Saving the gentle giants

Can science further the management of the human elephant conflict?

By Tamsyn JN Green

[email protected]

The exponential growth of human populations and resulting land-use changes over the past century has reduced the Asian Elephant (Elephas maximus) to a mere 15% of its former range across the continent.

The world’s second largest land mammal has an estimated population of between 38,000 and 51,000 individuals, only 6-8% of the total population of its African cousin. Across Asia, the species is a flagship for conservation, listed as a Threatened Species with Endangered Status in the IUCN Red Data Publication.

In Sri Lanka the conflict between humans and elephants contributes significantly to elephant mortality at a current rate of approximately three deaths per week. Sri Lanka’s high human population density, a human population growth rate of 0.982% and the conversion of more and more elephant habitat to human habitat give rise to conflict.

For over three million years elephants roamed the entire island - occupying even Colombo and Kandy until a few hundred years ago- but since the agricultural civilization began 2000-3000 years ago, the human elephant conflict has inevitably developed. Prof. Sarath Kotagama says, “I have finally accepted the human elephant conflict”.

Each year elephants kill between 50 and 60 people while around 120-160 elephant deaths occur as a direct result of the conflict. Many more elephant deaths go unrecorded and there is indirect loss of life when animals are driven back to national parks, where they eventually die due to overexploitation of limited resources.

Impacts of conflict

Community takes precautions at watchut in Pokunutenna

The human impact involves the loss of life and the economic loss due to property and crop damage. Banana, paddy and coconut were the most severely affected crops recorded in the south-east of the island, as well as damage to sugar cane, maize and papaya, while property damage saw an increase of 25% between 2004 and 2005, with more than 600 buildings affected.

Approximately 70% of elephant deaths are due to gunshot injury, while other methods employed by farmers and villagers to ward off elephants include use of firecrackers, coconut bombs, pit traps and nails left on boards causing elephants gangrene and other infections. Due to the male elephant’s greater tendency to raid crops and be aggressive towards humans, 74% of elephants killed in the conflict are bulls.

While protected areas managed by the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC) cover approximately 10% of the island, some 70% of the elephant population is found beyond their boundaries. Until now, conflict management has relied largely on keeping animals and humans separate from one another, by limiting elephants to DWC protected areas.

However, the carrying capacity of current protected areas can support only one third of the total elephant population. Monitoring conducted by DWC and Centre for Conservation and Research shows that elephants are an ‘edge species’ as the highest densities even within national parks are found on the outskirts, often where Chena cultivation provides the ideal elephant habitat. The annual slash and burn process of Chena encourages secondary forest and pioneer species preferred by elephants.

Previously it was believed that elephants mostly required mature forest, but recent studies now show that secondary forest provides optimum elephant habitat. For example, in the 1950s Udu Walawe was thickly forested with a small elephant population, but today its disturbed habitats support more than 300 elephants.

Cause for conservation

In recent decades prime elephant habitat has been lost due to deforestation largely in aid of irrigated agriculture, large plantations such as sugar cane and maize, and resettlement. Elephants displaced from their traditional habitats are forced into less hospitable forest fragments, often bordered by cultivation and human habitation. Crops and water bodies near to protected areas encourage animals beyond safe grounds, and settlement in elephant habitat heightens the conflict.

Seeking solutions: beyond corridors

Among previous attempts to alleviate the conflict included extending jungle corridors between protected areas. Initiated in the 1950s only as a temporary solution, it is believed to be flawed as it is relies on elephants being limited to protected areas and the long-distance migration of the Sri Lankan elephant.

In fact tracking elephants by radio telemetry has shown that female groups have small, well-defined home ranges of 30-140 sq. km. unlike in southern India where females may range in excess of 500 sq. km. Males occupy areas less than 100 sq. km for most of the year, but dramatically increase their range by up to four times during the annual musth period that lasts about two months.

A wider range during the musth period is thought to be related to reproductive activity and prevent inbreeding. While management of females is more feasible in Sri Lanka’s fragmented landscape, management of males is more complex but is paramount for mitigating the human-elephant conflict.

Elephant drives and the translocation of single elephants are two methods used to move animals out of developed areas. Hundreds of people form a line and use firecrackers or thunder flares to drive herds into protected areas. The last major drive took place in 2006 when around 250 elephants were moved into Lunuganvera National Park.

