The Killing of Elephants in Sri Lanka Part 2: Five Years Later
Photo courtesy of Al Jazeera
Sri Lankans have been jolted this month by the prolonged and agonising death of Bhathiya, an iconic elephant. The magnificent wild tusker’s suffering was unbearable; it had been shot at repeatedly and, limping badly, it fell into an agricultural well where it struggled to die. Even in death, dignity was denied by futile medical meddling because of a legal inability to administer euthanasia and attention seeking politicians found a helpless victim as the press and ghoulish observers crowded in. Undoubtably, the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), had failed to conserve this beautiful, wild life but critically injured it was beyond medical help. However, first, why was this elephant shot at by farmers and why was an unprotected agricultural well in its home range?
In May 2020, I wrote of the shocking decision by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa’s cabinet to issue guns to farmers: “The Government of Sri Lanka has decided to issue 2000 shotguns to farmers in Human – Elephant Conflict (HEC) zones, to protect themselves and their crops from marauding elephants; a further, 3000 guns are to be issued shortly….” The environmentalists’ distress at this decision was soon overshadowed by the economic crisis, which took centre stage. In the blitz of that nationwide economic disaster, despite the Wildlife & Nature Protection Society obtaining a stay order in courts on the issue of guns, nobody knows how many guns were finally issued to farmers except the gun runners and authorities, who advocated guns for farmers and watched their bank accounts balloon. Five years and two governments later, every prediction of a sharp rise in elephant deaths has been realised.
Who leads the way in this spiralling loss of elephants? Self-serving politicians throwing vote bait policies and government servants who fail in their duty to oppose them. From issuing guns to farmers five years ago, just this year politicians have regressed to elephant drives, gifting elephant habitat to farmers (11,000 acres of abandoned Kantale Sugar lands), declaring a right to kill any wildlife in cropland and an extravagant electoral promise of a road through Wilpattu National Park while judgement on this highly contentious case was still pending! Fortunately, the promise of reopening the road through Wilpattu, backfired as, after 15 years in court, the Supreme Court hastily issued a contrary judgement. But a prime example of a disastrous, politically motivated exercise, was the North Central Province elephant drive in January 2025. Elephant drives are proven failures. Yet at the height of the cultivation season, this drive was begun. Then it was stopped midway with the press reporting that 150 elephants are trapped and starving at the government farm in Oyamaduwa in the midst of cultivated fields. When advice was finally sought as a curative, the experts and their criticisms were quickly dismissed; perhaps, as the Canadian author Saul Bellow says, “When we ask for advice we are usually looking for an accomplice”. Finding no accomplices who had expertise, the government abandoned the drive and 150 starving elephants dispersed into the surrounding farmland. Herds with babies ran the gamut of newly armed farmers before they found their way back to their home ranges in the North Central Province.
The state’s avoidance of easily accessed expertise is bewildering – could it be ego or insecurity, I wonder. Once summoned to listen to a monologue on solutions to the HEC from a new Minister of Wildlife with only military experience my very expert colleagues, a specialist in elephant behaviour, a tourism expert and I could only blink. But this ministerial malady is evidently common among members of cabinets; I can only conclude that particularly dim-witted politicians believe that by sitting in a ministerial seat, they instantly absorb extensive technical knowledge of their portfolio through the plush upholstery. But how dangerous this odd belief in instant enlightenment has become to our wildlife.
As culpable as the powerful politician is the outdated agriculture officer who misguides farmers on land use. In Sri Lanka, with her heritage of unique, sustainable agriculture, it is easy to revive traditional land use practices. Sustainability is not as big a word as projected; it is something we once excelled at. Traditionally, Sri Lankans cultivated water-loving rice only in the monsoon season when water was plentiful. At this time there is enough water and fodder in the jungles and wildlife depredation is minimal. In the dry season, we cultivated millets and pulses that require less water and is less delectable to wildlife. By growing mixed crops, we enriched our diets and allowed the soil to recover from the mono crop of rice. As elephants are confined to the dry zone, since the advent of tea it is even easier to differentiate between the monsoon season and dry season. Thereby, advising on crops suitable to the seasons is an easy task for state agriculturalists.
