Survey on elephants, a success

by Shanika SRIYANANDA

The Ministry of Agrarian Services and Wildlife will prepare a national plan on conservation and management to solve the human-elephant conflict with the data collected from the country's first ever islanwide survey on elephants, concluded yesterday evening.

Minister S.M. Chandrasena told the Sunday Observer the protests by the elephant conservationists did not affect the survey and over 4,200 personnel including members of the Security Forces, Wildlife Department officials and NGO workers supported the the survey that was concluded successfully.

He denied that he said that the survey was to capture 300 healthy calves from the wild to domesticate them to be used in religious and cultural ceremonies and the so-called conservation groups missed the opportunity to offer their contribution for a national cause.

Claiming that capturing wild elephants or tuskers would affect the natural breeding process in the wild, over 12 wildlife groups pulled out their volunteers from the counting protesting Minister Chandrasena's statement.

The water-hole based survey, a project which costs $ 210,000 was commenced on Friday from the Minneriya National Wildlife Sanctuary and carried out in all national parks. While the country's wild elephant population is dwindling with humans encroaching on their habitats, according to predictions by wildlife experts there could be about 5,000 to 6,000 elephants in the country.

"Villagers, the victims of the human-elephant conflict helped the officials involved in the survey by providing them with meals.

"We have identified over 54 areas where there is a serious conflict between villagers and elephants", he said. He said the Asian elephant experts- Prof. Sukumar of the Indian Wildlife Institute and Bruce Read from the Florida Ringing Centre, USA - participated in the survey, which covered 1,500 locations frequented by elephants.

Minister Chandrasena said the existing data on country's elephant population and its behavioural patterns were not adequate to implement a National Plan. (Correction - Figures on elephants in the story on page 38 should read as 300).