Death prompts louder calls for action on elephants
Villagers in areas vulnerable to elephant attacks stepped up calls for additional protection this week after one more death in Puttalam and attacks in other areas.
Sanjaya Balasooriya, a 40-year-old resident of Mundalama, was killed in the early hours of Monday when he crossed paths with a wild elephant near Mahakumbukkadawala, Anamaduwa, about 30km from Puttalam town.
Police said Mr. Balasooriya had been riding his motorcycle to work at a garment factory when he was attacked.
Villagers staged a protest at the site, saying this was the sixth such death and that authorities had not taken notice of the problem.
As an immediate response, the newly-appointed State Minister of Wildlife Conservation Protection Programmes including Electric Fence and Ditch Construction and Reforestation and Wildlife Resources Development, Wimalaweera Dissanayake, said while the government was intent on finding alternatives to resolve the issue, for the time being it would put up electric fencing.
The state minister said officers are also planning to construct ditches around conservation parks and use bio-fencing to keep elephants inside parks.
The ministry would set up an authority within the ministry, separate from the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), to look directly into damage caused by wild animals.
Mr. Dissnayake said this would reduce the DWC’s workload, giving wildlife officers more opportunity to conserve animals.
DWC Director-General Chandana Sooriyabandara said the committee appointed by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa two weeks ago to provide a sustainable solution for human-elephant conflict was scheduled to submit its report in two months.
“We would mitigate our shortcomings following the resolutions of the report,” he said.
Mr. Sooriyabandara also said that areas such as Mahakumbukkadawala had not had a wild elephant population but that elephants had turned up in the area due to the lush greenery in abandoned private and forestry land creating an elephant-friendly habitat. He said the DWC had deployed teams to drive herds away to Tabbowa or the Kahalla Pallakale or Wilpattu national parks and was planning to move a lone tusker to the Horowapothana elephant-holding grounds.
“We experience changes in elephant migratory patterns when man-made barriers are built,” Mr. Sooriyabanda said. “When the Moragahakanda tank was made, the elephants that lived in the area migrated to Mahiyanganaya.”
People in the area said they were living in constant fear of elephants.
A senior officer of Anamaduwa Police said there had been problems with elephants for the past four years, with six people being killed.
“We see elephants roaming near civil settlements near Mahakumbukkadawala every day,” he said. “The elephants pull down coconut trees, smash and trample farmland. Even though we don’t have complaints from people regarding damage to property that does not mean there is no problem.”
Out of fear, residents had stopped travelling during early morning and dusk.
Elephants were roaming along roadsides even in daytime, in forested areas near villages, the police officer said.
A wildlife officer in Mahakumbukkadawala said the elephants had recently come to the area, moving towards human settlements because of the shortage of food and water in the Tabbowa sanctuary.
He pointed out that forestry officers bore responsibility for protecting animals living in their areas and that some carried out on forestry land had driven elephants away.
Meanwhile, farmers in the Matale district also say elephants are venturing into their villages in search of food and water. The animals were coming from the Minneriya and Wasgamuwa reserves during arid periods.
A member of Ambana Farmers Association, Y.M.C. Bandara, said a great deal of farmland in the district had been destroyed.
He said although an electric fence had been built in most areas, it did not function, and proposed that the government construct organic barriers and live fencing to keep elephants away from farmland.