Instead the state demands high yield in rice cultivation. Our agriculture policy makers seem to have missed the memo that high yield in rice was a colonial goal when Dig for Victory, an intensive agriculture campaign, was launched, during World War II. It was advocated in the colonies only to stockpile food for Britain (Bengal Famine, 1943). Therefore, we stopped rotating our crops 80 years ago as the British had no use for our dry season millets and mung beans, which they believed was useless native food. Sadly, like good but dated British citizens, we too have changed our diets and now demand only rice from our farmers. Even today, the allocation of agricultural subsidies and lands is governed by paddy cultivation. Thus even in the dry season when food is scarce in the forests, fields are mechanically irrigated and rice is grown up to the edge of every protected area. Farmers are supposed to cultivate rice on every bit of their land and elephants are supposed to understand that the only lush growth in the vicinity is a no go zone defined by a flimsy electric fence. When wildlife disregards an electric wire, the current Minister of Agriculture urges farmers to kill.
As long as guns are licensed, all wild animals are severely threatened. Living in a high HEC area, I understand that farmers do not need guns to protect themselves from wildlife. Firecrackers, drums and even a sudden howl of a power saw terrifies the largest elephant. Loud shouting drives away most other species but a gun is a very negative game changer. In addition to the threat to our elephants, there is a demand for bush meat with a Sambhur carcass fetching about Rs.100,000. At that price deer herds have vanished from the forest fringes and wild buffalo, those muscled, black herds that once adorned our meadowlands, have diminished to an occasional group in a heavily protected, less visited Block II and III of the Yala National Park and the far shores of Minneriya National Park. Across the river where I live on the border of Wasgomuva National Park there is a rare, grand buffalo bull with wide sweeping horns who feeds in the marsh. But a gunshot to his heart has missed and instead shattered his left shoulder so he struggles, unable to stand for long on three legs. I expect that as this dry season advances and the reed beds falter, a farmer with a gun will get a clear shot to his heart. Then he too will be filleted and sold as Sambhur meat to day trippers who believe that bush meat is a part of their little safari experience. Now, with farmers accustomed to this bloody alternate income, all guns issued will have to be withdrawn. But only a total civilian ban on guns will curtail ghost guns, the common homemade firearms, from being turned on our wildlife.
As for we the people, we are mostly unaware, complacent and very rarely invested in the future of the most significant species in our religious and cultural heritage. There is a sharp distinction between people living in elephant habitat and those who live in the wet zone and urban areas. If you have to contend with elephants every day, your religious and cultural values waiver. When daily schedules are governed by the times when the crop raiding elephants emerge and return from the jungles, its often hard to love elephants. Yet, last week, when an elephant who was chased onto the train tracks was hit by a train, it staggered into the village to die; there, people were seen stroking it gently, as its life bled away. Will the state be as compassionate and direct these farmers away from unsustainable agricultural practices and offer them alternate revenue generation in the dry season? Will expert advice be sought from a majority who will impart their knowledge pro bono?
It is long past time for the tourism industry to weigh into active elephant conservation. Nothing has changed in five years in that industry, so I quote myself from 2020, “I wonder, will the wildlife enthusiasts of the world want to visit a Nation that is systematically killing her elephants? Will Sri Lanka, where magnificent elephants have now been demoted from National Treasure to vermin, be the paradise isle that modern tourists dream of?” My friends in tourism, I am certain clients will have greater regard for ecotourism operators, who publicly support the lobby for the withdrawal of guns.
With the rapid acceleration of the HEC even the most apathetic wet zone dwellers and urbanites have become familiar with this acronym. The press has done its job with the tragedy of Bhathiya but their work has just begun. The DWC states that they are currently treating 13 elephants with gunshot injuries but unlike Bhathiya, most won’t make the news; certainly, the bull dying on the edge of our neighbouring reservoir at Himbiliyakada with a shot through his spine will soon be lost without fanfare. What of the many injured animals who are still roaming in deeper jungle with suppurating wounds and dying with every step they take? What is horrific is that there is hardly a wild elephant in this Buddhist land that lacks the tell-tale bumps and nodules that are the result of gunshots. Maybe the time has come when the press and conservationists and anybody else who cares form a death watch for the elephants of Sri Lanka for they are surely on a last ebbing tide, slipping away.
Or will we rally to challenge every political ploy and poor land use policy and demand that guns be recalled? I hope that every one of you will speak up before it is too late for our grandest heritage – the magnificent elephants of Sri Lanka.
