LOST ELEPHANT CORRIDORS - Key Sri Lanka Habitat Being Converted To Industry!
Lost Elephant Corridors - Politicians of Sri Lanka Giving away Critical Habitat to their Friends! Within months of his election, Sri Lanka's president Rajapaksa is stripping the country of their natural heritage. This goes against all promises he'd made for helping with human/elephant conflict, which has increased 50% in the past 5 years. He's providing public lands within a critical elephant corridor to Prime Site Corporation for the production of mangos. The high tech vertical electric fence that this well-funded corporation erects will block all elephants from one of the last remaining corridors that links seasonal tanks (reservoirs) and their critical recessional grasses. To avoid the fences, the elephants will need to cross through villages and farmers fields. Those farmers can't afford vertical fencing - thus, they and the elephants lose! Over 400 elephants died in 2019 - 50 percent more than the average of 260 in the previous ten years. There are only 4000 elephants left in Sri Lanka, so this is 10 percent of the remaining population.
While the politicians continue to lie about there being 6,000 elephants - there are not that many. To the people challenged by the elephants, there may appear more, but this is only because the elephants have been pushed out of their habitats by ignorant government supported developments that converted public lands to private corporations or ill advised irrigation projects. The new Hambantota port, airport, industrial zone (15,000 acres given to the Chinese), cricket stadium and municipal buildings were built within prime elephant habitat.
Our organization has taken great effort to map out the corridors of Galgamuwa, while taking note of all the recent construction within them. This includes a new school, temple, a multitude of new homes and newly planted paddy fields. In this area there are new canals, and small tanks being build dead center in elephant corridors that locals had purposely left natural because they recognized their essential value to elephant herds. The Mahaweli Irrigation project which decimated this region in central Sri Lanka beginning in 1961, continues to steal away the last remaining threads of corridor that 400 elephants have had to slink through. Canals are continuing to be built dead center of the corridor. Electric fences also run amuck in these areas - put up without longterm planning and forcing elephants to ping pong between the lessor of bad choices. Then people wonder why elephant conflict is worsening! Please wisen up!
Now, with the last threads of a corridor being stolen by the plantation shown in this video, and Mahaweli project expansion, the elephants are homeless and must survive by doing nightly raids on farmers fields. All 300 (some reports of up to 400) elephants will eventually be killed. It is inevitable, as they have only small patches of disconnected forest to hide within during day hours. The forest patches have very little forage for the elephants - they must rely on crop raiding for survival. Up until last year, these forest patches at least allowed the elephants to hopscotch their way between the Galgamuwa area tanks and the Kalawewa tank, to enjoy foraging on recessional grasses (which grow when the tanks water levels subside). Now, even these last vestiges of migration is becoming blocked. Please view the Google Satellite images in this video to view the facts.
Please view our video about this topic here: