Every year, approximately 350 Sri Lankan elephants die. This works out to roughly an elephant a day. This is an average figure, of course, but 2019 saw the highest number of elephant deaths ever reported, with 405 deaths. For 2022, we are projected to very comfortably cross the threshold of 350 reported deaths.
What’s important to note is that the vast majority of these elephant deaths are the result of Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC), from direct violence like hunting and poaching to indirect violence like elephants being caught and wounded in traps meant for other animals.
Since 1949, there have been active efforts to manage Sri Lanka’s elephant population to help it grow and, over the years, to mitigate HEC. These strategies largely focused on containing or limiting elephants and for good or ill, they have not seen major change over the last 70-plus years.
However, a new community-driven approach titled ‘Live and Let Live’ piloted by the TUI Foundation in Germany under its TUI Wildlife Sri Lanka segment, the Centre for Conservation and Research (CCR), and Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts aims to take a meaningful step toward mitigating HEC by focusing on human communities affected by HEC and how they can take steps to protect themselves and their livelihoods.
‘Live and Let Live’ takes shape in the form of sustainable electric fencing that is easier to afford, solar-powered, does not pose a danger to elephants (or humans for that matter) other than a very temporary electric shock, and most importantly, focuses on keeping elephants out of specific human-inhabited areas rather than keeping them in a larger protected area.
The two sides of HEC
Aside from the statistics on elephant deaths (which are startling given that the official elephant population in Sri Lanka is just around 5,200 elephants – reports of populations of approximately 7,500 elephants do not have any basis in scientific fact), there is much to be said on both sides of HEC.
Elephants suffer in many ways because of humans, from snares that leave elephants too injured to survive and condemn them to slow, painful deaths, to the entirely Sri Lankan invention of jaw bombs (food laced with explosives that explode when an animal bites into it) that outright kill smaller animals but harms elephants to the point where they can longer feed and then starve to death, to falling into irrigation wells, to being actively hunted either by poachers or by farming communities whose crops they have destroyed or whose people they have harmed.
From the side of humans, elephants can be giant-sized pests to farmers. Elephants damage crops, most especially paddy. They can destroy entire fields of paddy ready for harvesting in a single night. Once a harvest is complete they can break into stores where harvested crops are kept and cause significant property damage in the process. Not to mention the threat they pose to humans themselves – an angry elephant is something to behold and even unwittingly an elephant can harm a human when foraging for food. More than 100 people lose their lives to HEC each year.
How have we been managing HEC thus far?
How have we been managing HEC thus far?HEC in and of itself is not new. In Sri Lanka, HEC has existed as long as we have been farming. Centre for Conservation and Research Chairman, Trustee, and Scientist Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando, one of the foremost authorities on Asian elephants and one of the lead scientists behind ‘Live and Let Live,’ shared that since 1949, the key strategies for limiting HEC have been driven by efforts to limit elephants to protected areas and temporary corridors.
This is problematic for many reasons, one being human habitation. Humans inhabit 82% of Sri Lanka. Elephants range across 62% of our island. At the end of the day, across 44% (28,600 sq. km) of Sri Lanka, humans and elephants inhabit the same space. As such, it is of little wonder that there is a conflict between humans and elephants.
This is precisely why it is vital to relook at how to mitigate such conflict. Speaking on HEC and why the mitigation strategies of the last 60 years or so have been ineffective, Dr. Fernando noted: “Biodiversity-wise, it’s like trying to pour a jug of water into a glass that is already full. There is only a certain number of elephants that can be supported by our protected areas and that number is already in those protected areas. We cannot shove all elephants outside these areas into them. It’s biologically impossible.”
Dr. Fernando also noted that the vast majority of mitigation strategies to date ignored the elephant side of the HEC equation, noting that an elephant’s home range was 200 km and limiting them to smaller areas was forcing them to go against their natural behaviours and needs. The methods used to interact with elephants are also almost always confrontational or otherwise detrimental to elephants (traps, jaw bombs, fences that cut them out of their home habitat or isolate them from resources, electric fences that are improperly powered to the point of causing serious harm, barbed wire fences that injure and infect them, and so on).
This circles back to the approach that ‘Live and Let Live’ is taking, which in a nutshell, focuses on limiting the impacts of elephant behaviour on humans rather than limiting the elephants themselves.
