Environmental scientists and environmentalists have pointed out that Wildlife Conservation authorities have been practising the same old strategies to thwart the Human–Elephant Conflict (HEC) such as electric fences, crackers and digging trenches which have proved unsuccessful during the last 70 years.
The HEC occurring at present is entirely outside the protected areas. The main approach to HEC mitigation by the Wildlife authorities for nearly seven decades has been to try and confine wild elephants in the protected areas.
However, after much fruitless effort, currently 70 percent of the elephant range is in residential areas and Sri Lanka has earned the position as the country where highest level of HEC occurs.
Although the Centre for Conservation and Research (CCR) as well as several donor-funded (World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB)) projects have been promoting community-based electric fences in place of traditional HEC prevention strategies, mainly the linear electric fence system, the Wildlife authorities seem to still stick to primitive HEC prevention methodologies, which have helped to increase the conflict sometimes, the head of the CCR environmental scientist Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando told the Daily News.
He said that the World Bank funded Climate Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project (CSIAP) and the WB funded Eco -Systems Services Conservation and Management Project (ESCAMP) as well the ADB-funded North West Canal Project (NWCP) and Upper Elahera Canal Project (UECP) have implemented the community-based permanent electric fences and community-based seasonal fences for the protection of habitations and cultivations respectively, having accepted the two models as the most effective human–elephant co-existence methodologies.
In the meantime, the Parliamentary Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) has submitted a lengthy report to Parliament recently recommending to the Wildlife Conservation Department to abandon the old methodologies which have so far failed and implement the policy of substituting community-based electric fences in HEC prone areas.
According to the COPA, the policy of constructing an electric fence and trapping elephants is a failure when in fact only innocent female elephants and baby elephants are being trapped by such measures. Also the report has emphasized that although the government has been allocating large sums from the Budget to prevent the menace it has only increased and is growing speedily.
As such, the old policy which resulted in costing the government large sums should be changed immediately, the COPA has insisted. It has pointed out the importance of the joint assistance of the Security Forces, Civil Defence Department, agrarian organizations and the villagers being affected as essential in the construction and maintenance of HEC preventive fences and other strategies.
Also a large number of linear fences out of the total length of 4,600 kilometres is dysfunctional as there is a lack of regular maintenance.
Wildlife experts have pointed out that the Wildlife Conservation Department has planned to increase the length of linear electric fences in the Anuradhapura district, which is the most affected district by HEC, by another 1,000 km of traditional electric fences, mainly in Medawachchiya, Kebithigollewa, Horrowpothana, Mahawilachchiya, Nochchiyagama, Palugaswewa, Ipologama and Galenbidunuwewa DS divisions, without shifting to village and paddy field electric fence models.
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