Environmentalists welcome gazette on Hambantota Managed Elephant Reserve

By Ifham Nizam

The government’s initiative to gazette the much-discussed Hambantota Managed Elephant Reserve (MER) was lauded by environmentalists, who described the move as an important step to protect wildlife.

The government gazetted the Hambantota MER after a decade-long struggle to which the contribution of farmers’ organizations in Walsapugala helped in a big way to produce a positive outcome, researcher Supun Lahiru Prakash said.

He said the question of certain encroached areas being excluded in the gazette, and other processes needed to be worked out.

“There is an issue over the size of the gazetted MER in comparison with the size of the MER proposed in the Greater Hambantota Development Plan 2009. The gazette process of the MER could also be problematic. Removing the encroached lands from the MER and making them suitable for elephants is another challenge that the government has to deal with,” he stressed.

Around 70 per cent of elephant home ranges in Sri Lanka are outside protected areas. However, the authorities try to drive elephants into protected areas and fence them in order to mitigate the HEC, he further said.

The HEC escalation during the past decades clearly show that the method is completely unsuccessful. This attempt leads to increased aggression of elephants towards humans. Ultimately, Sri Lanka will end up as the country with the highest number of elephant deaths and the second highest in human deaths in the world, says Prakash, a researcher of the elephant studies in Sri Lanka.

“Elephants have a strong bond with their home ranges and it is not possible to remove them from their traditional grounds. If we try to do so through drives, only herds consisting of females and the young will be moved out, which will result in the remaining males continuing to cause trouble”, he explained.

This clearly shows that HEC mitigation does not help. On the other hand, herds driven to protected areas suffer due to lack of resources and die of starvation. This also reflects negatively on elephant conservation. That was why the MER concept was introduced to protect elephant home ranges outside the protected areas,” he noted.

The MER connects Udawalawa, Lunugamvehera and Bundala National Parks which are home to around 450 elephants. The idea was proposed in 2009 under the Gajamithuro Program launched by the Department of Wildlife Conservation.

Subsequently, the proposal was approved in 2012 at the Gajamithuro District Committee meeting. However, as there was no progress on the project since then, three elephant corridors were identified, but they have now been disrupted due to human activities, a department official said.