The impact of drives is debated as these target herds, though records show that elephants causing problems are mostly individual males. A drive relies on the fear of man, so aggressive habitual raiders are less likely to be removed from problem areas. While herds are easier to manage, capturing and relocating single animals is more often required.

Monitoring shows that once problem-causing males have been relocated to protected areas, they do not stay within the park boundaries. Defined by man, it is not possible for protected areas to allow for the animals’ full extent of natural movement. Increasing elephant numbers in protected areas may have unforeseen consequences for population structure and the ecosystem at large.

Despite being tested for the first time in the south more than fifty years ago, it is not until more recently that electric fencing has been used extensively. Electric fencing acts as a psychological barrier, protecting crops and property from wild elephants.

Today more than 500km of fencing has been erected by the DWC, NGOs and private companies. At the beginning of the year, the government planned to erect a further 600km, one third of which should be completed by the end of the year.

Pokunutenna community initiative

‘Regaining lost interdependence between people and elephants’ is the aim of an initiative founded 10 years ago by a small group of engineers, conservationists and naturalists. The group has developed a non-intrusive detection system for protection against crop raiding by elephants in the small village of Pokunutenna, which borders Uda Walawe National Park.

Despite research into seismic, laser and optical detection, the simple tripwire detection method has proved most effective. Using commonly available fishing line encircling crop fields and installing weatherproof electrical switches attached to the houses of the crop-owners, intruding elephants cause an alarm system to sound.

On hearing the alarm, the villager can then deter the animal from crop raiding by using torches and thunder flashes. The cost of making a 250m section including 60m of electrical wire and the alarm is under US$20.

Wooden stakes between the wires are readily available from the forest at a limited environmental cost, and the system is easily restored after intrusion. Easy removal of the tripwire means elephants can actually be valuable inhabitants out of season.

Research into infra-sound detection is also underway, though currently unaffordable for most communities. This technology is based on detecting the sounds made by elephants (as low as 5Hz) which cannot be heard by humans. These schemes do not exclude elephants from the area, and open opportunities for incomes to be supplemented by eco-tourism in the future.

This initiative is founded on the philosophy that communities must take responsibility for sharing their land with elephants. Many of the poorest villages are found in buffer zones on the outskirts of protected areas so ensuring their sustainable development is therefore paramount for conservation in Sri Lanka.

Conservation of elephants also extends to those that have been orphaned as a result of mothers being shot, injured or separated from herds during elephant drives. Since outgrowing its location in Maradanmaduwa, Wilpattu the elephant orphanage was relocated to Pinnawela in 1974. In the last 35 years it has cared for more than 100 babies. The 9 ha abandoned coconut plantation is home to the largest herd of elephants in captivity in the world.

In addition to the orphanage, the DWC also established an elephant transit home in Uda Walawe. On average, 15-20 baby elephants are rescued from the wild each year to be returned when they are strong enough to survive alone. By 2007, 56 young elephants were released back into the wild.

Such care comes at a high cost of about Rs. 100,000 per month for each elephant. To encourage financial support from visitors, a new elephant foster-parent scheme has been put in place to help pay for their shelter, food and veterinary care. These sites are proof of the positive relationship possible between man and elephant.

Chena cultivation

While irrigated agriculture and elephants are incompatible, the traditional slash and burn cultivation - chena - provides the optimum elephant habitat.

Chena practice results in secondary forest with pioneer species that provide ideal elephant food; this preferred habitat is maintained by annual cultivation. Between 100,000 and 200,000 of Sri Lanka’s poorest families are dependent on chena cultivation, which covers an area of approximately 1,000 sq. km.

This area supports around one third of the elephant population, the same proportion of elephants supported by protected areas covering an area six times the size. The high density found in chena areas indicates that elephant ecology is suited to such seasonally cultivated land.

While chena cultivation is illegal, occurring particularly in areas under the Forest Department, families dependent on one harvest for a year’s income put pressure on the government to drive elephants from state land.

Removal of elephants from such land encourages encroachment and permanent settlement. However, this ‘illegal’ use of the land is also beneficial to elephants as it creates and maintains their preferred habitat.

In order to move forward, government must manage chena practice and farmers must be willing to share their land with elephants. Elephants can become an economic benefit if chena harvests are marketed as conservation produce. Chena is ideal for organic farming and safer agricultural methods such as integrated pest management as opposed to reliance on pesticides.

