What we are doing to our natural environment threatens humans as well as every other species on this planet. We can no longer choose inaction. Daily News attended a Conference – ‘Biodiversity and Human Conflict: A Fragile Equilibrium’ where the issue of coexistence was brought up with Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando offering us a perspective on human elephant conflict on the occasion of the international day for Biological Diversity 2019.
To celebrate this day the Embassy of France in cooperation with Biodiversity Sri Lanka (BSL) and Hatton National Bank organized the above event.
HNB Managing Director and CEO Jonathan Alles commented that the International Day of Biological Diversity is celebrated annually the world over on May 22. It is a UN sanctioned international day for the promotion of biodiversity issues. Biodiversity Sri Lanka (BSL), is a network of private sector companies in Sri Lanka established in 2012, and has been celebrating this day continuously to create awareness of biodiversity issues locally.
“This year the theme is – Our Biodiversity, Our Food and Our Health. Today’s event is a great opportunity for BSL to collaborate with the Embassy of France, to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, a close partner of BSL. This event showcases the global significance of biodiversity and how we all need to come together across local and national boundaries to address issues that affect us all in the same manner irrespective of our differences,” said Alles.
The Hatton National Bank, has been a patron member of BSL since 2013, and has partnered with the network on various occasions to discuss and take action as a group to mitigate and adapt to the numerous challenges faced by the biodiversity.
“As a bank it is imperative we get involved in such matters that affect our country, as we perform a critical role, enabling development that sometimes unfortunately paves the way for the destruction of biodiversity as we know it. However HNB has taken a number of positive steps towards avoiding such national risks and has been an exemplary institution through which others can learn and we are open to sharing our best practices for the greater good of our country and its rich biological heritage,” stated Alles.
Alles added that HNB continues to support BSL in making this flagship event possible each year and hope to continue their commitment towards the conservation of bio diversity in Sri Lanka and make it a reality.
Ambassador of France to Sri Lanka and Maldives, Eric Lavertu pointed out that Climate change and biodiversity loss is one of the biggest challenges right now affecting all plant and animal species. He emphasized that we need to overcome this challenge and that we need to work together for the good of biodiversity.
“The idea of this conference is of course to exchange ideas. I believe scientists and researchers should work together. We must have a discussion addressing these biodiversity issues in Sri Lanka and try and do our best to work towards conservation,” said Lavertu.
Chairman of Biodiversity Sri Lanka Dilhan Fernando said “Our relationship with France as Biodiversity Sri Lanka has been very specific and special from the moment it began. Often words are plentiful in terms of environment and positive interventions. In the case of France everything they have done, have gone beyond words.”
He further added that the actions France has demonstrated not only in Sri Lanka but all around the world, makes BSL truly proud of their partnership. BSL, is established on the principle of collaboration. He further commented that it is wonderful to have our own individual interventions but ultimately on a national scale we need to deliver positive outcomes.
Chairman of the Centre for Conservation and Research Sri Lanka Doctor Prithiviraj Fernando called Sri Lankans a ‘privileged people’ as they have the chance to observe elephants in way that is not possible for citizens of other Asian countries.
“Elephants used to range all over South and South East Asia but today they are limited to 13 range countries in these regions. If you look at these 13 range countries we need to consider the country density of elephants – the size of the country and the number of elephants in the country. Sri Lanka has a very high density,” said Fernando.
Fernando pointed out that we also have much diversity when it comes to Asian elephants in the world. We have a number of unique individuals such as an albino elephant in Yala. She is around 20 years of age. We also have a dwarf elephant – the only confirmed dwarf elephant in the world found in Udawalawa National Park.
“If you look at the number of people- the human density in these 13 range countries, Sri Lanka comes third. We have the highest density of elephants and also a very high density of people in this small country. Unfortunately as a result of this, Sri Lanka has the highest level of human and elephant conflict in the world. Elephants suffer in many ways due to human elephant conflict. Some are killed and some are injured very badly,” stated Fernando.
Fernando highlighted every year about 250 elephants die in Sri Lanka.
“We have tried to mitigate this problem and solve this problem for more than 70 years. A master plan was developed in the 1940’s. It was suggested that we can limit the elephants to protected areas that are linked by corridors. Unfortunately none of the corridors materialized with the exception of one. So we have been trying to limit elephants to protected areas for more than 70 years. To do that we do translocations. But in spite of all this, human elephant conflict is still on the increase,” added Fernando.
Together with the wildlife department for 15 or 20 years, people have looked at the effectiveness of these so called Mitigation efforts. Especially by using GPS Satellite collars. Once you put a collar on one of the elephants, it provides us data every four hours, it tells you where the elephant goes. This has helped researchers to discover how effective the mitigation methods are.
“So together with the wildlife department we have monitored more than 25 elephants who were trans-located. Not one stayed in the place they were trans-located to. What we realized was this sort of translocation increased conflict making it more widespread. And many of them died after a short time after they were released in the new area,” said Fernando.
Fernando also spoke of Elephant Drives where large areas of elephants are driven away as a human – elephant conflict mitigation measure. One such instance was when they were driven to Lunugamwehera National Park. This drive took one and a half years. Every single day hundreds of people, went in to the elephants’ home, created a huge commotion, shouted and made sounds, lighted thousands of huge fire crackers, shot at the elephants, day in and day out for one and a half years and finally the Elephants were chased to Lunugamwehera National Park and fenced in.
“Elephants have a distinct social structure. The females and young ones are in groups. The adult males are single. Mostly it is the adult males causing human elephant conflict. We know that these drives make the young adult males aggressive. The drives change these elephants. They have faced hundreds of people confronting them. They have been subjected to extreme conflict day after day for one and a half years. Naturally they become aggressive towards people. These unsuccessful drives is why we have such a high level of human and elephant conflict in Sri Lanka,” explained Fernando.
If you keep harassing any animal it will turn against you and the same applies for elephants. So some of these mitigation activities cause more conflict. We know drives are extremely detrimental to elephant conservation as the Elephants do not adapt to the new conditions weakening physically losing body conditions and start dying – starving to death. 70 percent of Elephant range is outside protected areas. The majority of human elephant conflict is outside of protected areas.
It is obvious from what Dr. Fernando says that much more studying needs to be done to find a solution that is fair to both man and elephant and somehow reduce conflict. We need to look at both sides.
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