‘Live and Let Live’: from conflict to coexistence
‘Live and Let Live’ is a project that looks to save lives on both sides of the HEC fence. Led under the guidance of Dr. Fernando, it is a unique, tripartite effort between the TUI Foundation in Germany, under its TUI Wildlife Sri Lanka segment, the Centre for Conservation and Research, involved as the scientific advisors to the project, and Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts, which has undertaken the coordination and assistance for TUI Foundation in Germany.
The project is an extension to Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts’ existing ‘Cinnamon Elephant Project’ which has been running for the past six years under the guidance of Dr. Fernando in the Minneriya-Kaudulla area.
Speaking about Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts’ involvement in ‘Live and Let Live,’ Cinnamon Nature Trails Vice President Chitral Jayatilake, also an avid nature photographer, explained that ‘Live and Let Live’ was part of Cinnamon’s way of giving back to its nearby communities while also developing the potential for wildlife tourism. “What we do must trickle down the peripheral communities around the businesses we operate,” Jayatilake said, noting that to date, despite being one of Sri Lanka’s biggest hospitality experience providers, Cinnamon had always depended on tourism businesses around it like jeep drivers and boat operators to provide value-added experiences to its clients.
‘Live and Let Live’ adds to this vision because the pilot project not only serves to help farmers of the nearby village of Badi Wewa protect their crops from elephants, but also in the long run serves to make elephants more comfortable in the area, which feeds back into being a valuable tourism resource for both operators like Cinnamon as well as the farmers and surrounding communities.
The most effective form of mitigating HEC is through electric fences, which till now, have been primarily put up by the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC). Sri Lanka has about 4,500 km of electric fencing put up for the purpose of HEC management. Maintaining these fences is a huge undertaking, especially when they are deep inside forests. They are also very expensive to put up (Rs. 8 million per km), costly to maintain, and need to be replaced frequently.
Added to this is the problem that these fences cut across elephant ranges and separate herds. It is sometimes the placing of these fences across an elephant range that leads them to nearby villages and fields in search of food. Also, when they are no longer able to be powered with electricity, they become what Dr. Fernando referred to as “training fences,” with elephants quickly learning how to get through or take them down. “Electric fences are only a psychological barrier,” he noted, “Once they learn not to be scared of the fences we have lost the battle.”
How ‘Live and Let Live’ transforms the electric fence
‘Live and Let Live’ focuses on the people aspect of the HEC problem. Limiting elephants has been tried and tested and has failed. What ‘Live and Let Live’ does is drive the focus away from limiting elephants as a whole and works instead to limit the damage they cause in a way that is sustainable to both humans and elephants and the small farming village of Badi Wewa has served as the perfect pilot project.
Elephants and farmers come into conflict only when crops have been planted and are close to harvest. The elephant is looking for food. The farmer is growing food to survive, both nutritionally and economically. Instead of trying to fence elephants into a broader area, ‘Live and Let Live’ focuses on building temporary electric fences around crops, fields, and storerooms that keep elephants out of the fields until crops are harvested and dispatched.
The fences block off a very small amount of an elephant’s wandering range and keep crops (and livelihoods) safe. Once harvesting is done for the season, the fences (which only take half a day to set up or dismantle) can be taken down and stored away to be rebuilt for the next farming season.
Dr. Fernando explained that ‘Live and Let Live’ asked unconventional questions. Why not go towards developed areas to protect life, crops, and property as opposed to strategies that take place in the wilderness? Who should be building these fences? Should it really be the DWC or should it be community-based and led by the same people who know best where these fences should be built for maximum impact?
The fences by ‘Live and Let Live’ are easy to construct, solar-powered (with functionality to operate off the main electricity grid as well), and significantly cheaper than traditional electric fences (costing under Rs. 2 million per km). It gives communities better agency over protecting their crops and discourages elephants from damaging their crops.
The Badi Wewa community’s solar-powered electric fence was launched on 28 October under the patronage of former Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, whose office first formed the links between TUI Foundation Germany, CCR, and Cinnamon that led to ‘Live and Let Live’.
A rational step towards human-elephant coexistence
What set apart ‘Live and Let Live’ from other fencing initiatives, Dr. Fernando explained, was that it re-examined the use of fences and took a more rational approach, looking at what was within human control and especially within the control of those who were most directly affected by HEC and addressed those pain points in the most effective manner possible, while still being mindful of the impact of the fences on elephants.
“Elephants respond to what we do to them,” Dr. Fernando pointed out. “When people are kind, elephants too are kind and even behave like tame cats and dogs. But if we’re aggressive, elephants will also return the favour.”
