Death of a Sri Lankan icon highlights surge in elephant electrocutions
Death of a Sri Lankan icon highlights surge in elephant electrocutions
Malaka Rodrigo, Mongabay
April 30, 2021
See link
https://news.mongabay.com/2021/04/death-of-a-sri-lankan-icon-highlights-surge-in-elephant-electrocutions/
for photos.
COLOMBO: He may have had short tusks, but at nearly 3 meters (10 feet)
tall, Revatha was the dominant bull in his home range of Kalawewa in Sri
Lanka’s North Central province.
Other bull elephants that challenged him for dominance found themselves no
match for his might; some even died in their ground-rumbling jousts with
Revatha.
On March 9, Revatha, aged 45, was killed. But it wasn’t another elephant
that dealt the fatal blow. It was an electric fence that had been set up
illegally around a cornfield.
Electric fences are commonly deployed across Sri Lanka; the country has the
highest density of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and a correspondingly
high rate of human-elephant conflict (HEC). Wildlife-deterring electric
fences are meant to stun, not kill, an animal, much less an elephant. But
this one, like many in Sri Lanka was wired up directly, and illegally, to
the overhead power line, said Sumith Pilapitiya, a former head of the
Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC). When Revatha brushed up against
it, it would have been like grabbing onto a live wire strung between
pylons, he added.
Revatha wasn’t the only one. The same week he died, four other elephants
were electrocuted to death in the same region of North Central.
“All of them are fully grown males that would be carrying strong genes,”
Chandana Jayasinghe, the wildlife veterinary surgeon who conducted
Revatha’s post-mortem exam, told Mongabay.
Surging Trend
In the first three months of 2021 alone, 100 elephants were killed across
Sri Lanka, 21 of them from electrocution, according to the Department of
Wildlife Conservation (DWC). Eighteen died from eating explosive-packed
bait known as hakka patas or “jaw exploders,” and 12 were shot dead. The
cause of death for the remaining elephants wasn’t immediately known.
Annually, nearly 400 elephants and 50 people are killed in HEC incidents in
Sri Lanka. But while hakka patas and shootings are typically the main cause
of unnatural elephant deaths, the surge in electrocutions so far this year
has led to calls to better regulate electric fences.
Prithiviraj Fernando from the Centre for Conservation and Research (CCRSL)
called for the registration of private electric fences and conducting an
awareness campaign that such fences are just as deadly to people as to
animals.
According to the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL), most
human deaths due to electrocution in the country — 45 out of 103 in 2019 —
occur when people attempt to rig up electric fences straight to power lines
to keep wildlife out of their farms.
M.K. Jayatissa, head of the Progressive Farmers Federation of Kaudulla in
North Central province, told Mongabay that farmers do this because they
can’t afford to lose their crops to raiding herds of elephants and other
wildlife.
“But when an elephant dies of electrocution, it is a sad moment for farmers
and they themselves weep and feel guilty about what they have done,”
Jayatissa said.
‘High Risk’ of Death
The spread of agriculture into elephant habitat means the conflict between
human and animal will only intensify, Manori Gunawardena, a wildlife
scientist and country representative for the U.K.-based Born Free
Foundation, told Mongabay.
“A bull elephant with a home range in a human modified fragmented landscape
runs a high risk of HEC-related death,” Gunawardena said. “They navigate
and turn increasingly hostile on home ground while adult bull elephants in
these mixed landscapes raid crops.
“This tusker too, like many other adult bull elephants residing outside
protected areas, faced this risk,” Gunawardena said of Revatha.
Seeking Solutions
A solution to preventing crop-raiding by elephants is community-based
seasonal electric fencing, according to the CCRSL. These are managed by a
community rather than individual farmers, and pilot projects carried out by
in several villages have been successful, according to the CCRSL.
A newly crafted national action plan for mitigating human-elephant conflict
was presented to Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in December 2020.
It recommends community-based fencing to protect villages and crops and to
ensure villagers and farmers have access to standardized equipment that are
safe and effective.
Fernando said electric fences are not cheap; lower-cost ones tend to be
less effective. To be successful, community-based electric fencing would
therefore need to be implemented through government agencies such as
divisional secretariats and the Agrarian Services Department in a planned
manner to find a lasting solution, he said.