This traditional farming practice in combination with seeing wild elephants provides further economic opportunities through eco-tourism. Government now has the opportunity to exploit the invaluable relationship between traditional cultivation and elephant conservation.

Politics and compensation

Demonstrations and road blocks are among the minor attempts to put pressure on the government to remove elephants and address the human elephant conflict, while the bodies of people killed by elephants have actually been taken to DWC offices. Conflict resolution is a priority for Sri Lanka, but limited by the huge cost of habitat management.

The DWC currently spends around Rs. 100,000 per hectare on habitat management, but elephants need enormous areas and the cost of habitat management for a few thousand elephants in the scale of Rs. billions is unaffordable. Therefore limiting elephants to protected areas by habitat management is not an option.

A recent initiative of Ceylinko Insurance Company aimed to provide insurance for people suffering crop and property damage by elephants, and pay funeral costs for human loss. The Rs. 400 million project would have provided immediate (same day) assessment of damage by elephants through employees across the country and would become self sustaining as farmers bought into the scheme.

The initiative was the first of its kind in Asia, but government involvement has resulted in accepting the lowest tender. To date nothing credible has been delivered on the ground to alleviate human suffering. The challenge for government remains to find a way of delivering this well-researched and funded initiative.

A problem of perception

While human mortality as a result of the conflict has increased over the last decade, elephants are not the only ‘wild’ threat. On average, rabid dogs kill a similar number of people every year, while snakes cause a massive 1,200 deaths.

Those living in urban areas risk road traffic accidents, bomb scares and diseases. Just like the precautions taken when crossing a road or driving a car, safeguards in rural areas with elephants must be used. Despite studies showing that frequent conflict with humans causes elephants to become more nocturnal in their wanderings, in recent times there has been a decrease in safety precautions such as the use of tree-huts at night and travelling only in daylight in elephant habitat.

The problem is that those who want to preserve the elephant rarely have to bear the costs. Prof. Kotagama says, “You can talk to a man, but not to an elephant” and environmental education and discussion between conservation authorities, farmers and villagers can change the perception of the elephant to an economic asset, rather than an agricultural pest.

Despite the large number of national parks on this small island, 11 are less than 500 sq. km and the majority of elephants are outside, which means that resolution has to be sought beyond protected areas and with the support of rural communities.

Elephant conservation cannot be achieved by DWC alone. Likewise, people cannot continue to suffer such significant economic and human losses. Long gone are the days when the elephant was threatened by sportsmen and poachers, today the elephant faces a potentially fatal reality - not human greed but human need.

The national policy for the conservation and management of wild elephants

The aim of the policy is to find a compromise which allows elephants to stay in agricultural areas, but provides proper compensation for people:-

* Review and streamline the existing compensation package

* Develop an insurance scheme to address needs of the children of the affected families

* Institute compensation and insurance schemes with public-private support

* Immediate ex-gratia payment to meet funeral costs in the event of the loss of life

Asian Elephant

* Largest terrestrial mammal in Asia today

* Adults over 2m tall and weigh between 3,000 and 5,000 kg

* Forest animal requires shade, unlike its African cousin

* Female has gestation period of 22 months and can have as many as 12 calves in her lifetime

* Around 7% of males have tusks, compared with Southern India where 90% of bulls are tuskers

* Sri Lankan elephant has highest genetic diversity of any of the 13 Asian elephant range states

* Thought to communicate over distances up to 5km using ‘infra sound’ calls below the range of human hearing

* Daily requirement of 150kg, 50% of which is grass

* 40-50% of ingested food ends up as waste

* Spends 17-19 hours feeding, consuming up to 60 species of plant a day Population

Sri Lankan Elephant

* In late 1800s more than 2, 000 elephants exported to zoos in USA and Europe

* During British rule excessive hunting, and coffee and tea plantations excluding elephants from the hill-country, decreased population from an estimated 10, 000 to a mere 2, 000 animals

* Today’s population estimated between 4, 500 and 5,000 distributed throughout most parts of the dry and intermediate zones in the north western, Mahaweli and southern regions of the country Conservation Status

* Director General of DWC only person with authority to permit shooting of elephant

* Protected in Sri Lanka since 12th century AD, receiving full legal protection in 1937

* ‘Proscribing’ animals and permits for elephant capture and shooting suspended in 1954 Conflict

* Adult male to female ratio 1:3 declines to 1:7 in areas severely affected by human elephant conflict in North-West