More importantly, we identified evidence of corruption of wildlife officers, involvement of politicians and other high-ranking personnel in the illegal wildlife trade, and lack of active enforcement of wildlife law as major challenges to overcome the illegal capture and domestic trade in wild elephants in Sri Lanka.”

The research team comprised W.A.A.D. Upul Indrajith, A. M. C. P. Attanayaka (Department of Wildlife Conservation, Jayanthipura Road, Battaramulla, Sri Lanka), Suranjan Karunarathna (Nature Explorations and Education Team), Madhava Boteju (Biodiversity Conservation Society), Vincent Nijman (Department of Social Sciences, Gipsy Lane, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK) and Sujan Henkanaththegedara (Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Longwood University, Farmville, Virginia, USA).